Opinion Falling In Love with Creating (again…) - A Creators' Retrospect

[HeyJersh]

This week, IΓÇÖve been retrospective about my journey as a creator.

I wonder if you can relate.

Over the past 20 years, IΓÇÖve been making all kinds of things from music, photos, videos, voice-over, and streams. Ever since then, IΓÇÖve been falling in and out of love with the craft of creating.

2021 was a tough year for a lot of people. My creative apparatus wasnΓÇÖt all too active, either. I felt like IΓÇÖve hit the biggest creatorΓÇÖs block IΓÇÖve ever faced ΓÇô almost an entire year without creating (or at least finishing) anything at all.

Nothing but a pitter-patter came out of my creative boombox. My gut wasnΓÇÖt buzzing. My ideas werenΓÇÖt racing. My heart was just not in it.

ΓÇ£Do I really want to do this?ΓÇ¥, I kept asking myself.

I kept reminiscing of the joy I felt learning to play guitar, songwriting and sharing my songs with friends. That was the first time I fell in love with creating. After a few years, I needed something fresh and turned to photos and videos, until one day it all stopped feeling fun.

Finally, last month, after a long creative hiatus, I’m making music and videos again. I needed to find a way to fall in love with creating again. So I picked up a new instrument to learn like I did the guitar and a new course to make my videos even more entertaining! It re-spark an all too familiar flame…

And it was glorious.

Do you remember what it felt like to fall in love with creating the first time?

 

[MattCommand1]

Hi Josh,

I was moved by your sharing and thought I would chime in and offer a few thoughts.

If it helps, I would not say I LOVE being a Youtube creator but it is an entrepreneurial endeavor I LIKE (mostly). It is more pragmatic than an artistic one. Because I have an entrepreneurial purpose, I do what I have to do on Youtube although there are many aspects I dislike.

I have a friend who was so enthused and enthralled at being a YTuber. He was more of an enthusiast than I was and even encouraged me to get in the game (which I finally did in Jan. 2021 after several delays/setbacks). This friend did a fabulous job on his 5 videos (much superior than mine) but he came to dislike it and has stopped. Maybe he will get back in later but for now, it's done. After 5 weeks, he stopped.

He felt the hard work behind it and it discouraged him. But he set these crazy high expectations and standards for himself and for each video. I won't get into the other details but the bottom line is, I think we have to find a greater PURPOSE if we don't have the LOVE. Some people LOVE being a creator and YTuber but I "only" LIKE being a creator. But my WHY and PURPOSE is much larger and it drives me to do a good job, be a voracious learner, and incorporate every edge I can find in a REASONABLE manner.

I have run several into artistic/creator types. I am not sure if you classify yourself as such. Their mindset and the way they look at their creations (whether it is paint, music, videos, sculpting, photography, videography, etc.) and they are insanely and viciously hard on themselves.

I have a much more moderated mindset. I following a 5-year plan (of which YT is one leg of it) and I am mostly ontrack. Of course, I want to do much better than I am doing now but I am not going to mentally beat the hell out of myself because I mostly produce "average" videos. It is like what most experienced people say, improve a little bit every time. And even if there is no improvement, I got one more video out than I had before.

I offer another perspective. I was finally so pissed at myself in Jan. 2021, I blasted out my first crappy video and I didn't care. I just had to get something out. There were so many delays, I had all I could stand of my own procrastination. So, in a sense, my launch into my current YT channel was born out of being pissed at myself more than the LOVE of being a creator.

Now, do I recommend people get pissed at themselves? Not sure it is super healthy but it got my butt going and I followed what the gurus said. Get those 100 videos out and stop overthinking about subscribers! And by gosh, I was on a mission and I got it done.

As flawed human beings, we gotta figure out ourselves. We are all quirky in some way, shape, or form. I encourage you to explore where you want your life to go. Try different things as you have before. It may not be Youtube. It could be something else. As I told you, YT is a tool for me (albeit a very cool one) and a means to an end.

Anyhow, I hope what wrote helps you or someone else who believes you have to LOVE what you do. Sometimes you can do something without LOVING it. But I LOVE that vision I am working for. That drives me.

