I’m serious when I whip out my notebook and start taking notes.
So … “how to get big on youtube” is a genre, and there are about a million channels all telling you how to … get big on youtube. Naturally, that inspires me to feel massively insecure about the fact that probably everyone is following the same advice, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to measure up to all the people who don’t have my issues (of which I have so many). There are a gazillion youtube videos out there, after all.
Meanwhile, I’m still working on my camera anxiety.
This is probably going to be a big block for me, but I’m determined to get over it. The thing is, I realized that since I’ve lived most of my life trying to be invisible, I’ve attracted people who wanted me to be invisible … and I don’t actually like it at all. What I really want is to feel seen and heard, which also means that I have to get over feeling so uncomfortable with being seen and heard. I mean this for my personal relationships just as much for my current career venture.
To get a little bit personal here, I recently played Josh Groban’s song, “Hidden Away” while belting it out with my terrible vocal control, when in the middle of it I broke down sobbing too hard to keep singing.
Josh Groban – Hidden Away
If no one sees you then nobody knows
And all these words you were meant to say
Held in silence day after day
Words of kindness that our poor hearts crave
Please don’t keep them
Hidden away
I’m teary eyed right now just reading over it again.
I don’t think I was meant to be silent and invisible in my life. I love words too much, and I care too much about leaving a positive impact on the world. So, no matter how hard and scary it is for me to stand up and be seen, I want to do it. I want to overcome my fear. Because I want to help others and leave the world a better place, and I can’t do that in hiding. Do you want to know something that I’ve learned? Strong emotions, including fear, are easier to turn into forward momentum than having weak emotions. So it’s a good thing that I’ve got fear in droves — tons and tons of it, about practically everything.
Getting back to the original topic …
The deeper I dive into this youtube idea, the more it feels like I need to do this for the sake of my future. Because, as it’s been said, “If you do what you did, then you’ll get what you got,” and I really don’t want to repeat my past. If I can get over my camera anxiety, then I can start a new chapter in my life where I’ll be more confident in myself and make better choices. I also won’t attract people who expect me to sit in the shadows while they hog the spotlight.
So, the photo above is of some of the notes that I’ve been taking about managing a youtube channel — specifically the thumbnails. Not every popular channel follows those rules, but they’re a good place to start, especially considering that you only get about one second to capture someone’s attention. Then, after they clicked that thumbnail to see what the heck, the first ten seconds of the video are where you establish whether or not they’re going to stick around and watch it. Kind of insane, right? One second to catch someone’s eye, and ten seconds to make them stay — yet that’s how fast our brains work. In a way, it takes the pressure off the rest of the content, because as long as I don’t plummet downhill with the quality, I don’t have to maintain that level of engagement for the entire video.
I’m starting to feel excited about learning marketing. I wouldn’t go and claim that I feel excited for it every moment of every day — I still have plenty of periods of feeling soul-crushing defeat about how everything went so so wrong — but I can get behind the idea of spending 2025 learning me some new skills and re-making my life into something better. Provided I don’t end up homeless.
I even went through the trouble of digging out my fancy camera, that I bought all the way back in 2016 so that I could get high-quality photos and videos of the kids. Only then I became too anxious about accidentally breaking it or something, so I didn’t use it that much, and it ended up sitting in the case gathering dust. LOL. Now it can be repurposed for youtube, I guess.
So … let’s see where this goes.
What about you? What are some strong emotions that you’ve had, that you’ve used to change something for the better in your life? I’m really curious, because I think that we can help cheer each other on with positive words; we all probably need more than we’re getting. 😊
By Autumn Rain 