 Hello there my beautiful lovely internet friends. Welcome to my car sitting in a parking lot where I just purchased fries for lunch because I make healthy life choices. I wanted to talk to you about something that's been going on over the last couple weeks and that is the fact that I think I am approaching being burnt out on what I'm doing with YouTube. I'm not quitting YouTube, I have no desire or inclination to do that. I love what I do but the particular process that creators have to abide by to make YouTube work after doing this for three years straight, after never taking, I don't think ever taking a week off, like ever, has begun to really wear down on me especially with other things going on in my life right now. I want to talk about that because I think a lot of viewers might not know what goes on behind the scenes with creators and maybe this has happened with other YouTubers you know where you see someone like on the rise and they're doing really good and they're like gaining a big audience and they're going and they're going and they're going and they just stop, they just ghost or they like come back two months later and they're like hey guys sorry I got super burnt out I guess I'm back now but you know I had to stop because YouTube rewards consistency and if you don't post not only are you not getting new views or new viewers you're also kind of penalized on a whole. If you are not posting for you know a couple weeks at a time you are jeopardizing literally everything that you have gained the way the algorithm works you need to be consistently posting videos like a couple times a week once a week you know if not more unless you're like a really large channel that is a very established base but for the most part for the average creator you have to be cranking out content constantly for the first three years of YouTube I did a video every other day and I really enjoyed that and it was amazing and it was a lot but it got to be a little bit too much so I went to like a video every three days and I was like we can make sure I'm doing at least two videos a week and I've stuck with that you know for for a while now even going through surgeries because I'm like you can't really stop if you want to keep the audience that you have and it's not so much that like people like you my dear lovely viewers are going to be like you didn't give me a video for two weeks well screw you I'm done with this it's that YouTube won't show you my videos like it won't recommend content out and that becomes problematic and so there's always this ongoing anxiety in the back of your mind that you cannot stop otherwise you will lose everything you've been working for and everything that you've been doing this for and there's been a lot happening in our lives in the last three months some things that I've mentioned some things that are private and I am worn down I'm doing okay my mental health is being taken care of but I am worn down and I just got back from two weeks of traveling which was good but a lot and some of it was very intense and it wasn't just like a vacation and I got back I'm like okay you took two weeks off you have to like dive back into this you have to get stuff done and I have just been paralyzed and so anxious and feeling like panic over this and as I was sitting in the drive-through line waiting for my fries and if we're totally honest I also did get a milkshake um I just had the kind of realization of maybe maybe just be honest with you my audience and let you guys know that it's really hard to take a break from YouTube I've taken two weeks off and I think I'm gonna take at least another week where I'm actually removing the pressure to have to come up with something um and maybe longer I'm not sure but I'm not disappearing from social media um I've been doing a lot with TikTok and Instagram which I really enjoy I feel like there's a lot less burnout with that because it is the algorithms just work differently and yes you have to be posting but there's a lot less effort depending on the video on that goes until like making a TikTok or an Instagram real or an Instagram post then then happens with YouTube but what you're gonna see uh in the next couple weeks you're gonna see a lot of shorts and if you aren't familiar if you look to your I picked this up like it had my phone I'm actually talking to my phone and if you go to the YouTube mobile app it's like the second button in at the bottom shorts it's like short form videos which is not how I originally used YouTube which might not be how you've originally used YouTube but I won't let you know that I'm gonna be releasing a lot of shorts um pretty much daily for the next couple weeks I have them scheduled out so I am going to be taking a break as these little videos are going up I don't believe they go out in your notifications feed so there's something you can you know look up or maybe they're pop up in in recommended videos or if you want to check out you know other people's shorts then YouTube starts recommending more shorts to you in general so if you want to see those short videos I'd love for you to check them out and then as I feel ready I'm gonna be coming back and posting my kind of bread and butter long form content which I love doing I love long form videos but I felt so much pressure that I have to do it and I have to do it good and I felt that pressure for like three years now that I need a breather where I allow myself the space to not think about it and just relax into the idea that yeah maybe my channel will take a little bit of a hit and that's going to be a bummer um but but additionally that pressure has also led to me not attending to other things like I need to like my patreon community which is the reason why I can do this I have not been consistent with you know content and communication and I genuinely feel not great about that and so I need to take some time to focus on that because it's what I want to be doing it's what I who like you all are who I want to be engaging with but um you know over on patreon that's a very special community that you guys have given me and I feel like I've been failing over there and I need some time to kind of reassess now I have been told that it's like silly to do these kind of videos um like don't just make announcements do things but I did want to clue you in on what is going on behind the scenes um I think that uh losing monkey um month and a half ago combined with having surgery a lot of personal interpersonal things that have been going on um the ending of the lawsuit which was super stressful just a lot of a lot of little things that are not the end of the world um like the kidney infection and the multiple ER trips and like medical trauma and all of that over the last couple months has just piled up and I'm going to allow myself the space to breathe and I hope um that I will see you as soon as I'm back here in you know a week or two um but yeah I feel like I'm rambling at this point but I wanted to invite you in to the process and what is going on and yeah if you want to see more of what I'm doing feel free to hit up Instagram or TikTok I might slow down on those two I'm supposed to see my best friend who I haven't seen for a very long time here in the next couple days and so I'm going to take some time off completely to hang out with her um some scheduled stuff will be going up but anyways dealing with some burnout YouTube makes it difficult and maybe this video was just my way of giving myself permission to uh you know actually take a break so thanks for listening if you made it this far I feel like I've said a lot of the same things over and over again and been repetitive but here we are all right now it's time for me to eat these french fries and return on to my normal daily programming of going to a few meetings and getting some stuff done before I head out to see my friend so I genuinely am so grateful for this platform and it's never something that I want to kill for myself because I tried to do too much with it or I didn't pay attention on my brain or my body when it was telling me hey you need to you know take a breather for a second so that's what I'm gonna do and I hope that's all right I love you guys I'm thinking about you and I will see you in the next videos and remember to watch out for those shorts um they're they're they're different okay I'm I'm still rambling but they're different you know YouTube is all about long form videos it's why I love YouTube but I think that there's a lot of value to the short form content it's like you know just 60 seconds or like a 10 second dumb amputee joke or whatever it might be um so I'm interested if you guys like those and if you do you know give them a thumbs up give them a comment and uh let me know what you think all right I feel like I'm losing my mind now I'm not even sure what I'm saying I love you guys I'll talk to you in the next video