Alright, video number two. Here we go.
Okay, so a couple of weeks ago, I decided to start a YouTube channel. And I did so by abandoning everything that I had planned of starting off well, with a nice laid out plan, high production value, just wanting to put in the effort and make it really good right off the bat. But instead, I just abandoned all that, started anyway before I was ready. And that has gotten me thinking a lot about that approach, about a lot of different things. And so that leads me to today of another video of just hitting record, this time without any notes, without reading off my phone, just talking to a camera, which is something that I am not comfortable with. I’m very insecure. I’m an introvert. I don’t like attention, I don’t like putting myself out there at all. But I’m doing it anyway because I’m going to learn how to do that.
So the phrase that’s kind of been in the back of my mind for the last little while is “be less precious.” It’s kind of the theme of today’s video, this idea that especially with creative things, again, removing the barriers to starting, but just approaching things in a less precious way.
So I personally feel like I’m a paradox in a lot of different ways. And one of those ways is the fact that I want to dabble in everything. I want just a basic level of understanding, of competency at everything. Just dabbling, jumping around from thing to thing. And yet I also want to be the best at everything I do. I want to master everything. I love excellence, I need to do my best at things. So it is this weird paradox.
And growing up, I had a lot of perfectionism issues that I was able to work through and push myself outside my comfort zone, doing a number of things. But now I am applying that to starting a YouTube channel, to be less precious with things. There’s so much freedom in that. In just being able to hit record on a camera and not worry about a crazy setup. Not worrying about what I look like. Not having notes or the number of “ums” or “uhs” or pauses, just going for it. This is real. This is me. This is just hitting record, having the courage to do that and be unscripted and see what happens. See where that leads.
So, yeah, that’s been the main thing on my mind with how I approach this and even other creative things. Realizing that a lot of the creative things that I enjoy doing and want to do don’t actually surround themselves in the whole “I want to master this, I want to be the best at this.” Creative things for me is an outlet mostly to just have fun and explore and play and learn things and dabble. That’s what creative things have kind of always been for me, but at the same time, I’ve wanted to have some sort of a career where I can make money doing the things that I enjoy, which is kind of creating. So then there’s this other side of it where it’s like, I want to be successful at this, I want to be professional at this, I want to do well. But then it takes away from actually getting started. And then if you don’t get started, then you can’t actually get better at things. You can’t actually improve.
So today was just about being less precious, starting. I do have a whole bunch of different notes in my phone on reasons why this new approach to YouTube for me makes so so much more sense than what I had planned, why it’s way more conducive to who I am and how I operate, which I hope to get into next time, maybe.
But, yeah, for now, this was just having the courage to be less precious with it all and just talk to a camera and yeah, five and a half minutes, that’s a pretty good start. So, yeah, be less precious. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.
All right. The end.