Epiphany.

Recording This: Reflections on Goals and Personal Growth

I'm recording this to myself, to be honest, because I want to go back and watch this, listen to this, and stay true to the advice that I've developed for myself. I've been making more lists - yes, I make lists for everything - but mostly of things I want to achieve that or things I want to do that I haven't done yet that I want to get done. These goals are mostly pretty selfish goals that you know will only be things for me, but if they start growing into something like that and I can expand it to be more charitable and things like that as I get used to this process, I think that's how it should be.

I've always been someone who makes lists, but lately, I've been focusing on making a plan for my goals. I want to go back to getting into a workout routine - not trying to build a bunch of muscle or anything, because let's face it, I'm a tiny guy and that's just not going to happen. Instead, I want to make sure I'm getting the proper general workout to have healthy muscle mass. So, I want to be doing a certain amount of push-ups every couple of days, just as a routine. I've always wanted to be one of those people who gets up early in the morning and starts their day with a good workout - that's the kind of person I want to be.

I also have a creative project that I've been wanting to work on for a while now. I've always loved making machinima, using games as the base for my videos and writing scripts around them. One idea I had a couple of years ago was to make a Christmas parody in Minecraft - it would have been called "Crisp" (a play on the Grinch's "Chest of Robes") and would have featured some pretty cool animation work, with voice actors and building teams contributing to the project. Unfortunately, that idea never really took off, and I've been too afraid to try again.

Despite these setbacks, I'm determined to keep moving forward and working on my goals. One thing that's been holding me back is the fear of change. Sometimes when people ask me about my plans for the future - where do you see yourself in five years? or what are your long-term goals? - it makes me feel like I don't know exactly what I'm doing. That's because, to be honest, I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to get there. But that uncertainty is a major obstacle for anyone who wants to set and achieve big goals.

So, I've decided to just take the leap and start moving forward. This might mean making some tough decisions about what I want to focus on and where I want to spend my time. It might mean sacrificing some comforts or indulgences in order to pursue my goals. But it's also going to be incredibly liberating - like, I'm going to finally get the chance to make something really special with machinima, or write some amazing stories that I can share with others. And, of course, there's always the possibility that this whole endeavor will end in disaster.

