There's nothing wrong with taking a break. Making and editing videos is a lot of work; it's important to give yourself space to enjoy other hobbies if you're feeling burned out. Also excellent Minecraft play! I really like how you mined the blocks.
Learning to parse out one's personal fine line between what you like the idea of doing and what you ACTUALLY like doing is hugely important. I've definitely appreciated the informative and guide-oriented work you've done, but you can't force yourself to do it. It might be another story if you were bringing in the RU-vid millions (that is, it's your dang job), but as your personal bit of something on the side, primarily for you? Nah, you do what you want. At the risk of projecting myself a bit too much, it's easy to get lost in the sauce of wanting to do something "more" or do it "right" or "better," and then just not doing anything at fuckin' all. Don't do nothing unless nothing is what you want to do. And nothing is fine, by the way. People undervalue just chillin'. But don't get caught in the headspace of "I want to do this, but I should be doing this." Reserve that mental game for the Real Life shit, not your recreation and entertainment.
Honestly, a lot of what was said in this video is relatable, how you made it initially as a scrapbook or memories thing. That's the same reason I made my channel many years ago where I had uploaded many things for memories and things I pulled off. It was just serving as something as a nice "portfolio" of things where I show off random clips of all kinds of stuff to friends or social media. Fame or gaining a big audience was never a gameplan I tried chasing, it was purely a fun thing. I uploaded a bunch of SHMUP clears and random stuff before I slowly got distracted by other stuff and started branching out, as though I was getting tired of playing 1 genre the whole time maybe. I've had cycles of being into SHMUP stuff then getting burned out or bored when I 1st tried to go back to them after a long break. Eventually I get to a point where its like "if I'm not having fun at all then what am I doing." I sort of experienced that moment near the beginning of 2024. I haven't spent a ton of time on SHMUPs as a whole, but I branched out and focused on some things WAY out of my usual ballpark like Granblue Rising and actual god damn pinball. I've learned a lot about both of those things and it has so far been a great distraction for me in my free time. I definitely feel like it's benefitted me a ton getting away from my former usual routine. In my personal experience, it would make me think about what I've uploaded so far and occasionally part of me wonders if I would disappoint some people that followed me for ages for what I originally uploaded aka SHMUPs. This isn't really healthy thinking to dwell on and should never hold you back from considering trying anything else out. I personally would say take some time to think about a new hobby if nothing feels captivating at the moment and go HAM on something new like I did with pinball this year. Expanding ones horizons can do wonders for us in the long run. Given the growth of your channel and back when I remember seeing it as a 3 digit subs channel, you pulled off an incredible feat by initially SHMUP community standards. Go out there and have a celebratory cigar or whatever you would do to toast to that.
Just wanna say, I remember your name from like 2013-14 when I first started getting into shmups and played the hell out of Raiden Fighters on 360. You were always at the top of the leaderboards and I used your replays at a reference and I did make 3rd or 2nd at one point in the first game on "Normal" difficulty. Good times.
Hell yeah man. Just do what you want to do. You're not in a box. Upload replays without commentary. Upload em with commentary. Make your badass documentaries or guides or whatever vids. We appreciate it! I stopped making vids cause it's just too much time. I have so little free time and energy at the end of the day that I just want to play a game sometimes and not think about making it a video, let alone put up with a video editor.
You owe the internet nothing. All I do is upvote mediocre clears and sometimes even I feel pressure to keep uploading. Just fall in love with a cozy game. Like minecraft :3 For me it's usually metroidvanias.
