First YouTube Video

Posted on September 15, 2022 • 3 min read • 630 words

I finally recorded, and just got done editing my first YouTube video for my D&D channel

First YouTube Video  

It sure did take me a long damn time to finally get to this point. Months of procrastinating, not knowing what exactly to say in the video, then weeks of trying to actually write out a script. Follow all that up with another few weeks of convincing myself to actually record the damn video, and then another week after that of trying to make the recording perfect. And then you can’t forget the few days of editing it either - because that had to be perfect also. But there’s something there that I have to keep reminding myself of…

“Perfect is the enemy of good”  

I finally got over myself and just did the damn thing. Is the video perfect? No. Does it need to be? Also no.

And that’s OK. I am happy with how the video turned out, and that’s what matters to me right now. But here’s the weird part… I create cyber security courses and record them FOR MY JOB. Who would have thought that recording a video about D&D would have been so damn difficult? But there seems to be something very different between recording content when other people are expecting it of me, versus recording content just for myself. I am much harder on myself than anyone else ever has been. From what I’ve read, this is a very common thing, but I’ve never really stopped to think about it until now. I don’t need everything to always be perfect, no matter what my brain keeps trying to tell me.

The more that you try to make something perfect, the less of it the world will ever see. I’m starting to write more on this site, possibly more on LinkedIn, and record more (translation: any) YouTube videos. A lot of that comes from some of what I read in Show Your Work  by Austin Kleon (affiliate link). Reading through that book helped me to understand that any creation can be shared - it doesn’t need to be a finished product. A lot of times, people really like seeing works in progress, it gives them a sense of “behind the scenes”; it lets them see what you’re creating as you’re creating it. It allows people to not only see the finished product, but the process behind how it was created also.

I am going to put a conscious effort into recording and writing more, but not because I feel like I have to. Because I want to. Once I finally really got started, I enjoyed the process and am looking forward to doing it again for my next video.

So I’m taking the mindset from Show Your Work and putting it into my creations as well. Some of that will be blog posts (ta-da), some of that will be YouTube videos, and some of that will probably be something I haven’t even figured out yet. My point here is don’t be afraid to put yourself out there. People enjoy seeing what you’re working on, what you’re studying, where you are going with your career or your life. That doesn’t mean you need to overdo it and post every aspect of your life (please don’t), but it’s ok to share a little bit of what you’re doing - or share a lot of what you’re doing. Keep in mind, there will be “haters” out there - people who just want to put you down or tell you that it’s not good enough. IGNORE THEM. They aren’t the ones that matter. You are the one that matters when it comes to judging your creations.

Put yourself out there a little bit, try it out. It’s not nearly as scary as you might think.

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