Where have I been, and my plans for 2023 (Patreon)

Hey, everyone! It's been a while, huh?

Sorry for going dark for a while. I've been using this analogy lately of running downhill — this feeling like I have a million things going on and I'm trying to do all of them and if I try to stop I'll loose balance and crash. So that's where my mental state has been for the past 2-3 months.

Which I understand might be weird considering it looks like I haven't done much regarding videos or even podcasts. The holiday episode of It's Probably Not Aliens still isn't up yet because I've not had time to edit it.

Truth is, I've been researching and writing lots of big videos that have crept up in scope more than I anticipated, causing me to miss deadlines and even having to switch my focus a couple times. Then with the holidays last month, I felt myself being pulled away from spending time with my family in favor of working. I didn't want to do that, so I made the choice to stop working for the final week of the year.

On that note, I've also had a lot of personal stuff happening behind the scenes that I don't wish to share online. It's nothing bad, just personal, and I don't want to put my entire life online if I don't have to. I know most of you don't need to hear explanations about where I've been and why I haven't been posting as regularly, but I have gotten a few private messages asking if I've abandoned Patreon or YouTube. While those messages don't make me feel great, I think they are fair considering my private life stuff + big video projects + my break from social media have made it look like I'm not making anything

As always, there's so much that I want to do and not enough time to do everything. A lot has fallen by the wayside. Including regular updates to Patreon.

I've been wanting to post a big end-of-year update last month about all the stuff the channel accomplished, goals for 2023, and thanking you all for support here on Patreon. So true to myself, let's do it right now, nearly 2 weeks late lol.

In 2022, I experimented a lot with my channel. I did a few live streams with friends, tackled breaking Scooby-Doo news, and generally made a lot more unscripted content. And a lot of those videos were the best performing videos on the channel last year! But there's no real trend with the channel that I can see. Both unscripted and scripted videos fluctuated wildly in terms of views. So I think that means more experimenting in 2023. One thing is for sure, Scooby content is here to stay!

A recent breakthrough I've had in therapy is that I can spend weeks or even months on a video to get it "perfect" but if it doesn't perform well on YouTube, then I'll become depressed. In fact, I'll be more depressed the longer I spend on videos because I put more and more weight on them to become the video that makes my channel pick up. Meanwhile, I can make a quick unscripted video that I don't super care about, put it up in just a few days, and if it does well then great! But if it does poorly, then who cares? I didn't spend weeks on it, so I didn't have the expectations that it'd be a massive success.

I've spoken before about how in the early days of this channel, I posted every week or even multiple times per week, and how that never really gave me the time to care about the videos I was making. When one video was published, I was already on to the next one. I always looked back on that time as me not being thoughtful about my content, and that I never made anything I could look back on and be proud of. I still think that's true to a degree. But I also think that I was happier back then because I didn't put so much weight onto each video's success the way that I do now.

So I'm hoping I can evaluate those dueling mindsets this year and find a way to still make thoughtful videos that I'm proud of without putting so much pressure on each of them to be "perfect" and a massive success. I don't have a specific game plan, but I'm thinking it'll involve me posting more videos that aren't very polished, just to challenge myself.

I'm also going to be posting more exclusive video content to Patreon and Nebula as those are the two most stable sources of income for me, and I want to reward everyone who already supports me through those means while incentivizing more people to sign up as well! A lot more goofy videos with Emily, I hope!

I don't have too much more to say than yes, I'm still here working on stuff! Thanks for the support, and I hope I can continue to earn your support this year 💜