Hello!

When I planned to write this blog post, I thought it might be some profound look into finding myself ten years on from when I first uploaded to my YouTube channel and I’d draw some sort of pretentious conclusion as to how a decade on I’ve decided to go back to where I started.

But the short answer (which I probably shouldn’t be saying so close to the top of this post…) is that I like patterns and ten years seems like a good reason to do something again.

I never really consciously decided to stop making YouTube videos, at least at first – I was a couple of months into my first full time job and I just didn’t have the time or the energy to put into making videos on a channel that wasn’t growing. I had to choose where I was prioritising the small amounts of energy I had and I had to choose the one that was paying my bills!

I wasn’t too devastated by this decision – YouTube was always something I did for fun, my channel wasn’t particularly growing (which didn’t bother me at all) and it meant that I was putting all of my creative energy into my job and it paid off and generally, I enjoyed that job and worked with some wonderful people (obvs it still had stressful parts, but in hindsight it was nice).

Then I didn’t really think about YouTube again until about 6 months ago when I realised that this year marked 10 years since I did my very first vlogmas and I thought that it could be a really fun project. I made a list of all the vlogs I made and thought of maybe making parallel or similar videos could be fun. Then the more I thought about it I thought it could be a great opportunity to relaunch my YouTube channel with the bookish themes that I’ve let take over my socials (between my bookstagram, booktok and the bookish direction this blog has taken says enough I think!). I’ve loved watching BookTube videos this year and whilst I love making TikTok videos, I definitely have enough to say to constitute making YouTube videos and the more I sat with the idea the more I liked it!

My list developed from just the videos I made ten years ago to having extra columns for ideas for 2023 videos and what date and day of the week I’d be posting them, then in November I started pre-filming and planning, I printed out a calendar and had this really ambitious plan to film and edit way more than I had time for in a day.

And now we’re here – I’m over two weeks in and other than one day where Premier Inn WiFi did not allow for uploading a video on time (but I did still post a video, just the morning after!), I’ve posted a video every single day! I’ve been pre-filming a bunch of stuff, I’ve done what I always do and deleted a bunch of footage before I had a chance to edit it so I had to refilm to edit and upload on the same day, I’ve changed jumpers and outfits so that it looks like I’m not batch filming multiple times and it’s all coming together!

But because I can’t do anything to a normal level, when I was planning the videos I was going to make I kind of accidentally planned enough videos for the entirety of December… so I’m doing a whole month of making YouTube videos which is potentially too much to ask, but I’ve really enjoyed filming, editing and uploading so far.

I think I was put off editing for a long time after I was fired from my video production job last year, then I dipped my toe back into video production with making TikTok’s and now I’m back into making longer videos, I’m feeling so creatively driven! I’m pushing myself to try new things, I’m learning new techniques (which I never did in my old job, absolutely throwing shade at my old boss lol) and I’m enjoying producing content again!

Have I accidentally therapised myself through the traumatic PTSD I got from being fired? Maybe a little bit, yeah!

So, this is the playlist of all the videos I’ve made so far this year – I’m not bothered about views at all, but I’ve been so pleasantly surprised by how many comments I’ve gotten! Obviously it’s not tons, I’m a tiny little channel, but my videos are finding new people and a couple of them have liked my video enough to write a comment and it makes me smile every single time.

Will I stick with making videos after December? I hope so! I’m hoping to be able to make at least one video a week, maybe two, balancing it with work and life and everything else. I’m enjoying making content so much so I think it’s something I’d really like to make time for in 2024.

Realistically I just love talking about books – some of my highlights so far have been the 20 minute video where I show off my reading spreadsheet, going through my 2024 reading journal and decorating for Christmas!

So no juicy gossip really, but a little bit of a joy and creativity so I wanted to share that!

Thank you so much for reading,

Sophie xx