That's okay, though. Because at the very least, I'll have tried. And who knows? Maybe this is exactly what I need to do in order to take my channel (and myself) to the next level.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello everyone my name is eposvox and i got some oreos and you know what it makes me happy and i don't always do a lot of things that make me happy in life and isn't that why we're living life are we living life to be happy well it is now 1 11 am and i spent probably the past hour and a half in my car in truce driveway talking with her and i finally had an epiphany that i've probably been building up and needing for a very long time and that is just about getting things straight and getting things figured out in my life i have a lot of bitterness and a lot of stress anxiety and frustration towards not being what i would consider successful now you can look at pretty much anything i do and anything involving the way i which in which i do it and say that i am a successful individual and i probably can't fairly argue against that and yet at the same time for quite a few years now i've had this really just distaste or just this really gross feeling of discontent and just the feeling of not being where i should be not being where i want to be in life and it's always confused me and i actually went through for a while now having these like goofy mini existential crises or whatever i'm figuring out where i want to be and what i want to do in life and today i realized it doesn't matter where i am it it's not really about where i am in life because if we're always reaching for the stars then we're never necessarily going to be happy with not being at the stars we do need to learn to be happy at the clouds or even just a little bit higher off the ground but that's obviously not going to be our end goal and we have to be okay with that it's that i'm not trying then i didn't even know that it wasn't trying and that's what made it more confusing i didn't even know that i wasn't reaching for the stars that i want to you know if i want to be here and i'm here i'm basically just working like horizontally with a slight angle and not just reaching for things i think it's really complicated and really confusing and involves a lot of things that may not make a lot of sense but i don't know i i have passions i have things i work towards i spend 99.9 of my time working towards what i thought were goals towards this image of where i wanted to be in life towards where i thought i wanted to be in life but i wasn't really chasing my dreams i'm not really i'm still not i'm not really you know reaching for what i want to get i'm continuing to work and continuing to do the same thing and i've never understood why like in a lot of ways i work a lot harder than people expect and i do a lot more work than people expect and so people get impressed by it and so people think that if i continue doing what i do that i will be successful or you know that i am successful because that's what i do and to some degree that is true but it's not to the level of success that i want to reach because i'm not doing other things i'm not taking advantages of advantage of opportunities that are out there i'm not you know i'm not i'm still not reaching for the stars i'm just like basically climbing up some steps just throwing ridiculous metaphors out here because i'm exhausted um but and i don't think i ever fully process that i i look at myself and i compare myself to those i went to high school with i went to one of i went to basically the top high school in the region and so i was surrounded by of course a lot of incredibly smart people and while i was very smart myself i always saw myself as below some of these people who were getting perfect scores on their acts and who were going to harvard and who now work for google and facebook on this during the summers while they teach while they go to school for undergraduate degrees it's you know they do things and while i'm not necessarily reaching for that it all comes down to actually going after and taking advantage of opportunities and that's what i'm not happy with i'm not happy because i don't feel like i'm trying i don't feel like i'm trying hard enough to achieve what i want to achieve if i were then it wouldn't matter where i'm at in life because it doesn't matter what a really cliche motivational quote or whatever as it doesn't matter how successful you are overall as long as you're trying if you're not trying then frankly you're never going to succeed and that is exactly my problem i got in the habit of just working my ass off and continuing continuing the work to do the same thing and thinking that just devoting all my time to it that just devoting myself towards working the exact same way the whole time would find success excuse me find success for me and that may be the case and you know that may be something way down the road i get to but i'm not going to find just like a straight path to success or find the path to the success that i want to find by doing that i need to actually set like goals actual goals not just in 5 to 10 years i want to be here it's i want i need to set goals for how i want to reach it and i've never been able to process that before and it sounds really really simple but when you start applying it to your life it doesn't always get that simple it's pretty hilarious june and i are involved in this honor society thing for university that we got to watch these motivational speaker broadcasts and stuff to say that we're learning about leadership and it's all you know really cheesy stuff that you don't expect to apply to your life until it hits you like we when we were talking about it we realized that a lot of this comes from exactly what one of the guys was saying and it's about just that you need to have a call so you need to have a reason basically when when you apply to me i need to have a reason why i'm working so hard or else all of my work is in vain and that's exactly what has been the problem in my life is i haven't had a reason to work other than i want to be vaguely successful and so my work hasn't been all that successful and so that means i need to change things i need to stop running away from opportunities i need to start taking advantage of opportunities applying that specifically to youtube is collaborating with other youtubers going after these crazy projects that i just steered away from applied to real life not avoiding certain social situations not avoiding job opportunities not avoiding contests or competitions or things like that i need to go out and do things and again this all sounds so simple but when you're wrapped up in your life and when you're devoting yourself to just working 24 7 hoping it'll pay off in the end it slips away a little bit and it gets really frustrating as hell when it does but i think i'm getting there i think this was a huge step for me and i think it's something that's going to help me figure things out in the future and i hope to hell i listen to that's part of why i'm recording this to be honest is for myself so i can go back and watch this and listen to this and stay true to the advice that i've developed for myself i've been making more lists yes i make lists for everything but of things i want to achieve that or you know things i want to do that i haven't done yet that i want to get done and these goals are mostly pretty selfish goals that you know will only be things for me but if they start and it's something like that and i can expand it to be more charitable and things like that as i get used to this process and i think that's how it should be but not that you all really care but i want to kind of get into a little bit is i want to go back to getting some sort of workout routine i don't want to do a whole lot of working out and like build a bunch of muscle or anything i'm a tiny guy i'm not going to be bulky it's more i want to make sure i'm getting the proper just general workout to have a healthy muscle mass and so i want to be doing a certain amount of push-ups every couple days just as a routine i want to have that you know be that early morning workout kind of person i want to i've always wanted to make a machinima with games and you know a game mission of that script did and one that i had worked out a couple years ago was this crisp it was basically like a hella grinch still christmas parody and it was in minecraft and i was gonna have voice actors i actually had a few building teams that were gonna help me with it it was gonna be pretty cool and it just kind of slowly fell apart and i never really went after that anymore and that's something i want to do and actually had a really good idea for something but i'd want it for the most part to really just be animated and so that involves getting a lot of people on with a lot of work hours and this one's also christmas related so may not be something that ends up being all that realistic or final but then there's things like i want to do i write stories i want to get heavily back involved with writing i want to do certain things with film and photography and the things i just need to work towards and do there are projects i just need to take on i need to not just put them off until i have more time or i have more freedom that's not how this works and i've always known this hello phone it is 1 20 am why are you texting me hi chew i'm on skype it is one of those things where you just have to go and do it and you have to let it go you just have to no this doesn't necessarily mean things change for the channel ideally it means things could change from the good way for the channel because it means i'm going after more of my goals and it means quality and just content will improve overall for the channel but it's not like i'm taking anything away it's just i really need to get some stuff straight and i was actually about to make a huge blog post about something very similar to this and about how because i've gotten a few questions recently about where do you see yourself in five years where do you see yourself in 10 years blah blah and i never know how to answer that and that's because i don't know where i'm while i think i know where i'm going i don't really know how i'm getting there and so that makes those questions really hard to answer because it takes away the solidification that you're going to get there you don't have a cause so you have no confidence in that you can get where you're going and that becomes problematic so hopefully i didn't bring your faces off again a lot of this is for myself but i want to put it out there so i can stick to it and hopefully it helps some of you all out as well and hopefully i stick to it and hopefully things improve from this because frankly as far as video content stuff goes if i can chase after some of this stuff this makes things like this could be huge for the channel it could be huge for myself personally which when i'm this involved in the channel means that it's going to be huge for the channel or it could end up being nothing at all so we will see so thank you for sticking with me if you're still watching and thank you for sticking with me for just being subscribed to the channel and watching my videos and i really appreciate your guys support and i'm gonna go eat some more oreos and go to bed because it's now 1 30 and i got to work tomorrow so we'll talk to you all later bye\n"