Is "Compare & Dispair" really true? The video blogging meltdown that saved me...
I literally just started video blogging, which is surprising since I spent the last 8 years of my life talking about doing it. And thinking about doing it. But the action of actually making a video blog never happened. Until now.
Part of what held me back was fear (what if no one watches it or I'm not good at it), part of it was laziness (Netflix became a priority) and the rest was ego (I was going to be discovered and given my own talk show, why bother video blogging). In July I moved from New York to Minneapolis and I kept telling everyone, "I'm going to start video blogging from Minnesota and I'm relaunching my website". I actually didn't have an existing website to relaunch (you're reading the first one ever) and I've been in Minnesota for 10 months, so it was time to start video blogging.
I have a history of talking about what I'm going to do, rather than actually doing it. Or I start new things, but then I don't follow through. Sometimes, when it gets hard, I put it down to take a breather, never to pick it back up again. I actually paid a career coach to tell me, "You've done so many amazing things...once." BOOM. That describes it all, right there--I lack follow through. I now see that I didn't have a willingness to grow through my emotional discomforts (fear of rejection or not meeting my imaginary career goals). So launching this website and filming video blogs is my attempt at trying something, sticking to it, and growing with it and from it. The best part is, I've chosen to film video blogs that capture exactly where I'm at in this "getting my sh*t together" journey.
If I told you how many hours I've logged just to create this video, you'd laugh. Meanwhile, I was getting ready to tear every hair out of my head. Everything that could go wrong, went wrong. I ordered a lighting kit on Amazon and I broke the "diva ring light" before I even used it and the camera stopped recording because memory card was full right when I said the most brilliant thing I've ever said; and yet, it didn't get recorded. I filmed a total of an hour of footage over a period of 3 days just to get a 5 minute video. I tripped over my words, I started sweating, there were so many times I wanted to say F-this. A few times I flew into a rage of frustration (which the camera caught) and seeing the way I behaved was so ugly and scary that I actually put that footage into the video to make a point. So many emotions came up, and yet this is only my 2nd video blog. Why even move forward, if it's so much work and I feel miserable? And why make a video blog about HOW HARD video blogging can be?
Because it's my start. Not my end. After I filmed my first video, I looked at some of my favorite YouTube'ers and I kept seeing where I fell short. How could I ever be as great as them? I was ready to abandon this all together. Then something flooded into my mind (seriously, I felt like it was divine intuition smacking me): "They started somewhere; this is your start". So I began looking at some of their first videos and it gave me a lot of hope for my future--their early video were far from perfect, yet they have grown so much and their current videos are amazing. If I compared my first videos to their most recent ones, I could find so many flaws in my own. But when I went back to view their earlier videos, I saw they didn't have it all figured out on day 1.
No one started with a perfectly polished video blog! So this is my start! Watch my video as I take you inside some of my best meltdowns while making this video, that actually give me the most hope in moving forward. If you're starting something new or want to be reminded of how uncomfortable it is to be a beginner, watch this! We're all in this, together. And I hope we all make it.