YouTube is my vice. I spend hours and hours and hours there watching videos every single day. I’ve recently however starting to resent the fact that apparently I seem to prefer watching other people do stuff rather than do that myself. Watching interesting videos feels like a leisure but doing interesting stuff has somehow in my mind turned into work.
Just few days ago I watched a Casey Neistat studio tour and I caught myself thinking how nice it would be to have a neatly organized space like that for making stuff. Well I have a space like that! I’m just never there because instead I’m in the house watching YouTube. I hate that. When I was younger I took apart solar lanterns to build a solar battery charger, I made a camera gimball stabilizer out of threaded rod, angle irons and plumbing pipe, I build a functioning submarine out of legos. Now I can’t even remember when I last time build something just for fun.
While watching youtube is “fun” aswell however it’s not memorable. I still remember my lego submarine from 20 years ago but I don’t remember a single video I watched yesterday. I’m worried that if I keep doing this I’m basically just throwing my life away. There’s always going to be another video to watch. I will never finish that project.
I guess I’m just venting. I’m sure there are people that can relate however. How do you guys deal with this?
I often fall in the same trap. The algorithm is set to keep you on you appetite. Serve you tons of meh content to keep you scrolling, with little nuggets of good content. Remember, to get angry at YouTube for keeping you unsatisfied like a dog trainer would to keep its pack attentive. I manage to get out of it by doing the simplest things whether I enjoy them or not. Sharpen ONE knife, or take appart and cleaned the door lock. Once I am done with that one task, I often find a little satisfaction off it and look for another one. My pitfall is sitting in front of the computer without a clear intention, I’ll fall in YouTube grip very easily. Like chips in the cupboard, I don’t like them but there there … Suggestion, share some of your past work here. It might get your attention back to doing instead of watching.