As part of a conversation about developing your confidence to "speak" (i.e. with your voice) online, I happened to look back over my YouTube channel and I was astonished to discover that I've uploaded over 500 videos at this point. Not all of these have been published yet (30+ of them are for the beginning of my Final Fantasy XI run in the Final Fantasy Marathon, which is a long way off publication yet!) but that's still a pretty impressive number… and I had no idea!
I've really enjoyed getting a feel for what I want to do with YouTube. The "Let's Play" format that I spend most of my time doing may not be the most fashionable way of doing things any more, but I'm slowly but surely building up a thoroughly pleasant audience of supportive people who seem to enjoy what I do very much. I even got a "shout-out" from fellow Atari ST-related creator The Joy of Sticks earlier this week, which was really exciting and nice to see.
Creating cool things online really is about networking, even for antisocial bastards like me. You can create things in a vacuum all you want and there's a certain amount of satisfaction to be drawn just from the act of creating. But there really is something special about knowing that the things you do are actually "reaching" other people and affecting their lives in positive ways — even if it's just through simple entertainment or informing.
I digress. I was talking about developing self-confidence. While I'm still an anxious, nervous, depressed wreck in reality, I actually feel pretty confident with both my written and video content these days. I feel I've naturally settled into distinctive styles for both, and my complete lack of desire to be at the centre of any sort of drama or clickbait controversies gives me something that sets me apart from a lot of other stuff around today, too.
It's something that's come with experimentation and practice, though, and I'm glad I listened to people when they had things to say to encourage me. Probably the most noteworthy of these was my wife suggesting I should appear on camera in my videos rather than simply being a disembodied voice. I was extremely nervous and hesitant to do this as I'm not a big fan of my own appearance and I've always been afraid of mean comments about it — you know what the Internet is like.
But I gave it a shot anyway, and I feel all my videos have been much better since I started doing that, even if my actual camerawork has sometimes been less than optimal. (Hey, I'm doing the best with the equipment and environment I have available to me!)
If you're yet to check out my stuff on YouTube, please do take some time to have a look when you have a moment. I'm especially proud of my three Atari A to Z series, which look at Atari 8-bit, Atari ST, Atari 2600, Atari 5200 and Atari arcade games; I take great pride in researching these as well as providing some anecdotes from my own experience where applicable, and I love showing off stuff from those home computers that don't get nearly as much love as stuff like the C64 and Spectrum. Atari was such a defining influence in my life that I'm happy to have the opportunity and the capability to celebrate it in some way.
Anyway. As always, thanks for being kind enough to take a look at what I do and supporting it. I hope it's abundantly clear by now that I love creating stuff, and I love expressing my passion and joy for the things that are important to me, so it means the world to me that people want to come along for the ride. And I'm not planning on stopping any time soon!
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