 

[The Jungle Explorer]

I first fell in love with creating long before YouTube was ever a dream. Back in the 1980s, I bought a Sony Handycam M8U model. This was the first-ever 8mm video recorder Sony produced. I bought it to record a 6-month long expedition deep into the Amazon rainforest. Knowing that the conditions would be hard, I also bought an underwater housing for the recorder. Being completely new to video, I forgot one very important thing, which I will later mention, which was the spark behind my venture into video editing. With the latest, most up-to-date modern handheld video technology, I set off into the Amazon jungle ready to document my journey. Having no way to view my work, I recorded tape after tape over six months, and when I got back out to civilization I mail the tapes back to the US. Back in those days, it took up to three months for mail to get from Brazil to the US, so it was six months later before I got a letter informing me that there was no SOUND on the recordings! I had been filming for a whole year by that time, and there was not one peep of sound on anything I had recorded.

Remember that one very important thing that I had forgotten? It was the adaptor that connected the external mic jack on the camera to the external mic on the underwater housing. A very small but critically important thing. My heart was crushed beyond words. It was not something I could let go of. It was like I had lost a loved one. I mourned over the loss. But also, there was nothing that could be done, right? Well, not necessarily. Over the next 13-years I slowly accumulated sounds, until I had all the sounds I needed. Using a hodgepodge of six different videos and audio equipment, I artificially recreated the sound for the videos. This was my first foray into video editing and by far y greatest achievement. The final result was so good that not one person who has ever watched a video has ever perceived that the audio is not 100% original. But the effort it took to do this with non-professional equipment was gargantuan.

It would be many years before I picked up video editing again, and it was not until I could do it on a computer. Mind you, it was on a basic PC in the late 1990s and it took 24-hours to render a small project but compared the manual analog editing had done, it was a dream. Once I discovered the flexibility of digital video editing, my mind exploded with ideas and I have never looked back.

2021, was a very hard year for me as well. Not because I lacked motivation or creativity, but because I saw a huge drop in views for no reason. It did not make me want to quit, but it was discouraging because the content that I see getting all the attention these days is content that I believe is not worthy of a dumpster, and yet people are lapping it up like ranvonous meth addicts. I have always tried to produce content that is useful and beneficial to people and humanity, but now I am being to pushed to produce the kind of crap that I utterly detest because if I don't, I have no chance to compete for the attention of an audience that desire the worst form of human entertainment possible. It is discouraging to see this societal trend.

 

[HeyJersh]

Hi Josh,

I was moved by your sharing and thought I would chime in and offer a few thoughts.

Wow! Thank you so much for sharing your perspective and your thoughts!

What a way to start your YouTube career!

I consider myself a Creator type, yes, but only for the hobby and fun of creating anything, not just YouTube -- producing music, videos, blogs, podcasts, a live show, and any of the arts. The simple act of creating an experience or moment I can share with others fuels me with joy. It's the only reason I do it. The only time on hard on myself, though, is when I'm pushing myself to call something "done" instead of "perfect".

I agree with you. Sometimes, ya gotta try some new stuff and see where it goes. This is exactly what helped me in the end. New instruments, new skills.

Also, you're right about not having to love creating to create. This was a powerful statement you shared, and I'm grateful!

 

[HeyJersh]

I first fell in love with creating long before YouTube was ever a dream. Back in the 1980s, I bought a Sony Handycam M8U model. This was the first-ever 8mm video recorder Sony produced. I bought it to record a 6-month long expedition deep into the Amazon rainforest.

Holy cow! What a wild story!!

Very cool that you finished it after so many years!

I wish you a much better year than 2021! We definitely have a lot of interesting platforms ahead of us!

 

[The Jungle Explorer]

Holy cow! What a wild story!!

Very cool that you finished it after so many years!

I wish you a much better year than 2021! We definitely have a lot of interesting platforms ahead of us!

I am nothing if not stubborn and dedicated. Guess that is what makes me a good YouTuber. LOL!

2022 is a new year. I got big plans. It takes more than one bad year to keep this old dog down.