August was ridiculous.

Especially when the wind kicks up and you can hear the creaking of dead wood leaning on one another trying to fall over.

I think August might have been the busiest month of my life, at least since I moved. I had two in-person specialist appointments with doctors. Both were booked before I moved and couldn’t be done over the phone. Then there were two camping trips and my little sister’s wedding. Every one of these events required four hours of travel and at least one night away from home. The result is I felt extremely behind and exhausted at the time. Making putting in the time to catch up feel impossible. Thankfully there is good news. I did have a great time on the camping trips so let's talk about those for a bit.

The first of two trips was the week after my sisters wedding. Three of us went to manning park. We stayed for two nights in one of the drive in camp sites called Cold stream campground. Because it is right beside the highway and does not provide running water or power it is the cheaper option and almost always has space open. We found a spot for two nights and explored the campground the first day. I fed a chipmunk and we went up to the alpine meadows for lunch. It pelted rain all night but thankfully cleared up by the morning. Aside from our tents being a bit damp we were dry and warm. The second day we hiked up mt frosty that ends at an altitude of 2408m (7900ft) above sea level. By the end you can tell you are quite high up because the peak is on level with the clouds. The air is thin up there but boy is it one hell of a view. I have been up there before almost fifteen years ago. It was wild seeing the glacier almost completely gone. The trail leading up to the peak is surrounded by pine trees. Almost thirty years ago now there was an outbreak of the pine beetle. They killed most of the trees in the forest. When I was there last most of the trees were standing and brown. Now they are all collapsing and starkly white. It is a haunting sight in some ways. Especially when the wind kicks up and you can hear the creaking of dead wood leaning on one another trying to fall over. It made some sections of the trail sketchy but it was a wonderful hike.

The second trip I went on was a short over night camp up mount Seymour. This one was was scheduled to line up with a doctors appointment the day I headed home. Four of us went, myself, my friend and my sister with her husband. It is a great spot for camping because the top of the mountain is back country. However it was a bit frustrating. We have a strict fire ban in effect due to lack of rain and extreme forest fire risk. There was a large number of people up there camping and we were the only group without a fire. We did have small candle holders allowing you to roast a marshmallow if you wanted. But no open sparking flame. We even had to camp in a non designated spot because the area we were in had two other groups. The latter of which had used two tenting sites. One for their stuff and the other they cut a small tree down and were burning it. In a tenting site.. This was demoralizing and depressing. Especially as the sun went down and we could see the forest fire smoke lingering above the mountains and falling like a quiet fog over the city of Vancouver. The other campers were not only breaking rules but extremely disrespectful to the environment. There was trash everywhere. There are no toilets up there so it was difficult to walk anywhere without stepping in a dug pit toilet. There is not a ton of dirt up there so if you have to take a number two its best you pack it out. Obviously no one is doing that. Not even their toilet paper. We spent easily an hour on the way out packing up trash from around our camp site left by previous campers. Including unhurried burn pits. Toilet paper, Burned socks likely used as toilet paper. Ropes, Plastic utensils and more.. I don't honestly care if people break rules. All I ask is if you go camping in the back country please clean up after yourself.

Aside from the frustrations we had a great time. We made some tasty fajitas and drank beer. The view was wonderful and our neighboring campers were quiet at least.

August 26th I arrived home after my last scheduled trip. I was rested but also full of anxiety and stress. I needed to get to work on a project asap because the worst thing you can do in this industry is vanish from peoples minds. I mocked up and edited my next big video. While I had released some projects in August none of them really broke containment as something that would help the channel grow or even sustain its current size. I needed my next thing to actually do well. I needed it to do better then the last few projects as well. For a video to succeed it needs two things. It needs roughly 100k views and it needs to reach that number within a month of it being uploaded. Ideally after this point it continues to be sent around within YouTube and continue to grow. The reason for this is the amount of time I put in. They require a full week of editing time and that is no small feat for someone trying to stream at least three days a week. The last video I had that hit my goals was the Gremlin video from march. While I have released videos on water, vampires and my experiment with Jupiter Hell Classic since that gremlin video. None of them hit that point where they break containment and reach the wider YouTube audience. They were recived super well and people loved it. It was worth making those videos. But financially they did not cover what I had hoped for. Thankfully the release of the most recent project changed that. In fact I just had my best financial day on YouTube this year.

The graph below is watch time. This is one of the most important statistics that YouTube tracks. This is the highest it has been in a really long time and that is due to people bouncing from the new project onto the original and perhaps vise versa. Then going through the rest of the long videos I released this year. Almost all of them saw a huge uptick in time watched. That is the difference of a video released last year making $0.83 cents per day and making $8 per day. This adds up when you are talking about 13 similar videos.

YouTube has always felt like an uphill battle against forces that are out of your control. I think it will always feel that way. There is part of me that wants to play to the meta and follow what others have done to find mainstream success. The rest of me wants to experiment and be creative. That is what I will more than likely continue to do. Unless something I release does horrible. Then I have to consider if the time spent is worth it or not.

I currently have two projects in the works. The first to release is a read through of a Legendary Dwarf Fortress Story™. I'm sure you can guess what it is. This will be a bit more experimental for me with a very different creative process. I'm excited to see if people like it. If you are a paying subscriber on this blog I have a post up with an exclusive preview: https://www.blindirl.com/my-next-video-preview/

The second project in the works is much closer to my current stuff. I want to make a video about a specific vampire hunter who I played back in April. Should be a good time as well. That project is a bit further out and more in the early planning stages.

Schedule

I plan to do some extra streams this week. It is Subtember finale this weekend and that means bonus gift subs for every five gifted. This starts on Friday. My plan is to stream Tuesday - Friday and maybe Saturday if I have the energy. I will also be taking it a bit easy Tuesday - Thursday so I have the mental space. I would also like to finally get my knees back into cogmind. It is a super cool roguelike that has come a long way since I last played it almost three years ago.

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