2018 Review and Resolutions (Patreon)

image: still from Peace for Triple Piano. Because we've come full circle!

Hello Good Humans,

2018 was entirely crowdfunded. Never before have I relied completely on donations to survive a year, but we did it!

First let's review the work we accomplished, and then I'll review one of my 2018 resolutions.

The first project of Jan-Feb 2018 (and the end of 2017) was an ambitious one: Peace for Triple Piano. A spherical video with a canon in space-time, a hefty theoretical backing, and ambisonic audio, it took over two months to make (along with the making of video) and had many stressful moments, but I'm proud of the result.

The big project for March was the annual Pi Day video, this year about what would happen if we had Alternative Pi, that is, a pi that went 3.1418... and I also did a fun little Snow Day video about snow tracks and snow rollers.

Also in March I started trying out Lens. I'm fairly certain in the end it was a net negative because the notification spam led to dozens of folks unsubscribing from the Patreon, although I was hoping it'd be a useful perk in the long term, especially if enough creators adopted it that it became a thing. (It did not, and what with the upload bugs that never got fixed, it's become too frustrating to keep using myself, so I'll probably be discontinuing it in 2019).

The big project I began in March, and still have on the backburner, is the Emmy Noether video. But I knew it would take a long time, and subscribership was only decreasing, so in April I took a break from Emmy and worked to get some videos out as fast as possible, and so I published Metachirality? and Metachirality!, and a making of and deleted scenes video for those too.

Metachirality is a beautiful concept so that was good. But they weren't very popular videos and it was looking increasingly like I was out of favor with the algorithms. So in April I launched another initiative together with M Eifler, VIM Live, a weekly livestream ramble between friends that definitely has done nothing for subscribership but has been very beneficial for me personally, since M is a genius and spending time with them every week is a good thing for my soul. In 2019 we're planning to change the subject and format, more on that in a future post.

In May I decided I was going to just work on the Emmy Noether video and not other videos, even if it meant not publishing other stuff and continuing to lose subscribers. I also continued to work on Project Butterfly. Oh, and I posted this little lens compilation about security questions which I mention now because it mentions bees.

And I made a lot of progress on the Emmy video! I'm still excited about it!

But then June rolled around and Tau day was coming up and so I took some time to make Suspend Your Disbelief, a video about manufactured controversy and politics in general, told through the story of Tau vs Pi.

At the end of June it was time for a mid-year rethink. It was also my 10 year channelversary, and after 10 years of YouTubing I'm too old to just be surviving and hope my career magically comes sustainable. I had my viral moment and I can't count on getting that lucky again. 

Maybe if I made shorter easier videos? So I decided to try some New Strategies and published Spidermath.

In July I failed in my attempt at making a quick easy music theory video, succeeded in making a video about the Four Utilities Puzzle, and made a Soup Conspiracy Theory video.

Two good videos in one month! But while I enjoy making such videos sometimes, I also want time for deeper work, and at this pace I didn't have time for anything else.

At the end of July to early August I took a quick break to make a tiny puzzle game, Number Friends, which I realize I totally forgot about and meant to spend a day or two polishing up to release publicly.

In August I started pursuing other funding streams. Many successful creators have crowdfunding as an essential but not only source of funding, and I realized it was up to me to do the work and get those other funding bits to supplement Patreon. I took some trips to the bay, had lots of meetings, and came up with various leads, some of which didn't work out, but one has already come through (VR180 Scutoid funding from Google!), and some are still potential things for the future.

At the end of August I started the Scutoid obsession, including a hefty post about Scutoids.

By September I was really feeling the burnout, despite trying to not work the insane hours I did in my 20s. I guess once you're super burnt out, working normal hours doesn't help you be less burnt out, it only makes you not get even more burnt out as fast. So I kept working on my scutoids, but I scheduled an actual vacation, and until then I took three hours of fake-cation every day to read, yoga, meditate, and pretend I'm on vacation. I still was working 6 or 7 hours every day but that break in the middle was pretty nice. And then I went to Harry Potter World and drank on the streets of Hogsmead in a funny hat.

In October I came back from vacation just refreshed enough to dive into new plans for new endeavors. It seemed like maybe my future would have something to do with AI? So I started taking some online machine learning courses and learning Python, and created 50 implementations of Fizzbuzz which are pretty delightful.

