I never thought I’d get this award, it’s certainly not something I set out to achieve. To think that 100,000 people thought enough about what I had to say to subscribe is just a completely silly notion (especially when I look back at some of the things I’ve made in the past). In the beginning, I focused on sharing knowledge and documenting what I was creating. As time went on, I started to have higher expectations of my work; I became interested in filmmaking, composition, color grading, audio, and storytelling. I think I make a lot better things than I used to, but I'm nowhere near as good as my heroes or as I want to be. And, I know when I look back on this in another year’s time I’ll see what I made today wasn’t that great either.
However, without a body of work to look back on, I’d have no context to see the journey. It's important to remember that we can’t possibly make our best work the first time we publish something, it takes practice, discipline and the knowledge that most of what we make won’t live up to our own high standards. In time we get better. This was the 196th video uploaded to YouTube for me; that's a lot of practice!
I hope this inspires you to take action and to make things. See my path and take comfort in the fact that I just pressed 'publish' - even when I wasn't capable of executing at my own high standards. Pressing publish is the only way to improve. There are no more gatekeepers, if you have access to the internet and a smartphone you too can speak to millions of people if you choose.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for allowing this kind of life to be possible and for being such an important part of my story on YouTube.
