So, I have finally hit 1,000 subscribers on my YouTube channel. I imagine if you're here, you're probably well aware of my YouTube channel. It's kind of my whole... thing, currently. Being a content creator is honestly something completely new to me and is unlike any other part of my life, and is incredibly bizarre to me. I do really enjoy it, and there's parts of it that's really awesome. There's also other parts that are terrifying.

When I first started, I remember uploading a video when I had about 300 subscribers, and I was terrified of what people might think of it. And there was nothing wrong with the video whatsoever, it was a perfectly fine video, but I was just scared. I remember having some friends come over to my house at the time, because I was running in-person sessions back then, and it was on the day that I'd released the video and I was struggling to GM because I was so freaked out about what the response might be.

I remember being almost paralyzed and needing to have a couple of cans of lager to calm down. Oh, and you should never use alcohol to alter your state of mind, as that's one of the potential signs of being an alcoholic.

...I'm not, by the way. Like, I barely ever drink. That was one of the rare times I'd ever drank. Plus, I had friends coming over, so I wanted to drink a bit. Why am I saying all this stuff? This is making it sound more and more like I'm an alcoholic, right? And isn't the first step admitting it?

Well, anyway, the point is, it's really scary putting your work out there. Obviously, I have no idea what you, my dear, dear reader, do for a living, but I would imagine it's probably not going to be something that the entire world can see very easily and for free. I mean, unless you're also a content creator... chances of that are pretty low though, right?

And that's just the thing with content creation. It's like you're going to work, doing your job, and then everyone in the world has the potential to have a say on how well you did, and pick you up on any slight mistakes that you might make.

And this is why social media, and quite frankly, the internet at this point, can be so damaging to your mental health. Because no one should ever have the entire world be able to criticize them. Because no one can stand up to that scrutiny. No one in this universe could potentially stand every person on the planet being able to critique every part of their work.

And even if you did every little thing absolutely perfectly, there's going to be some people who simply do not like what you did. Some people will dislike Part A and think that you should have done Part B a little bit differently, or some people will think that Part C was pointless and you should have just focused more on Part D, etc.

No-one is able to put up with that, and it doesn't matter how strong your willpower is. I guess you have to reach a point where you need to stop listening to people, which is kind of rubbish because you want to listen to people. You want criticism. Criticism is a good thing! It helps us evolve, it helps us change, and it helps us become better at the things that we're doing!

And ultimately, in the case of content creation, you might be ignoring your very fans, the people who helped put you in the place that you are today. And that's the thing that you should never forget about content creation - yes, you're the one that does literally 99.9% of the work, but there's still people who tune into your content because they want to support you. They share it with their friends when they don't have to, because they want you to succeed. They like your content. They want you to keep going. They want to see more of it.

And that's beautiful, it's amazing, it's incredibly flattering, and it can potentially give you a bit of an ego. But at the same time, it can just genuinely make you feel really good about yourself, in ways that I've never experienced in anything else I've ever done in my life.

And sadly, because you probably aren't going to be a content creator, my dear reader, it will be next to impossible for me to be able to get you to understand what this is like, because content creation is so bizarre and it's so strange, and I've never experienced anything like it in my life, both for better and for worse.

And that is ultimately why I made this blog post. Because content creation is weird, and it's next to impossible to explain to people what it is that a content creator is going through at any one moment. These days, I almost always have comments that I can reply to, things I can do to improve my channel, work on the next script, work on the next video, think of new ways to market my channel to people, consider new ideas, consider what I'm going to do in the future, think about things like Patreon and memberships, etc.

Honestly, the list goes on and since I started doing content creation, I realized that there's an infinite amount of work that I can do. I don't just get home from work and then I'm done. Home is my work and I can always be doing something. And that honestly is kind of cool. I like it that way. I like that I can put effort into something whenever I want to and hopefully get something from it. That potential is always there and it's exciting and it gives me purpose.

And I do honestly really like content creation. You really have to have the willpower and mental fortitude to be able to do it, but it's as good as it is bad. But if you're able to ignore the bad, then it's just pretty good.

I do wonder if I'll feel this way when I get to 10,000 subscribers...