So, I want to be a content creator. A YouTuber, to be more specific. How original of an idea, right? Thousands of teens, pre-teens, maybe even adults, want to be a YouTuber these days. I mean, c’mon, you can make bank and not even leave the comfort of your room. How cool is that? But it’s not about the money for me. Hell, I don’t think I’d care if I didn’t even ever hit 100 subs. I want to make videos because I want to be comfortable in my own skin. I want a personality, I want to entertain.

When I was younger, I loved to act. Mostly in the musical my school put on but there was an Off Broadway production that I was a part of. My acting career was stopped short when I entered high school and my father made me realize that acting wasn’t a viable career option for me. It was dangerous, risky, and didn’t come with a guarantee that I would succeed. So I put my acting career on hold. I stopped looking up schools like Interlochen and apartments in LA where I would move temporarily while going to auditions. Granted, it wasn’t ideal for a 14 year old to move out to LA but I loved acting and I wanted to pursue it. I still love it. Going out on stage, becoming someone that you aren’t. Pausing your life and leaving it backstage while you become another person for a whole hour and a half (give or take) was the ultimate dream for me.

I was talking to my pal, John, the other day. We were discussing the up and coming talent show and he asked me whether I would be performing something or not. I told him that I don’t go on stage as myself. I’ll go on as someone else, but I can’t go onstage as myself.

Flash forward to 15 minutes ago while I was taking a shower, when I was thinking about my (failed) YouTube channel. I say failed because I didn’t stick around long enough to see if it would get anywhere. Crazy, right? I’ve been wanting to be a YouTuber since 9th grade and I finally made one a year ago, uploaded a few videos, and deleted it? To be honest, at the time, I wasn’t comfortable about myself. I was drowning in self-loathing, a low self esteem, and fear. Fear that the small number of people that watched my videos would make fun of me or hated me. I realized that if I was going to upload videos, I would have to be happy with myself before I let others see the real me. Tying this in with my conversation with John as well as my want to move to LA to become an actor made me question myself, if I can’t stand up in front of my class and talk and if I can’t go out on a stage and be myself in front of a group of people, why do I want to post videos on a platform where potentially millions of people can see the real me?

I’m still trying to figure that out, to be honest, but I know that I have a voice and I have a couple messages that I want to get out there. I have ideas for videos that I’ve stored in my brain and my phone for the past 3 years. I have a want to help people, be a voice, and maybe even an inspiration one day. This all starts with me being able to be comfortable in my own skin. And as I stood in my shower, I knew that in the back of my head that I knew that if I really wanted to do this, I would just have to do it. As scary and as crazy as that sounds, I just have to do it. I can’t stop and think about all the exponents. There are just too many to consider and statistically, most of them are probably impossible.

So, this is me taking my first step in just doing it.

I know, this isn’t a YouTube video but this is me, projecting my voice, on a platform where potentially thousands of people could see and I’m being me. I’m not acting, I’m not pretending to be someone else. This is me.