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January 09
Setting Priorities and Making Time

I originally set out several weeks ago to write a post about my long-standing desire to be a video content creator. I was going to write about how creative I'd been as a child and how much video crap I did any time I had access to such a camera. Then, I realized I was talking about prioritization, although indirectly.

I made plans to shift the post and create a video blog to talk both about that post and to possibly talk about my desire to post regular videos of some sort to YouTube, whether they're tech talks or about health or just a general video log of day to day happenings, I wasn't sure yet.

After, perhaps ironically, failing to write anything at all (for the good reason that I caught another cold), it occurred to me I should just rewrite (I had one and a half sentences done) with the starting idea that we all prioritize different things, and there are different factors leading to prioritization.

The background I was going to explain and work through a little bit in the previous post was that as a child, I found the process of producing video content incredibly interesting. I didn't think I would go work in TV, but I felt like I had a lot of stories to tell, and I frequently ran up against the limitations of both technology, and what I had. A friend and I made several short videos on a computer I had using Windows Movie Maker, a webcam, and a USB extension cord, and we had the better part of a longer story with more varied settings recorded on a DV tape, but the tape would get rewritten and it would be years before I had access to both the camera and a computer I could capture and edit with.

Once I got that, I was doing some more things, although the limitations of storage meant I couldn't do much. Later, I had limited access to video equipment for a while. Most recently, I have ample video, storage, and compute resources, but what seems like fewer ideas and less time.

I've been wanting for a few years to get back to video stuff, but the thing I don't have today is my attention. I have a few videos on YouTube, and I take clips on my phone and my camera from time to time, but even though I've wanted to for years, I've never had the wherewithal to keep up a video production workflow or a particular series of things for a while.

I've tried a few different things – video games, server administration stuff, personal blogs, one train video I managed to capture, among other things – and none of it has worked.

I think what it comes down to is prioritization. Every time I start to work on video stuff, it does "work" but I am not able to keep up with other thing I do, whether that's playing games, meeting up with people, writing, or just having mental downtime. Certain types of videos, I'm both mentally and physically unable to prioritize. I couldn't go make a bunch of train videos because those are quite physically intensive, and while I'm in a good place, I'm not in that good a place.

The other thing I worry about is my ability to create short fictional videos or periodic personal blog content. The world doesn't really need another "tech" channel or podcast, per se. I would want to find something unique, which might be easy to do in concept, but difficult to do in practice. Although it would be technically easy, I don't particularly want to be a talking head channel, certainly not on a technical issue.

But all these are excuses, and I think at the core of it, I know I could find something if I wanted to and put some time into it, and if I did, I could produce something somewhat reasonable, and get better at the craft. I could create a conservative posting schedule or even make things varied so I don't get bored.

I was originally going to make a video to pair with this post to make the announcement of regularly posted video content, but it never happened and to make it worse, this post was delayed by a week due to my usual winter troubles, minor illnesses made worse by the continued existence of my chronic illness.

We'll see if I end up coming up with anything. I was pleased with myself this past year for avoiding long and arduous hospital stays and with relatively few exceptions I made a blog post every week. It's down from where I was a few years ago when I was writing about music, but it has been good nevertheless.

Perhaps I will never get into video production, and my YouTube channel will remain as it has always been – a vessel for random things I see or do, for the times when something particularly good comes up. one of this will stop me from eventually spilling a few thousand words about the workflow challenges contributing to keeping it from happening, though.

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