#oneaday Day 1131: Taking a rest

Hi folks, as I've already noted on YouTube, I need a break. I've been making videos almost non-stop nearly every week for a very long time now, and I need a bit of time off, particularly after a tiring week of lots of things to do!

With that in mind, I'm going to take a couple of weeks off from making videos, and in early April I'll come back, perhaps with a revamped schedule to take a bit of the pressure I've been putting on myself away. Right now, I'm doing four videos a week, which is quite a lot considering YouTube is by no means my full-time job — and my full-time job now is a lot busier than it was when I first started taking YouTube a bit more seriously.

For context: when I really got into doing YouTube stuff, I was working a job where my days were so full of pointless meetings I could literally fall asleep for 2-3 hours in the middle of my workday and no-one would actually notice. I eventually took to making videos in those gaps (and occasionally sleeping) and thus I was able to get a lot of stuff done.

Now, though, my day job fills up my whole day. Between writing stuff for Rice and working on stuff for Evercade, I rarely have a "free" moment — which is emphatically very good for job satisfaction and an overall sense of happiness, but not exactly conducive to squeezing in one's own creative projects during convenient periods of "downtime".

This has, as you might expect, been making me feel a bit anxious, because I don't want to feel like I'm letting people down, particularly as the YouTube channel has seen such impressive growth (relatively speaking) over the course of the last year or so. I feel like I might have set unreasonable expectations for myself, and I'm concerned that if I don't match up to those expectations, people might bugger off. And, while I've always said that I do my creative stuff primarily for me, it is nice to know that people are watching — it's been particularly pleasant to see the uptick in actual conversation in my comments section recently, too.

So I guess as well as some reassurance from those reading, I'm also interested in the thoughts of any creative types reading on what you think is a "reasonable" commitment to make in terms of something that is essentially a side project. Four videos a week is fun and satisfying to put out, but I don't think it's sustainable.

So what do I do instead? Do you think a monthly cycle (week 1: Atari A to Z, week 2: Atari ST A to Z, week 3: Retro Select, week 4: Evercade A to Z) might work? That means much slower progress through all the series, but would definitely take a lot of the pressure off.

Anyway, that's my thinking right now. Don't feel obliged to offer any thoughts — I primarily wanted to let you know about the two-week break more than anything. So, regardless of what I decide, I'll be back on the videos in early April! If I can find the time and energy to do so this weekend, I'll do a video announcing the short break over on YouTube to remind everyone, too.

Thanks for your understanding and continued support!