This day kind of counts almost as 3 months after a huge burnout that I had. That was a phase in my life that was very hard and I don't want to revisit it again. Too many insecurities suddenly started surfacing, I didn't feel good about myself and what I did at all, spent hours endlessly browsing through social media, fell into a lot of comparison traps, didn't want to wake up in the morning as I just wasn't ready to do anything! Talking about the present, most of the things seem to be repeating again. But there's a complicated thing that's happening now. I have a goal that I'm working towards , I really want to make it happen. In fact two goals that I'm working towards. But I'm not able to take any action since I want to make it all as perfect as I possibly can. Wait actually while writing this post, at this very moment, I found a partial reason why this is happening to me and my productivity. I'm striving for perfection. I want to make it perfect, the best, I want zero regrets. Let me elaborate a little more about the 2 goals. I have a gut feeling that I might figure something out in the process of writing this.
Goal1 : Elevate the quality of my YouTube videos
There was a time when I was very very excited to start my channel and I immediately did that. Posted 4 videos and suddenly stopped posting. Why? I have content that I want to put out. Creative coding stuff that I enjoy, Back-end dev stuff which I really enjoy, some heart to hearts with the viewers etc... But all that excitement came down, when I saw my first video fully. Audio quality ? BAD! Video quality? BAD!!!! length of the video and pauses in speech? TOO MUCH!! Time I took to edit it out and figure out everything? An eternity!! I can go on and on about everything that went wrong. I tried a little to improve the audio and video quality of my subsequent videos but now I know for sure that the next video I put out will be good in terms of the audio and video quality. Also in terms of the editing quality. Let's talk about the action that I've taken for these. Editing? I've been watching a lot of tutorials and observing how other YouTubers that I admire do it. Before all this I hated editing. But now, I'm just amazed by how I can weave a story pouring in all my creativity into it using editing and I love it. I love editing now. That's a plus and is going well now. Now onto video quality. I haven't done much for this. It is decent for now. Got a new laptop recently and it kind of improved the video quality. But I'll still keep experimenting with it. I'll shoot videos with both my webcam and a Cannon that we bought a few months ago and will try to compare and maximize the quality. So that's still in progress. Still need time to figure it out. Coming to the next, probably the biggest problem. AUDIO! I've been researching about this for God knows how long. Trying to record and rerecord my voice and seeing which filters work well with my voice. But I still seem to have a persistent metallic sound in my voice. It sounds too hollow and the S sound is terrible. I listen to other podcasters and the audio on their channels and I hate being in this place. Ugh!!!! What exactly am I supposed to do??? Audio is the biggest problem. I have a new mic but I don't know how to get the best possible sounding audio out of it. Not sure how many more tries it is going to take. This is one thing that has been troubling me a LOTTTT!! I need to figure this out. The passion and excitement that I'm putting into planning my next video, I'll not let that go in vain just because of a terrible audio. I'll figure it out just like I figured out many other things till now. I'll do it. It's possible. Just needs some more patience, more time with the mic and the audio editor and less time trying to compare myself to the pros out there!
