Blogging About My YouTube, Self-Confidence, and Fallout!

(This is a blog post regarding my most recent YouTube video- Fallout P.6!... And also me rambling! You MUST read it!)

This video took me a lot longer to release than I wanted to, and I feel like I could've edited it to flow a bit better. But I really need to get this video out and not obsess so much! I heard a phrase recently: "You never finish a project, you abandon it." And it is incredibly true. I think I could edit my videos forever if I didn't force myself to just release a product at some point. I really need more viewers who are more distant from the work, so I can get some feedback about how my editing is going.

I think I'm doing ok, but when you tend to work without feedback, you start moving in circles without ever really getting anywhere. I would get feedback from Reddit at times, but usually they seemed to just want me to make much more heavily edited videos in the style of someone like Warlockracy or Sseth or someone like that. I would like to try that, but I'm not sure how to go about it really. And I was more interested in making something like a video-essay, like I see Tangomushi, Boulder Punch, or Dungeon Chill do. Though I feel I'm not quite knowledgeable enough to really jump into this.

But I recognize I'm not going to get better at this if I'm always holding back in this way. I'm not sure what I'm waiting for. I guess I'm afraid of the criticism I'd get, or that maybe my takes would be seen as stupid or uninteresting. I think I'm at least a little interesting, but I struggle with self-confidence, and I also don't want my YouTube channel to become me vomiting out all of my opinions into the void. I see that sometimes, and the YouTuber ends up becoming someone who basically just reacts to and criticizes things on the "opposite side" or whatever, and everything interesting gets lost in the shuffle. So I'd like to avoid being overly controversial or loose with my opinions.

But at the same time I can see I'm just not super confident in myself, so I'm worried way more than I should be. My most controversial opinions really aren't all that controversial. Like I dislike a lot of the talk about Fallout being a story that's purely about capitalism and satire of the US, but I think viewing it that way removes a lot of depth and richness in the themes of the series. I also think a lot of modern Fallout lore has a lot of lame stuff in it. But I'm concerned people will view me as some anti-woke "the Quartering" uber right-wing conservative guy for thinking this way. Or as some other "Voice of the Gamers" goofball who basically just makes a career out of being super negative all the time and hating anything new.

I also want to be open to new opinions and ideas, and not be a slave to my current thinking. I don't want to fall into that trap either. But I worry I'm so concerned with avoiding controversy that I'm just not really saying anything.

And really I think it all comes down to my confidence. Being more comfortable talking and making videos would likely remove all of these fears pretty quickly. So I would like to make some videos that help me face those fears. Though I'm not interested in anything controversial or political, I just want to be more comfortable in my own skin, and I think that will make my videos better. But I tend to second-guess any mildly critical opinions I have, and I feel torn, because I don't want to be overly negative. On the flip-side, I think this actually ends up making me more negative, because I'm repressing it too much. So then it just explodes out and I'll go on a negative rant or something, or the negativity will explode into my real life. I want my YouTube to be an outlet for me, and to hopefully produce something that people will enjoy, so I feel like repressing all my feelings or opinions would be totally counter-intuitive.

Anyway, this is overly-long. I've just been struggling with the video-editing for the past week or two, and I'm having doubts about it, honestly. So I need to figure out how to make my YouTube more of an outlet for myself, and as a way of improving myself, rather than like as a chore I'm doing without really understanding why I'm doing it. I think I lose sight of the fact that I actually like to film and edit videos, because I'm so caught-up in behind-the-scenes shenanigans. (With most of these shenanigans coming directly from my neurotic brain!...)

I'm happy overall with these Fallout videos though, I really enjoyed replaying Fallout 1 for YouTube. I actually did another quick Fallout 1 playthrough offscreen as a female character, which I've never done before, and I was also pretty evil, so it was a fun change of pace. I really like Fallout 1! I was a bit annoyed with some changes I saw in the Et Tu mod of Fallout 1/2, which was also why I did another playthrough. There's some added guns and a few other minor things, which isn't such a big deal, but I felt like I needed to play Vanilla Fallout 1 again just to see if it was all that different. Et Tu is definitely good, but for your first playthrough, I'd still recommend playing vanilla with the hi-res pack or just at the classic resolution. After that, Et Tu is definitely worth it, and I don't want to hate on Et Tu too much, because it has a lot of nice QoL features that classic doesn't have. But the purist in me dislikes that!

Anyway, I've now finished Fallout 1, and will finish up Oblivion Remastered, release all the videos for those, then I will play Fallout 2 for YouTube. I may play some spooky games for October as well, I'm not sure. But I think Fallout will be just a long ongoing series that I film and release when I can, and I will probably do some spooky or short games on the side. But we'll see, best-laid plans of mice and men and all that...

Overall I'm still enjoying doing YouTube, and I hope to keep improving my videos! I appreciate any feedback or ideas as well, I'm open to any thoughts really. I'd like to come back to doing my Reddit blog again, because I don't tend to talk much about doing YouTube or just generally describing what I'm up to in this way, but I like doing it. I figure there is probably someone else like me who will read it or watch my videos and relate, or maybe it's just interesting to hear someone's thought process in this way. But I like to talk about these things so there's more thought to all of it, instead of just pumping out videos like factory-style or something.

Thanks for reading or watching!