Discussing burnout and creative lows

 So about two months ago, a dream of mine suddenly came true. Through a combination of ad revenue, sponsorships and Patreon subscriptions, I was able to make YouTube my full-time career. Finally I could talk about the things I want to talk about without feeling like I was just procrastinating on something else I had to do. I had an audience engaged in my work, I had a paycheck that meant I could reliably live independently (with my lovely wife of course), it was a really really cool thing. All I had to do in return was make at least a couple of videos a month, and ideally make them both something people actually want to watch. Perfect.  

Hey folks!

I really hope you've all been having a great month - Cleveland has been real pleasant lately, certainly a nice change from the hellstorm of never-ending blizzards back in March. Anyway, I wanted to vent here because I feel like I need a space to talk about this and it's relevant to my work - this feels like the right avenue. And to start off, let's chat about my routine.

My Routine

My routine begins with a week or so which I spend looking at media and current events, more closely examining what I think would be an interesting topic, and then throwing around ideas for how I could tackle it. Generally I'll try to have a script I'm mostly happy with by the following week, though there's often some tweaks to be made here and there throughout - for instance, almost all of the skit stuff in the Talking Dog Movie video just sort of happened on the day I was filming. So yeah, I'll spend about a week on my research and script, then a day or two on filming stuff, then two to four days on editing things together, then after staying up all night for any finishing touches I upload the video unlisted and set it to premiere the next afternoon. Here's what it would look like as fun bullet points instead of a messy paragraph:

• Research/Scripting: ~1 week
• Filming - ~1-2 days
• Editing - ~2-4 days

My work day itself is just way too varied to outline here. Sometimes I wake up early and work on stuff in fits and starts throughout the day, more often than not I'll procrastinate and suddenly have a massive rush of productivity in the late hours. It's fine, I'm fine, It's fine.

Sponsorships change this routine slightly, but only really insomuch as I have to establish a clear day of release with my sponsors early on rather than just roughly aiming for a certain date with an overall "It's done when it's done" attitude. It definitely adds some level of stress knowing that there's a company out there waiting expectantly for me to give them a video, but that's just business I guess. I do also have to think about doing somewhat regular Twitch streams since, miraculously, I do have a few folks who watch and subscribe to me there and I like to give them content too. Overall though, that's how it works for me.

Or rather, that's how it's supposed to work for me. 

That's the story I tell everyone, including myself, about 'how it works for me'. And sometimes, for sure, it does - but that's not giving you the full picture of how this goes, so let me give you a more realistic take on My Routine.

My Actual Routine

• Research/Scripting - 2 days to a month plus, accommodating for the fact that sometimes I immediately know the direction I want to take a video and sometimes I lose all confidence in what I'm making and start over three or four times before I commit, or just switch projects completely because I either no longer care or have faith anyone else does
• Filming - 1 to 4 or maybe 5 days, accommodating for the fact that I generally do not like my appearance and will sometimes needs to redo everything just because I really dislike my face or the way I talk, or get frustrated because I'm incapable of talking off-the-cuff in a coherent manner and in some parts of the video I keep looking at the script.
• Editing - 1 or 2 extremely stressful days because this is necessarily the last part of the process and I always end up taking too long on the other stuff and oh god the sponsors are asking if the video is ready oh no oh no

So congratulations, Brain, you made a dream job into something that fills me with constant dread and feelings of incompetence and worthlessness. Neat!

I've always been a procrastinator and I've always had huge issues with focus and losing interest in what I'm doing, so I did kind of predict that this was an issue I'd eventually run into. For the most part, I always pull it out of the bag at the last moment, because for whatever reason I am able to summon up a tremendous amount of unbreakable will at literally the last possible second and not a moment before. That last day before final upload, I genuinely work my ass off from early in the morning to early the following morning, no shower no sleep - even if that's preceded by a lot of days of slow, meandering, indecisive thinking about how I want to approach something or if I did something wrong, or just getting distracted by twitter and video-games (and of course, knowing the whole time I'm distracted that I should be doing something else).

Now as I say, on some months, this does not happen at all. Especially early in my channel, I was a machine in terms of taking my thoughts about something and channeling it into a clean 20-30 minutes of video. But that is definitely not the norm, and I've found more and more this to be the case. The script for my Captain Marvel Outrage video was done a few days before the final upload. The YIIK script, as I joke in the video, was done just three days earlier. The script for my Jeremy Kyle video was finished two days before I uploaded. Which brings me to my current state.

My Mental Health

I don't know if what I have right now is burnout, or imposter syndrome, or some kind of undiagnosed ADD, or if i'm just in a creative rut. But what I at least want to do now is dispel a droning that has been in my head for months. An endless droning voice that tells me, "This isn't even that hard". It tells me that because I've worked harder jobs, I know people currently working harder jobs, I know they're making less than I am doing it, that they don't get nearly as much free time or flexibility, and this is all based around me basically getting to make a living talking about the stuff I talk about in private anyway. All of this is 100% true - but no, that does not make it easy. Right now, I live in fear that I'm letting my audience down, that my next video is going to put people off, that my own inability to engage myself is going to lead to the slow death of my channel and the end of a wonderful livelihood - and it's a fear that's shared by many, and it's a fear that can suck the life right out of you.

So where am I actually at with my work this month? Well currently we're almost halfway into the month, and I have five different introductory paragraphs with a few scattered sources on some google docs. Here's the titles I have;

The Ideology Of The Marvel Cinematic Universe

How Chernobyl is NOT 'Anti-Socialist' Propaganda

The Demonization of Single Mothers

How 90s Cartoons Handled... Neurodivergence

Spider-Man Far From Home Hot Takes

Sound neat, right? Yep, they're really cool topics, and I have plenty to say about them, probably enough to fill a good 25 minutes with a few laughs in-between. Each day, I open these docs, and I wait for those things I have to say to come out - and they are not. I write a paragraph, and it sounds unconvincing or aimless, so I start again. I look back at my sources, then get distracted by something else. Another day passes, and in my head I reorganize my schedule "just as long as I can get the script done tomorrow, I can film that night and edit the next day and then it's ready". And then another day passes. And then we reach today.

I fully, 100% plan on continuing to release videos, at basically the same pace I am now. For all the stress I'm talking about here, this is still absolutely what I want to do with my life right now, and right now this is what puts food on our table. What I mostly want to express with this rambly vent is that this might be a slow month, because it's been tough, and it's making me realise something is wrong and needs to change. If anyone can offer their own advice, I welcome it. And if you are also a creator reading this, and what I've written resonates with you, I just want you to know that I feel that self-doubt and I'm here with you.

That's all I have to say right now. Thank you so so so much to all of you who support me, love you all, and stay safe.

Jack