January 2020. I'd taken time off to work out whether I really wanted to keep going with this channel. No script, filmed in my kitchen because my studio looked like a bomb had gone off. This one worked like therapy.
Is it still worth it?
It had been a long time since my last upload, and there was a reason. Making videos takes a lot of effort, it wasn't paying back the way I wanted, and it was getting harder every day to find the time. I really love making videos for YouTube: telling my story, reviewing products. But I needed to understand whether all that work was still worth it. I'm not talking about money. I'd say I do it 99% for myself, because it makes me feel good. I just didn't feel that the remaining 1% was enough.
The algorithm doesn't make sense
What frustrated me most was the numbers. The videos I shot and edited with the least effort were often the ones performing best. A video where I talked about a drone I didn't even have in my hands had over 30K views, while videos that took me a week or two to make were stuck at around a thousand. I understand how the algorithm works, more or less. I just didn't know if I wanted to keep playing that game.
Meanwhile I hadn't stopped creating. I'd worked a lot with friends and edited some films and shorts, paid jobs that couldn't go on my channel. The channel is still my heritage: the views keep growing very slowly, and I have my small audience. That's what I want to keep serving.
The answer is yes
I thought about giving the channel a new direction: reaction videos, or teaching you some proper Italian recipes. I'd just seen a Gordon Ramsay pasta video with millions of views, with oil in the water... don't get me started. I gave myself until the end of March to see how things went, sticking to the rule I've heard so often from Peter McKinnon and Casey Neistat: done is better than perfect.
Talking to you turned out to be therapeutic. You worked like a shrink. By the end I had my answer: yes, I want to keep making videos. But things needed to change: a new intro, maybe a new channel name, something fresh.