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Over the last year, I have become fascinated with YouTube as a medium to show my creativity. I have always been a creative person, but self-doubt and confidence have always held me back. I have always avoided doing things because of the unyielding doubt of what people may think, which has meant that I have missed opportunities and good ones at that.

A few months ago, the thought of getting in front of the camera was terrifying, and I vowed that I would never vlog, so you’re probably thinking why the change.

I turned 40 this year, and I am not sure whether this made me realise how much life has passed me by, but I wanted to grasp more opportunities and stop the anxiety from holding me back. I have friends and old acquaintances that are in better jobs and have happier lives because they have seized opportunities that have come their way.

Now back to YouTube! I have always been creative and had the ability to pick up anything technical very easily, so I wasn’t worried about editing and creating. The thinking that worried me the most was getting in front of the camera! I started off easy and kept it simple. I wanted to get the difficult bit out of the way and concentrate on the bits that worried me the most.

On to creating my first vlog, yes it was scary. I’ll be honest it was a total disaster. The sound was awful, and the video was shaky, but it was a valuable learning experience. I have, as I get older, seen mistakes as a learning experience more than a disaster.

A quick tip about YouTube, the viewers will put up with poor video all day, but the best way for a viewer to skip your video is poor audio, so worry more about the sound than the visuals.

On to my first release! I had a couple of failed attempts after the first video I talked about earlier. They got better as I learnt more, I got some improved kits, like a good-quality mic, and a GoPro 7. I’ll be honest that I probably didn’t need the GoPro, and you’ll probably have a good camera in your pocket, yes your mobile phone. If I can offer one piece of advice to anybody starting vlogging, is to try it using the kit you have before spending large amounts of money. I wasn’t too worried about the GoPro as I knew that I would have other uses for this, so it wouldn’t gather dust in a drawer.

I put my first vlog out around 2 months ago, and it was by no means perfect. I could have spent months trying to make it perfect, but it wouldn’t have seen the light of day, and as Peter McKinnon says “Done is better than perfect!”, a mantra I have grown to embrace over the last few months, and having learnt more about agile development in my day job, (I suggest looking up Agile as it’s far too detailed to go into here) its about getting something out there that works and improve as you go along.

Now let’s get on to the reason for this vlog. I started YouTube mainly as an outlet for my creativity, to enable me to teach (I wanted to be a teacher when I was younger, but never did well enough in school to achieve this!) and to give me a reason to step out of that comfort zone.

So if you are thinking about vlogging but too scared to do it, then, as the advert says, “Just do it!”. Yes, you are going to get haters, the keyboard warriors, and the people with nothing better to do than leave bad comments, but they are still sat behind a keyboard, probably bored with life, while you are out enjoying it, so grasp it with two hands and get out there.

I hope you liked this blog and tell me what you think in the comments below or on social media, links at the bottom of the page. It would be great if you could check out my YouTube channel and tell me what you think.