Regarding the future of my Youtube channel...

Creativity is such a fickle thing.... 

There are a lot of extremely talented people who can pump out amazing artwork after amazing artwork on an almost daily basis. And there are people who only release stuff once every year. Neither of these publishing schedules are really better then the other. Creativity works differently for everyone so therefore does it only makes sense that people express that creativity at different intervals. However the worst nightmare of everyone that has ever attempted to do anything creative is a creative block or creative burnout. There is no worse feeling then spending hours if not days or weeks in front of a blank screen being unable to write even a single letter, draw even a single line or put down even a single musical note. And yet is this phenomenon frighteningly common. 

There are many reasons why so many people suffer from this. Mental Health problems, burnout, unrealistic expectations of society and material problems are only a few of many of. Our capitalist society is in this regard havoc for any creative expression. A lot of creative work is done at the side since it is extremely difficult to monetize your creativity properly and this means that the focus of the artist changes from doing creativity as their main activity as something that has to be done during free time when they are tired and really should be recovering from their day job. That is not to mention all the domestic tasks that people usually need to do. This is especially bad for Neurodivergent persons like myself who only have a limited amount of executive functioning resources each day to spare. This means that doing creative work becomes a compromise. Do I spend all morning cleaning my house or do I spend time working on this script? If I do groceries this afternoon will I still have energy left for doing some voice-overs? These are all questions I have had to ask on a regular basis. 

Which brings me to my video work. It is no surprise to regular viewers of mine that my video output has gone down dramatically this last year. Videos have also become shorter and filled with less content. I made a Shortz video trying to explain this but I have had to come to some harsh realizations since then. As I am writing this right now do I have an unfinished video about Bad Dutch Public transit. The script is done but I still need to do voice-overs and shoot footage for it. This is something that I have been putting off for a while now. I think the subject is interesting to talk about but it is also very much a response to a trend. This bothers me because I feel that a lot of my work has been me responding to trends and I don't think that I am really flexing my creative muscles when I do that. I have heard someone once say that "responding to the things that are right in front of you is the sign of the creatively bankrupt" and while that statement is maybe a little bit pretentious I do feel that I am at the very least somewhat creatively spent. Even the thought of making a video right now feels like an annoying chore. An obligation I feel that I have to do because I am a Youtuber and Youtubers are supposed to make videos. I am small time of course and I could easily just not upload anything anymore for the rest of my life and be happy with that but I still feel the obligation. 

This is not the first time I have felt like this. I have had more then a few times last year and the year before that, that I felt like I should quit. I fell out of favor with the format of the video essay when people decided to make video essays that were getting longer and longer. This was something I was against since I have always been very to the point when it comes to my presentations. I also lack the academic skills to do the kind of research that is necessary to really get that amount of information for such long essays. In the end I feel like I was an amateur trying to measure themselves to the professionals. Clearly this was a recipe for failure. Keeping all of this in mind I have had to come to the conclusion that it is probably for the best that I stop making Youtube videos for the time being. I began making Youtube videos 3.5 years ago, early on in the pandemic, and honestly I would rather quit early and take a look at a short hobby I can look back on with pride, then somehow get big a few years down the line and find out that I am completely burned out. I managed to build a small but good userbase who have supported me through all the wacky stuff my muse has taken me and I want to thank them for all of their support. I am not completely ruling out that I will ever make videos again but for now do I feel done with Youtube. 

So what comes now? A week after publishing this article I shall retool this blog into something a bit more attractive and instead make it a repository of art and photos that I made or took. I might also do some writing about subjects that interest me in the future but I am not guaranteeing anything. I shall also attempt to retool the script of my final unfinished video and publish it here. The script is good as done and I feel like it would be a shame to never publish it. 

I want to look back at my short Youtube career not as a failure but rather as a learning moment. I am working on becoming a peer counselor for Autistic people and in a sense do I see that as an extension of what I started way back in early 2020. Youtube gave me a launchpad for which I could do this and allowed me to build my confidence in presentation and understanding my own Autism. I also managed to meet a lot of new people because of it and for this am I grateful. I want to thank all people who tuned in and watched my videos! I am grateful for your support and I hope you enjoyed them! 

- Sincerely
Pim