I spent most of November traveling. A couple conferences, visits with various folks, and generally still trying to figure out what the future holds. At the time I was working pretty hard on a possible supplemental endeavor that ended up not working out. I got to spend lots of time with lots of cool folks though!

One of my 2017 resolutions was to "only" travel by plane twice, one business one personal, a resolution I kept that year and that was so awesome I decided to do it again in 2018. And I totally hacked my resolution by making one of those trips a 17-day mega trip with lots of work stuff all packed together and that was a bad idea. Plus my first trip was only in September, so, basically too much travel too close in a row. Hopefully in 2019 I'll be smarter.

Luckily, in December the thing with Google came through, I got a camera in the mail, and dug in on Scutoids! And so we close out the year with a pile of adorable pom pom bees, cool shapes, and the promise of some monetary support coming soon.

2018 had a bit of a rough start Patreon-wise because of the big Fee Change Fiasco at the end of 2017. There's been some slight ups and downs and we're ending the year at about the same Patreon numbers we started with, but the big change is letting go of the expectation that Patreon and merch sales should be the entirety of my income, which is a big relief.

We did it! It worked! I am going to save for retirement.

Ok, so.

2018 Resolution Review

Let me quote last year's resolutions post to start:

I usually keep about half my resolutions: the work-related half. The half I usually fail are the ones about taking better care of myself, not working all day every day until I burn out, etc.

But now that I'm crowdfunding and don't rely on any single funding source that might look at what I'm doing and wonder why I can't do it faster and cheaper, I'm determined to work sane hours and that it will have to be enough. 

I've known for years that I'm not in my early 20s anymore and I can't hunch over a computer working all day and pulling all nighters to finish videos, but this year I turn 30 and my body hates me and I've gone from "you really need to start taking better care of yourself" to "ok, that's it, you don't get a choice anymore".

But it's always easy to make excuses to keep overworking just for a little longer... just until the Patreon is set up, or just to do tshirts in my spare time, or just while a colleague is in town, or that emails or messages don't count as "real work" and can be done all evening, etc etc. 

So THIS year I'm serious. Work is no longer #1 priority. If this fails and the Patreon crashes and burns and I have to get rid of my studios and piano and get a normal job doing something entirely normal, that's better than working at the pace I've been working for 10 years. But I don't think that'll happen, and I think it's less likely to happen if I avoid burning out!

Ok, so in one way I totally failed at this. I started the year burnt out, and I ended it burnt out, and I was pretty much burnt out the whole way to varying degrees.

But on the other hand, I succeeded at most of the component parts that were the actual resolutions I made in my personal notes. I didn't work 7 days a week (mostly). I didn't work most evenings. I learned how to cook a few foods with more than 2 ingredients. I did yoga most days, meditated most days, took a vacation. I actually went to a doctor about my broken toe. I actually ate more fresh vegetables and vastly cut down on eating out. 

Maybe the reason I don't feel any less burnt out is that it seems like all the extra time I saved by not working all day got eaten up by "self-care chores" like eating and cooking and cleaning and exercise. The American Economy loves to promote "vacations" and "self-care" as chores to do in service of working more efficiently for longer as you age and get burnt out by the industry's expectations. I "relax" the same way my dog "settles", with a focused intensity that says I AM RELAXING, LOOK HOW HARD I AM RELAXING, AM I DOING IT RIGHT??? IF I RELAX HARD ENOUGH CAN I GET BACK TO WORK NOW PLEASE?

I guess the success was ending the year just about as burnt out as I started it, instead of yet another year of continuing to plumb the depths of how burnt out it is possible to be. I guess, as with many injuries, it's not enough to use it normally instead of straining it. You have to actually stay off it for it to heal. But at least I didn't make it worse, for once! 

It's not quite progress, but if you do calculus to it, you can see quite clearly that there is progress in the first derivative of progress.

In some ways I am still really hurting from 2017 and the years prior, but 2018 was probably my happiest and most secure year ever. Which honestly isn't saying much, as clearly my life's goal has never had anything to do with personal happiness. But I've come to realize that all the myths about the starving tortured artist are exploitative lies, and that doing good work for an entire lifetime requires a baseline of security and happiness, so I'm working on that. I think I can do even better in 2019.  I did lots of arts and learned how to put an egg on many different foods.

In 2019 I will do even more arts and even more foods.

Thank you all, deeply and truly from my heart, for making 2018 happen! Now 2019 is coming, and I'm truly looking forward to what it will bring.

🐌

Vi