Update: Is It Harder?

Hey everybody;

I'm grateful to be writing this instead of speaking, as my throat's Sahara dry with a nasty cough and fierce pain. Travelling to a city of two million for a week, this result isn't surprising, especially via how I spent some of the nights.

It was enjoyable though; all that matters.

I'll get over this illness soon, and I'm not going to use it as an excuse for why there isn't a new video out yet.

I made much further progress on it straight after landing, but I've been struggling to complete a YT script for some time now, having jumped ship between "Everybody's a Critic When It Comes to UI" (previously mentioned), "So I've Finally Played… Dead Space 2", "Ubisoft Isn't Bad…" and now "Finally… a Better Hotline Miami."

The first step in addressing this has already been done, in lowering the amount of extra content I produce here that was impeding my Youtube, but rather than just end it there and a "hope you'll enjoy the final product", I want talk frankly about how writing can get harder with time…

Something I often tear myself up over is for the first three or so years of my "Career", I was releasing a video every other Sunday, and that output has slowed down year after year after year.

The first explanation I gave myself was…

The old videos were worse.

Which they are.

I used to say that I couldn't stand my content from COD's Identity up till ME2 Years Later, when I finally stopped recording in the early mornings I.E. sounding like a Kardashian waking up from a drunken stupor.

Now that goalpost has moved all the way up to Metro Exodus YL, which I don't like. There's videos in between there I'm really pleased with, often the ones I'd least expect, like Control and King Kong, but those are the exceptions.

So, the videos would have to take what they take, and they'll be better as a result. I've felt very pleased about everything released after Metro Exodus; except the delays kept getting longer without a work related reason.

Adobe kicks my shins every other click, but that's not new.

The second explanation was…

I'm ill.

Back in 2016 when all of this started, a few weeks after I was laid off, I was hit with about half a dozen different health concerns all at once.

Two years ago I finally had a name for it…

Central Sensitivity Syndrome.

Don't think of it as a disease, more an umbrella that encapsulates a library of symptoms. Normally, somebody would only suffer from one of these symptoms, or it'd relate to a greater concern like infections or cancers.

CSS however, it's possible for the whole umbrella to describe one individual; the core of it all being the central nervous system intensifying all of the body's nerve signals to the brain.

If you've ever had an injury, you know that dull yet needle pin sting it has during the recovery period? Imagine that, but it never goes away, and it's for an injury that doesn't physically exist.

Your brain is just making it seem so.

Forever.

Thing is, this has been there with me since the start of this channel, so that's not an explanation either.

Maybe I've been worn down over the years, but I'm generally a much stronger person mentally than I was seven years ago. I used to daydream of going into some of these Doctor's offices with a baseball bat after being told I just need to do some Yoga and drink Chicken Broth.

That doesn't happen so much anymore on either account.

So in-came the third explanation, the real one…

I'm not scared anymore.

Because I was poor, because I was sick, being obscenely lucky with those Years Later videos put a gun to my head mentally. It said, if you're not releasing content right now, you're going to lose everything and go back to draining your soul at a nine-to-five corporate cubical.

My family pursued their dream music careers within Vancouver and Los Angeles, who as with so many dreamers, were spat out with precisely the callousness you'd expect from both cities. I have to work at this, or else, with everything I got that they never had despite working so much longer and harder, I'm spitting them out too.

Witnessing it happen time and time again to multiple channels I admired, I'd always think with every upload, "this is the one that's going to make everyone hate me."

Intentionally isolating myself to avoid friends, family, and colleagues from finding out something unknowable is crippling me…

Youtube was my outlet, it was my creative expression, learning tool, social-link, collaboration excuse, and livelihood all at once; I was scared, petrified at the thought of losing it.

Fear's been my primary motivator for nearly a decade, and now, finally, I don't have it…

I'm not rich, but I'm not min-wage.
I'm ill, but not locked away.
I'm proud of my work, not guilty over my opportunity.
Okay, these were not meant to read like song lyrics, I'm stopping this.

In short, I'll be doing Youtube, but no longer because I'm afraid everything's over if I don't. However, there has to be a motivation replacing that fear, and I haven't decided what it is yet.

I've been having enough existential thoughts for my Therapist to say to my face that I'm having existential thoughts. The main challenge now with Youtube is that what used to be my only outlet is now not satisfying an outlet I previous suppressed, that being a social group.

Now that I no longer believe I have to isolate myself from everybody, isolating myself for work is required to put food on the table.

Hosting Multiplayer on the Weekends with Patrons, collaborating on a film script with a friend ready to start pitching to producers, or making assets for The Shambles Championship, has an emotional pull that talking about Phil Spencer's latest quote, or writing descriptions of gun-perks, and booting up Adobe Premiere after the 50th crash that day doesn't have, especially when I've done 90% of this before.

To clarify, no, this isn't my resignation letter, and there's still so much I want to do on Youtube.

I wanna do Alan Wake YL. I want to tell the story of Cyberpunk. I want to show all the physics games that aren't called Half Life 2. I want to somehow involve EA Canada's Soccer Field into a showdown between Battlefield 3 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter (buhahahaha) to decide once and for all, which Campaign is worse.

And I want to talk about why this OTXO game is so fucking great, but I can't do these things with fear anymore; even if I wanted to, I couldn't, and while I don't want to go so far as to overhaul my entire channel, I am currently having to overhaul myself.

Side Note: I've just started Vyvanse, and I immediately wrote more of everything including the video… if this is all I needed, I'm gonna get the Baseball Bat.

What's not a sidenote is y'all; without your generosity, while there'd be the occasional YT cheque high enough to cover rent + expenses, I wouldn't have been able to output enough content to keep the channel, at least, not without sacrificing my own health even further.

I do sometimes wish I was consistent enough to grow everything simultaneously, but the truth is, I am lucky to even do this at all, and lucky to have people like you that directly support it.

It means the world to me, because for so long, it's been my only world.

Thank you.