It's my 4,992nd day on YouTube, it's January 28, 2025, and today I'm thinking about a book I read a few years ago called The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. If you're a creator of any kind, a YouTuber, an author, a streamer, I believe this book will be really helpful for you. This morning is a perfect example of what Pressfield talks about. If you're a creator, it'll often seem like all these resistances come up to keep you from doing your basic creation. Today I had several hours I could have live streamed before this, on Twitch and on YouTube. But now I'm down to about an hour, and I caught myself thinking I'll just go to Home Depot instead. Even so, I feel really satisfied knowing that if I can take even an hour a day to film several YouTube videos and live stream on Twitch, that's enough.
What happens to most of us is what Pressfield calls resistance. The thing I've done really well in my career on YouTube and Twitch is break through that resistance over and over. I recognize it for what it is, and this book gave me the language to name it. So many times, if you're a writer and you show up to write, at first you'll feel uninspired. You'll have no ideas. Some days I'm really enthusiastic and I can't wait to go live. Other days it's more like, I don't have anything to say today, maybe I should do something else, my videos are crap. But no matter what my mind is thinking, I just get out there and create.
Creation is a grind, and you just keep showing up
If you want to be an author, a creative person, a YouTuber, it ultimately comes down to the grind. It is just a grind. For me, I've made over 10,000 videos online and thousands and thousands of hours of live stream. You just keep showing up every day. It doesn't matter how many people are watching, whether it's live or on your videos. You just keep going live. Whether it's a roller coaster, whether you're up or down or somewhere in between, you go live anyway. If you're an author, you write. You just write, no matter what else is happening. If you're a musician, you play music. It doesn't matter what else is going on in your life. To me, I'm a YouTuber and a Twitch streamer, so you get out and you go live.
Now, it doesn't have to be so regimented that you can't take a single break or a single day off. What I'm leaning into now is different from the past. Before, I felt like I had to have YouTube videos coming out even when I was gone. What I'm going to do now is the opposite. If I'm taking a week off, I'm just not going to publish any videos or live streams that week. I'm going to really take the time off. If I've been on the grind the rest of the time, taking a week off doesn't matter. It's not like my whole audience is going to disappear overnight. And I have a day like today where this is the only quality time I have to film videos. I have a massage, then the kids come home from school, then I go to my AA meeting and give my sponsor his medallion, then I put the kids to bed. Maybe I actually could live stream some music after the kids go to sleep, but that's a different energy than recording videos.
Last year on Twitch there was half the year where I didn't live stream at all, and on YouTube I took a month off from making videos. That happened because I'd been a bit too rigid before and wouldn't take time off willingly. But that rigidity is, going back to The War of Art, just another form of resistance. Once you identify what your thing is, if you're a creative type, you do it no matter what. You do it whether you feel inspired. You do it no matter what you're thinking. You just do it.
If you think you want to do something, do it
Someone in the chat said they want to give it a go but don't know what to do about it. If you think you want to do something, one of the best things I've done in my life is to just do it. I get out there and do it. I wanted to be a police officer and a correction officer, so I did it. I wanted to go to grad school, so I did it. I wanted to start on YouTube, I did it. I wanted to sell t-shirts, I did it. I wanted to sell courses, I did it. I wanted to be a pro gamer, check, did that. And now it's, I want to play music, so I've made 308 or 309 songs. You just do it.
So if you think you want to do something, do it. With YouTube or Twitch, if you think you want to live stream or make videos, just start making videos and start live streaming. It's easy. Do the least. You don't have to have anything fancy. Just use the easiest, simplest way you can get started. A lot of times you'll find these things you think you want to do, you don't actually want to do them. But that's valuable, because once you try something and know you don't want to do it, another desire will come up from there. I've consistently gotten myself to a place now where I love doing YouTube and I love doing Twitch. There's nothing else that's nearly this lucrative in terms of the money I can make, and nothing else that's this much fun. What I love about Twitch is that it's a live community where everyone watching is here while I'm live, and I see the chat, even though I respond to the chat after I record the YouTube vlog.
A variety of careers, and finding the fun
I've had a variety of different careers over the years, and that's because I really thought I wanted to do each of them. When I was in college, I told myself I want a career that's fun, and being a police officer was one of the most fun careers I could imagine. So I did it. But with all the drinking I was doing and all the long hours, it got to be more stressful than fun. At first it was fun, then it started to get more stressful and wasn't as fun anymore. What I've found with YouTube and Twitch is that these are fun. YouTube and Twitch are fun. I'm grateful that today I broke through that creative block. I took some time to experiment and research video topics beforehand, I walked the dog this morning, and I listened and prepared for an interview I have later this week.
I'm really happy that I'm still here doing this, because a few years ago I got so toxic on this whole thing that I sold all of my equipment. The crazy thing is I've since bought it all back. It was actually in 2020, so almost five years ago, that I got so burnt out I sold everything. I had all the same gear I have now, and I sold all of it. I sold all six monitors, all my computers, all my microphones, more than ten thousand dollars of equipment, and I sold it for probably half that. Then I had a couple of months where I tried to do an in-person show, which 2020 was not the best time for. When everybody was going online, instead of seeing it as my opportunity, at first I simply reacted by thinking we needed to get offline, which was definitely accurate in its own way.
Sometimes, right when the world is giving you what you've asked for, it can be infuriating. For years and years I'd wanted to be a professional gamer, and hardly anybody watched gaming streams or supported them until 2020. Then in 2020, after selling all my stuff, I was on the trampoline one day and realized I still wanted to be a pro gamer, and the entire universe had just aligned so that I could finally have what I'd wanted for years. I just needed to buy all my stuff back. But I didn't have any money to buy anything except the cheapest computer, about $600 off Facebook Marketplace. One friend mailed me a Blue Yeti mic I'd sent him years before, and another friend mailed me a day-one Xbox One. With that equipment, which was god-awfully humbling after having a $10,000-plus studio with top-of-the-line gear, I started going live again on Facebook. I got to be a professional gamer starting with the crappiest equipment.
Ironically, about two years later, I realized I was tired of being a professional gamer. Playing video games a few days a week is fun. Playing every single day for hours is not fun. I haven't gamed in something like six to eight months, and it's because things take up space in your life. To me, music gives me a much higher return than gaming does, though I still think about gaming. If you want to see more of how I think through this creative life, I share a lot of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist.
So today I feel like I'm winning the war of art. If you're a creator, I'd definitely recommend reading this book by Steven Pressfield. And I appreciate all of you supporting me in this.