A Needed Break

A Quick Word

Before we begin, I just wanted to throw this out there: As I was thinking about what to say in this post, I was playing a VR game on my phone, and it was a bit of fun. However, as I sit here writing this post, I feel like my shoulders are spinning. This probably is due to me using a terrible, cheap VR headset that houses my phone. Anyways, onto the post.

The Prologue

I’ve been making YouTube videos for a long time, and I’ve done Let’s Plays for a good chunk of that time. In fact, I had a goal of trying to never miss an episode release for 2018 and 2019, and even a goal to make even more content than I was originally making.

I may have flown a bit too close to the sun.

Burnout

My first encounter with this sensation was during my time at SCAD. I mentioned my experience with burnout, and other aspects of the Fall 2018 quarter, in a blog post on The Road to Business.

As a quick recap, up to that point, I had attended college courses every Summer, Fall, and Spring semester from the time I was eligible to take dual-credit courses in high school to the time I arrived at SCAD. Despite both of my parents telling me to take a break after high school, I persisted and ultimately suffered the major consequences.

Burnout is not fun. Not in the slightest. I felt like shit. I hated myself, and the nearby bridge that served as a shortcut between my dorm and the dorm across the highway seemed friendly to my decaying mind. All this is to say that from this experience, I learned my limits and the signs that I might be burning out.

This brings us to now.

As I was editing episodes 8 and 9 of Let’s Play Pokemon: Blue, I had this… feeling… This feeling is a bit hard to describe, but it was like I knew something was starting to fizzle out… The passion I had for my Pokemon: Blue series was starting to die as I became increasingly more and more frustrated at various errors I encountered as I produced some of the later episodes. Things like my notes on the boss fights being incorrect, editing glitches, and even an occasional missing file that I swore I made were all starting to get to me.

This all culminated to a point when I was working on editing Episode 9 and Episode 10. I became so frustrated with how seemingly terrible this series was turning out to be, as I kept comparing myself to the likes of Chuggaaconroy and what he was able to accomplish with his friends for his series on the Black & White Pokemon games.

If we’re going to be objective here, then Pokemon: Blue Version has got to be one of the most well-put-together series I’ve ever aired on my channel, even rivaling my series on Metroid: Samus Returns which is another series that is technically an editing marvel considering how much work went into that series, but I grew to despise it because of how many errors I encountered while working on the second-to-last episode.

How did it come to be that I grew to start to despise both of these technical marvels of editing and production (when compared to the rest of my channel)? It’s simple. I’ve got it in my mind that I need to be perfect when it comes to these videos otherwise nobody will watch them and I will be a total failure. This is an incredibly toxic mentality that I shouldn’t be having in the first place, but I do have it, and I haven’t the slightest fucking idea on how to get rid of it.

So, I’ve identified that I’m feeling something brought on by both Metroid: Samus Returns and Pokemon: Blue Version. What am I going to do about it?

The Break

To put it simply, I’m going to be taking a break from Let’s Playing.

Well, first I’m going to be finishing up Pokemon: Blue Version, and then there won’t be any new Main Let’s Plays for quite a while. This is actually convenient since the end of this series is roughly around when the Fall 2019 semester starts at my next college, so I’ll be able to focus a bit more on school and other creative ventures.

While this is going on, there is still an upcoming Side Let’s Play of Rabbids Go Home. Once that series is done, which will be roughly the last full week of September, I won’t have a new Side Let’s Play for a little bit. I’ll probably start a new Main Let’s Play in the following October, and start a new Side Let’s Play sometime after that.

What will I be doing in the meantime? Well, focusing on school for starters, and I’ll also be working towards bringing additional content to the website. We’ve already got Mini-Pack up and running, but I think it would be fun if we also started doing other shows in the future. I don’t want to confirm anything, but I’ve got a couple of fun ideas that may or may not require the assembling of a set and the acquiring of props.

Other than that, I might have a few other series that might pop either soon or in the near future. That all depends on what their final file size is like.

Send Off

That’s about it, really. I’ve just felt the creeping sensation of being burnt out from doing Let’s Plays all the time, and I think it’s time to start stretching the creative muscles. Who knows? I might even lift my rule against M-Rated games in the future…