One of the other hobbies I have is creating YouTube videos out of videogame clips and various discussions based around nerd culture, and I’ve always done that for fun with very minimal success. In recent months, however, the channel has been gaining thousands of views and steadily climbing in subscribers, which has brought me no small amount of joy. I can do it! I can do the video thing. I can make people laugh.
I am jealous.
Of myself.
Which is so stupid and absurd, but ultimately nobody is just one person and two things can be true. On the one hand, something I’ve wanted since I was a teenager is finally coming to pass, and I legitimately could not be happier about it. On the other hand, I can’t help but recontextualise my writing efforts and compare it against the channel. While I may pour a lot of effort and time into one project, I pour equal measures of deep thought and vulnerability into the other on top of a similar amount of effort and time. Like yeah, I can make people laugh, but can I make people think? Can I make people read a life experience and relate it to their own and have a humdinger of a brain poking session?
I am an idiot because I see people read my stuff and I am as thankful for it as I have always been, and now I am comparing it to an entirely different medium with an entirely different tone and having a crisis because it doesn’t get as much attention.
I think the thing I struggle with, even still, is having attended university to find a bunch of likeminded deep thinking writey-folk to bounce ideas off and feel validated existing alongside, only to leave university and be thrust back into the isolated void that is writing for oneself in an uncaring universe. A writer’s journey is often a lonely one, as it’s just me and this sheet of virtual paper, hashing it out until I arbitrarily come to a stop. I’m my own editor, so I have no idea if my garbled thoughts make sense to the outside world or if I’m just amusing my own tangle of nerves in the meat soup inside my skull. And then when I do hit publish, having absolutely no idea how many people these words reach. There are analytics, sure, but what is a view? A cursory glance or a fully comprehended ten-minute sit-down with a coffee and an open mind?
Actually, I don’t really check the analytics because I’m sure I won’t like what I see. So that probably doesn’t help.
Whinging about views is cringe, I know! But the goal of this blog is to be as open and honest as possible about my journey through life, and in my continuing attempts to portray myself with accuracy I have to acknowledge the parts of me that you’re not supposed to have. Like being jealous of the other part of your brain that can make people laugh, and comparing yourself against more successful people who are doing what you want to be doing but better.
“Making things is like deciding to spend your life playing a rigged demented slot machine, except instead of quarters you’re gambling everything that’s ever made you feel something and like, your childhood trauma.” – Savannah Brown
For those of you that do read what I have to say, thank you so much. I hope you don’t feel overlooked by my self-obsessive neuroticism in this post. If you’re fellow writers then maybe you can simply relate.
Perpetually Perturbed 