Update Blog - 5/11/24 (Patreon)

I'll confess that last week, I was emotionally going through a lot. As I was working on the next History video, I was having a lot anxiety and self doubt, and I was questioning if it was either something inside me or the video that I was working on that was overwhelming me. As it turned out, I was actually going through a burnout that gradually grew while I didn't notice. From that moment, I decided to take a few days off and only return to making videos when I felt ready. It turned out to be exactly what I needed in order to get my groove back and to put myself back on track with what I have in store for you all. But that's just the short version. Here's the story of my week in full.

• Released my review of The Triplets of Belleville: This is the kind of movie that, the more I think about it, the more that I love it. There is that unique feel that you get as an independent feature where it doesn't follow the usual mainstream narrative rules (especially as a film that doesn't depend on dialogue), but I also appreciate it a bit on a personal level because there are aspects of it that feels familiar to me. It's funny how I was able to notice some French-Canadian influence in the film. Not just with some of the aesthetic of the city of Belleville with skyscrapers that have the same style that you'd find in Quebec City and Montreal, but also some of the mannerisms of the Triplets themselves. I'll even say now that the christmas song they sing is actually one that I've sometimes heard growing up. It's like our version of "Jingle Bells, Batman Smells". And of course, it's not just those elements, I really enjoyed. The animation is masterclass, the 1930s style opening is beautiful, and the characters are very charming to present this fun-filled rescue mission to save a biker from the mafia. This is an example of why I love reviewing. It allows me to discover movies I've always wanted to check out and give me a good excuse to do so in order to discover new favorites. But now that we're done with the old triplets, we'll be moving on to the young ones with The Powerpuff Girls Movie. Even if I watched this show as a kid, I never got the chance to see the movie itself. I've already revisited a childhood show with SpongeBob, but soon I'll be going back to the city of Townsville to see how the girls did on their feature.

• Recovering and Working on the next History video: Like I said at the start of this blog, I was going through a burnout last week, and it even showed based a bit on what I wrote in the previous Update Blog with how I felt while I was working on this video. By the time I discovered that, that's when I decided to step back and stop working altogether where I preoccupied my time with other errands and things to do around my place until I felt recovered. It took me a couple of days before I got back into working on videos again. However, I started off with a few small side projects to ease my way back into it so that I don't go back big, and once I clear those out, then I returned to the history video. In total, with the days I've spent off, it took me 5 days to step away from this project and then returning to it. Along with some help from friends and my therapist, that helped a lot to regain my confidence to work on this again and I'm feeling more pumped than every to edit all this together. The progress that I've done so far is going well where I still have to put all the clips together, but I do have a clearer picture of the length of this video and it's not as big as I expected last time. From my own footage, I cut off a little over half of it and now it looks like it will be around 50 minutes. I'm glad that the issue wasn't the video itself and that I was able to mentally recover myself to keep working on this. With the anxiety gone, now I see that this is going to be a truly epic video!

• REMINDER FOR PATRONS $50+/MONTH: This month's Discord Chat will be happening on Tuesday the 14th at 8pm EST. Let me know if you're not available for either so I'll organize a quick chat at a different time.

And that's been my week of recovering and the outcome of it through my work flow. This turned out to be a much better week than I've experienced in the previous one and it served as a reminder of the importance of self-care. Take this blog as a lesson to take care of yourself and, if things start to feel overwhelming and you mentally don't feel good, that's a sign that you gotta take a break and return only if you feel ready. You're only at your best when you feel like you're at your best. So, until next time...

See ya later, dudes!