Update, 2022 Plans, & 2021 Statistics (Patreon)
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Hello! It's been a bit, apologies for the radio silence. December did *not* go as planned, and demotivating YouTube problems, mounting health problems, and holiday plans all got in the way of my ability to finish the video I was planning to get out at the end of the year. I gave myself two weeks off to see my family and recharge a bit, and it was incredibly needed. Turns out, working literally nonstop has a habit of making health problems *worse*! Even when your job involves sitting down and staring at a computer all day. So, yeah, I'm doing everything in my power to ensure 2022 is a healthier year for work. The result is that unfortunately my output is gonna have to slow, and I'm dedicating myself to only putting out a video a month for the time being. This may be my M/O from now on, I may switch to just putting out videos whenever they're done, I'm not sure. Part of my decision stemmed from some time I took to crunch numbers on the work I did in 2021.
I've mentioned it before, but I log all my hours in a big spreadsheet I drafted up at the start of last year. Here's an example of what that looks like:
This was done less so to ensure I worked "enough" each week (although I often let it become that), and more so to determine the amount of time I spent on each aspect *of* the work I do. All this time logged was essentially to culminate in a big incomprehensible mess of a spreadsheet to output a set of only slightly less incomprehensible graphs:
The most important conclusions I came to from all this was, 1. Wow! I'm getting faster at making these (as evidenced by the Labor To Video chart, which determines the ratio of an hour of labor spent to the amount of *finished* video it roughly equates to, measured in minutes, as well as the time it takes me to speak a script relative to its length)! and 2. The videos I'm proudest of, and that most represent the kind of videos I want to make going forward (thoroughly researched, intricately edited, longer form) take a good bit longer to make, on average, than I can afford myself in a two week span.
Yes, it's true! I am a stress-spreadsheetmaker. But this wound up being more reassuring than anything. Toward the end of the year I observed I had spent a *lot* of time working on videos that, while I enjoyed making them, didn't really feel special to me. My claymation horror video was an example of a video that, while I'm fairly happy with it, was one I set out to make with the express intent of making with the fastest possible turnaround time so I could hone in on a much bigger project (that I'm still working on...). I still put nearly thirty hours into that video, which is thirty hours I could've put into something I truly felt excited about. The other bit of good news therein is that I have a whole bunch of videos I feel extremely excited about planned for this year that I can't wait to get started on.
This will ideally give me time to do other things I'm passionate about again. I care about making music about as much as I care about making videos, and I literally *lost* the calluses on my fingers that have been there since I first started playing guitar at age 17 because I only gave myself time to work on video for pretty much all of 2021. This year is probably going to be kind of weird for me, even, forcing myself to be comfortable with stopping work at the 8-hour mark each day is going to be difficult, especially when damn near everything I do for work is stuff I genuinely love doing, but I think by in large it'll be better for me.
So, when I finally *do* have another video out, don't be confused by the multiple-minutes-long intro sequence about the holiday season, LOL. Hopefully my output slowing down doesn't disappoint too much, and hopefully the quality of the work I *do* put out will make up for the less frequent uploads. Thank you all so much for continuing to support me through this brief drought. I promise I'll make it worth your while.