Treading Water during Quarantine - Channel Update (Patreon)

Hey everyone, I hope you're all staying safe as we enter the sixth month of this pandemic. That's right, it's been six months.

At the start of the coronavirus outbreak, I considered myself incredibly lucky. As a youtuber, I work from home and the lockdown had almost no effect on my job or my financial situation. I even saw this as an opportunity to increase my video production rate; during my Anniversary Livestream a few months ago, I said that I'd like to get back to making videos every 2 to 3 weeks. However, six months into quarantine, I still find myself struggling to meet my deadline at the end of the month and in my frustration, decided to figure out why.

Throughout 2019, I was making a video every 2-3 weeks, but I was also going to the gym regularly, attending conventions, and constantly taking steps to improve my production and personal life. So far in 2020, I've made one video a month... and that's it. No gym, no conventions. I wake up every day knowing that nothing is going to be different - in fact, many things are getting worse - and the only thing for me to do is sit in front of my computer and work.

Making videos is the only thing I do, every day. While many people lost their jobs and were forced to stay at home with their family, I'm stuck at work every day. Rather than losing my job, I lost my social connections. I live alone and the ferrets aren't great at keeping up with a conversation. While I've tried to make up for that lack of social interaction through Skype calls and Twitch livestreams, at the end of the day, I still haven't left my apartment. There is nothing to break up the monotony, every day is the same. I've been pushing through it since I know I'm luckier than most, but it seems like I've hit my limit.

My strategy during quarantine was to just survive until the end - I've stayed home, gone to the grocery store no more than once a week, always wear my mask, etc. But after six months of treading water, I'm starting to tire and it's affecting my work. When every day is exactly the same, it's hard to motivate yourself to even get started.

I now realize that I wasn't making videos every 2-3 weeks *despite* going to the gym regularly and attending conventions... I was making videos every 2-3 weeks *because* of it.

I've always known that it was important to stop working every once in a while, but I've also held myself to an impossible standard and thought that I could just push through it. Now I'm realizing that I can't, I'm human like the rest of you. So I need to take a step back and re-evaluate my strategy, especially since it doesn't look like this quarantine is going to end any time soon.

I think it's important to note that I'm not burning out, I still enjoy making videos. But because of this pandemic, I'm ONLY making videos, I never get to turn it off and do something else. So while I've been working on my next video on banking for a few weeks now, I'm struggling to find the motivation to continue because I want to do literally anything else. Since I've made the process more public, people on Discord and Twitch have been providing valuable input and I'm looking forward to finishing that project. But I also need to take a step back and figure out how to get the rest of my mental health needs met, so I'm not in this exact same situation next month.

So I've decided to push this video to next month and give myself some time to get my personal life sorted. I can't keep waiting for the pandemic to end, this is the new normal and I need to adjust. I know some of you will be disappointed with the delay, but I'm also really excited to put a little more time into this next video.

Stay safe out there!