This post was originally made to my ko-fi page on the 2nd of November, 2023 which can be found here.

There was a moment in July where I felt like my channel was seriously prepping to explode. I was getting thousands more impressions by the sole grace of YouTube. The view count on my older videos began to climb — and they climbed rates that caused the analytics to curve upwards in a way that might suggest a potential for exponential growth. It felt like all the hard work and the thousands of hours spent working on this series were about to pay off. 

But then the miracle ended. It just kind of stopped. My viewer base had increased, as did my "baseline" for views on videos, but I was left with a somewhat hollow feeling. 

The problem isn't that I'm not grateful for that bump, because I'm extremely grateful. It's that over the course of releasing videos to a very small audience I had built up a resistance to that kind of excitement. I had faith that if I persisted things would improve, but I wasn't sure it would happen anytime soon unless I got extremely lucky. I was used to getting 50-60 views in the first 48 hours on videos I spent 80-100 hours producing, so I felt like nothing could hurt me. But when things just suddenly clicked for that brief window, I got a taste of what it was like to just get views... I let my guard down.

"It might actually be happening!"

I kept gaining subs and getting the most thoughtful and encouraging comments and it floored me. But since it was my first time experiencing a bump like that (that wasn't the result of effort on my end like an ad or giveaway campaign), I wasn't ready for nor expecting it to end so suddenly.

I think it inspired me to work harder in the following months though. And with the Pocket giveaway, Season 2 launching, the livestreams, and the two full-length Retro Odyssey videos... I feel like I put as much as I possibly could into it in that timeframe. But that doesn't guarantee anything. My numbers are the same as they were in the immediate wake of that brief July bump. 

When YouTube decides to reward you, you never truly know why. You can look back and study the analytics and piece together a narrative as to why you were successful; but all that really amounts to is a story that attempts to explain what happened. 

The hard part of seeing a little success on YouTube and having it disappear is that you can't simply work your way into more. I can control the quality of my videos and when they're made public, but I have next to no control when it comes to reaching people with them. And while what I can control should be what I focus on (and is for the most part), it's what is out of my control that determines whether or not this makes sense for me to continue. So, it creates a difficult space to exist in, and I think most people who make videos have probably felt that at some point or another. 

Now, I'm pretty stubborn. I didn't take a pay cut last January for nothing. I still have faith in myself and what I'm doing and I'm going to do my absolute best to keep pushing. With this and my other personal projects. But I just needed to convey — to someone or no one — damn is it hard sometimes. 

Thanks for reading and I wish you all the best.

~HPR