From Words to Videos: My Journey into YouTube Content Creation

Hello fellow adventurers,

This evening, I want to talk about launching my YouTube channel, which accompanies this blog. I'll share what led up to it and why I decided to venture into content creation at this stage in my life.

Blogging has evolved significantly since I last created content daily. These days, you have support systems like social media channels, YouTube, and TikTok, just to name a few. Back in what might as well be called the Jurassic period of the internet, we had none of that. It was a hard slog, and often, you wouldn't make it because relying solely on words and a few pictures was incredibly challenging. You either had what people were looking for, or you got nowhere.

I was among those who endured that long, hard slog but eventually found myself on a deserted backroad on the far-flung side of the internet universe. Realizing I didn't have what people were looking for, I walked away.

Fast forward to now—some 28 years since I last blogged. Battling with depression, sometimes you find yourself trying weird ways to cope. This round of depression has been the longest and hardest battle I've ever faced. Yet, even in the darkest moments, I kept telling myself that things would get better because I still had too much to live for.

My daily routine involves checking emails and news as soon as I wake up. Then, it's off to Facebook and YouTube while enjoying my morning coffee. This has been my routine since October 2016 when I discovered the Safari Live (now Wild Earth) channel on YouTube.

What a difference one small inspiring stream can make in a person's life. Yet, it wasn't then that I decided to get into YouTube content creation. It was the many gaming channels on YouTube that began steering me in that direction. Initially, I thought gaming would be my niche because it made sense—I love playing games, so why not share that? However, I realized that constantly playing games could become boring and I couldn't dedicate 100% of my time, so a gaming channel was out of the question for my main YouTube focus.

To make a long story short, I took a different direction when I decided to begin blogging again. I figured I would make videos on similar topics found here in this blog, but I soon realized that could become mundane. That's when inspiration struck. A channel offering generic shorts about mysteries from around the world, asking for viewer interaction via comments, seemed like the way to go.

The first short I released was on The Lost Colony of Roanoke. In the first 24 hours after posting, it garnered 455 views. It only managed to attract 3 subscribers, but hey, that was three more people interested in what I have to say than the day before.

I never imagined I would be a genuine content creator on YouTube, but the channel analytics from the past three days show that it's worth my time. People are genuinely interested in mysteries that not only pose questions but also share some history.

I don’t know where this is going, but hopefully, it’s straight up.

Until next time,

Christina E.