Goal2 : Release my side project
I got the idea on October 6th I guess, too lazy to check when I did. The development has been getting postponed for a number of reasons till now. Four more pieces of functionality to add to it now. But I've been kind of getting discouraged. I've messaged a few people on Twitter recently to validate the idea and every single one of them thought that the idea was good. But man I'm scared. This is my first project that I'm working on, on such a big scale, giving it so much of my time. I've taken a lot of time to design it and plan the flow of the app. But there's still a fear. I don't know why. I want to eventually monetize it too. That will be a good learning experience. Even if no one uses it, I will! Because I really feel something like this one is missing. But what exactly is the idea? I guess I've come quite far with the development and think that it's okay to reveal the idea. I've been building an app that let's Twitter users organize and filter through their bookmarked tweets. I've been recording my process of building this app on Indie hackers. I know this idea is useful. I know it will help me at least if not anyone. I know it can be monetized and at least one person will be ready to pay for it because I've seen tweets where people talk about something like this. I remember reading a tweet a few months ago where someone was asking if there were any good apps to organize and store bookmarked tweets. They were using notion to add links but were looking for a better tool. So I know that people will find it useful. But I haven't figured out a lot of the logic, the 4 pieces of functionality, that is a huge and complicated part of the app. On top of that, I'm scared of getting a huge Firebase bill, that I might not be able to pay back. This sounds silly, as I might be able to overcome it with the way I design the database, but still it scares me big time. Then the other part, major part, the pricing strategy, no clue how I'll make it work. Have been thinking of incorporating stripe, but still I'll need time to internalize the way it works, because I don't want to take any risk in terms of money, what so ever. So all this is pointing me to another huge fear, money. I just don't want to fall into a bad place in terms of money. I'm not talking about getting broke. I'm talking about mismanagement and then ending up paying a huge huge bill to other software services. Just been figuring out how to connect my cards to PayPal and stripe. And already the thought of having a business account and paying tax returns, oh my God!! It all just sounds so scary and overwhelming. I haven't dealt with money first hand. Always used the money my parents gave me and took their permission for every small purchase that I made. But now I'm in charge of my accounts and I'm slowly earning money. Not huge amounts but it is something and the very thought of me managing it all is so so so scary. Am I being too dependent on my parents? Am I trying to run away from reality? No idea. But I know something for sure. It is stopping me from making further progress. I'm right now in a state of mind where I just don't want to go forward without having figured out completely what to do next and how it will work. On top of that, this tech stack is new to me. Never worked with Firebase before. But learning it as I go. A huge amount of time is being spent but I enjoy it nevertheless. I enjoy developing the app and the thought of putting in front of people and letting them use it is lovely. It fires up an unprecedented passion inside me. I really really want to see it benefit people's workflow. OK the word "people" is too ambitious. Let's just say, I really really want to see it benefit my workflow and experience on Twitter. I know it will. But the obstacle now is, I'm scared to deal with money. I don't want anything related to money to go wrong. I don't want my users to pay extra, naturally I don't want to pay extra too. I want it all to be the best possible experience. I don't want my parents to fall into any problem because of this. Does this all sound reasonable? I guess it does. But actually acknowledging this fear is kind of making me more accepting of this fear. I know I'm still a noob with money. But I know I'll get better at it, just like I got good at other things that I tried out this year. Yes this is much scarier and the risk associated with this is much more. But risks are meant to be taken Manu. You have a vision of a future in your mind, a vision that you want to turn into a reality, and risks are meant to be taken for you to get as close as possible to it. It is much better to fail now, when the stakes are much lower than to fail in the future, with money, when the stakes will be too high and the risk associated will be too much. Better fail now. If you want to make your vision a reality, Manu, this has to be done. This is just one of the many risks that you will have to take from now on. Don't focus on what could go wrong. Think about all that could go right.Dont be so scared of money. It is just like one of the many experiments that you conducted with yourself. Sometimes you fail. Sometimes you win. But a lesson is always guaranteed. What can be better than that? Just go ahead, take that risk and you will love yourself for this. Go ahead, develop the app, I mean develop Tweeker 😊(this is Tweeker's debut on a platform other than Indie hackers😇) , get rid of all the to-dos on your Tweeker trello, release it for people to see, not on some day but on NEXT FRIDAY. Next Friday you will finish this up and release it. Don't worry so much about the reach and money. Just write good code, working code and ship it. Rest all can be figured out. Good luck to me!! Let's do this. Tweeker can be found here if you're interested: 1) On Twitter --> Tweeker 2) On Indie Hackers --> indiehackers.com/product/tweeker-2
Do you have any advice for me? Regarding Audio quality for YouTube videos or Tweeker? (I highly doubt someone will read this entire post. If you do, let me know. I'll be glad to know someone spent a lot of their time reading through the stuff I had to say. It is flattering to say the least!) Coming back, if you do have any advice for me or just want to know more about Tweeker or anything in general, shoot me a DM on Twitter. Anyways, I highly highly appreciate if you read this whole post. Thanks for your time. This is the biggest post I wrote till date. Poured out my heart into this. Anyways I'll take leave now. Bye! Have a great day!