being bad at "making" things

    In the Markiplier episode of Chuckle Sandwich, near the end of the podcast, Mark goes into this monologue about his relationship with making things. I just want to cement a manual transcription of it:

 I was about the same age when I had the same thing. I was about 27. I hit my goal. I wanted to be a big YouTuber. I hit it. Then another year goes by and you're like, "Okay. Now what?" I'm not saying it's the same situation, but before I started doing any other kind of project — cause you gotta remember that for me that was still 8 years ago. There were many years after I hit my goal where I was happy that I hit my goal, and then I got progressively sadder because there was no where left to climb. And it took me a very long time to realize that it wasn't that I wanted to make movies, it wasn't that I wanted to make a choose-your-own-adventure. It's that thought back to why I actually started in the first place. And why I actually started was not to be a big YouTuber. It's because everything in my life was out of control, and every single thing that was going on in my life before I started YouTube was out of my control. I had nothing to hold onto. I got laid off my job, I had a terrible relationship, I had my appendix was removed and during that they found a tumor in my adrenal gland — like all these things were out of my control and I felt miserable that I had nothing to show for all the years I had been alive for up until that point. It was like, “If I don't find something, I will never be happy.” and that's why I started YouTube. Even after I hit my goal on YouTube and I had kind of thought about — this is still like 3 years I'm condensing a lot into a very long period of time — But even that started with baby steps like “If I want to make something and take control of my life and do something that I feel is fulfilling, what is that?” So I just did the same thing when I started YouTube. I didn't start with YouTube! I tried a bunch of things. I tried making a comic, programming a game, I tried learning new different languages, I tried y'know making art — I switched majors from engineering to art school to see if it would make a difference. I tried again and again. I started wanting to do Freddie W. stuff and Corridor — didn't work, didn't know how to do any of that and then but with what I do now it started because my brother said hey some people like to watch people play video games, and I was like alright I'll try that, don't think it'll go anywhere. It wasn't like I had this burning passion for reacting and play games — I love playing games and I like doing that stuff. But it was about hey this is something that I can do and at that point I could do nothing so I might as well start here. And then, the same kind of adventure started again when I realized I had hit that goal. Very long time horizons. Lot of time to self discovery, but it's like yeah that's what led me to here. Just constantly trying to find that thing I could hold on to.

    That was probably incoherent as fuck for a multitude of reasons, most of them being my terrible grammar, but woah. The best part of this episode was that that wasn't even the coolest thing he said. This time, I'm not going to quote it directly so I can jog my noggin a little and make some sense, but he says something along the lines of:

    I have sat in a studio dripping with sweat and crying my eyes out in a studio alone for days, but I would go home after that day and go back to the studio the next day. The fact that I had a bad day has nothing to do with my goal, but obviously I can't always ignore it. I believe that this idea needs every ounce of energy I can produce, or it won't be as good as I want it to be. It deserves every ounce of my energy because I know what it's like to have the ability to make stripped away from your being.

    I, until now, have never even thought of that as an approach. I've had months when I sat in front of a computer for 7 hours from morning to evening working on a game, but once it was done, I didn't like it? Being a “smart kid” since you were young leaves you really miserable until you learn that cool stuff takes time and effort to really learn.

    I've always said that hey I may not be the smartest person in the room, but I have confidence in my ability to digest new concepts thrown at me and then using them. In the past few months, though, I've really had that ability put to the test. All that confidence turned into anguish very quickly when I had to face the inevitable: “Hey, maybe this is too much? I'm not having fun anymore.”

    School has also really taken its toll on me. I am not a good student. I hardly study even right before exams, and it shows on every report card. One could say I don't know how to study because I've never needed to, but that's a lie. I'm just terrible at giving tests: I get anxious, stressed out and end up with a migraine right before the exam, which isn't very helpful. It doesn't help that I resent every element of the modern education system, either. But I don't have much time anymore to complain. So what do you do when you don't know what to do?

    I guess my first advice to myself would be that you have nothing concrete you want to work towards in the next month or 6 months or even year. All your plans span over half decades and aren't even really plans, they're just abstract ideas.

    To that, I would say, well, what's the point of an objective that goes on so long? I've had many projects which I've put my heart and soul into only to ditch it the next chance I've gotten because I found something new. Why should I spend so much time and energy into something when I don't even know if I can do something with what I learn? Why should I waste my time?

    And finally, it's to THAT paragraph that Markiplier talks to: Please love what you do or find something you love to do.

    I think I've only realized it now, but it'll take time to learn to not run in the face of effort when I'm trying something new. Recently, I've been trying to learn Rust, and it has been a new fucking experience. This is easily like the third time I've tried to get into it, but the difference is that before I would come across a topic and go: “Oh I don't know what this is and don't want to read the paragraph carefully explaining it all, so I'll just go back to python.” I am happy to say that I am now on chapter 9.2 of the Rust book.

    This post is much more train of thought than previous ones (I don't know, the other ones I had like planned to write. With this one, I just sat down and thought: "I must write something"), but that's mostly because I just wanted to give myself a real opportunity to talk about stuff I am rarely comfortable talking to people about in a way that doesn't sound like I read too much. Also, I really like Chuckle Sandwich.