Growing up I always had fun making little videos. Whether it was music videos on my iPod or hosting fake talk shows with my friends on tiny cameras, I always was interested in making videos. The tacky little videos turned to GoPro style montages of summers and Christmas mornings. Maybe I could do this more often?
So around December of 2017 I said screw it, picked up my phone, got in my car and started filming. That day I drove around doing nonsense. Filming nonsense. When I ran out of phone storage I called it quits for the day and headed home. I immediately airdropped the footage to my computer, opened up iMovie and started editing. Soon enough I had a video on my hands that I thought was funny and I was truly proud of. So I headed to youtube.com and uploaded my very first video.
About a year, a few months and 26 videos later here I am, opening up about how posting that one single video made my life so much better. I’m inconsistent when I post. I’ll put out four videos in a week and then not again for two months. I’m trying to work on that aspect. But when I am posting, I’m seriously having a blast doing it. For 14 years, I was a part of a dance studio. In the end I was at the studio for up to 5 or 6 nights a week. It was my safe space and how I expressed myself. For so long, dance was my creative outlet. Then I came to college. My whole life was flipped upside down.
It was time for me to find a new way to express myself. I struggled through that for my entire first semester, feeling trapped in this new and unfamiliar place. Come December as I worked up the courage to post my first video, I had found a new passion, a new way to express my creativity.
Looking back, I can see a total turn in my confidence level when I started making videos. I mean hey, I’m uploading sometimes embarrassing videos of myself online for the entire world to see. I’d hope I was pretty confident. I’ve posted too many clips of me singing and dancing either in my car, my dorm, or even a random bathroom mirror. In all seriousness I’m thankful for my newfound sense of confidence. It’s pushed me outside of my comfort zone in ways that I didn’t think I’d ever reach.