[Music] oh [Music] crap yep I said it before and I'll say it again life moves pretty fast you don't stop and look around once in a while you could miss it in this internet dystopia that we call home I admit I fell into a deep spiral of trying to be consistent while dealing with work responsibilities home life and even my own needs uh was burning out then unexpectedly I got a cold that took me out for one week then for the first time ever in my life I got food poisoning oh all to say I
was able to to take a month off from everything at first I went through my usual rounds of being depressed and worthless altogether this put me out 2 weeks but being sick and out of it for 2 weeks it weirdly enough was the one thing to finally help me get a glimpse of what it's like to be to exist to be in the present to be in the now without all the nagging anxiety and chatter in my head that I usually deal with I was free from it it was not just to slow down I
was able to spend a lot more time with my wife three cats and just to spend time with myself you see the thing is I've been spending so much of my time living for others even my own expectations I'm just trying to do so many things that I'm not giving myself enough time to just exist oh I need to know what I'm saying going through life without anxiety is just just something that I desire so much and it's something that I need if I'm going to be able to pursue and be successful at my Artistic
Endeavors and honestly even as a [Music] person all I want my love I signed up for therapy [Music] and you know therapy really helped me to take a step back from just consuming so much social media and being able to actually comprehend what I'm actually looking at and what am I looking for now that's the question then I stumbled across this quote from Rick Ruben the audience comes last I I'm not making it for them I'm making it for me and it turns out that when you make something truly for yourself you're doing the best
thing you possibly can for the audience which I highly recommend his book The creative act a way of being and I feel like that's the problem on social media for Content creators all across the interwebs we're so focused on Trends algorithm trying to find our style and whatever the heck that means but I feel like we're not asking ourselves the right [Music] question key word want to get kind of real for a second the last few weeks to a month I've kind of been going through a creative block and I finally figured out what it
is that's kind of perpetuating this continuous recurring creative block and it's the fact that I keep comparing myself to others slowing down has really helped me to examine myself kind of like third person mode in a video game there's more I can see of myself than just being like blinders on like a horse but with that comparing myself to others I'm also finding out there's another piece to this puzzle that I haven't noticed and that's I continuously look externally I look outward when it comes to f finding the things that I want to create and
like finding what I want to be creating the art of slow living that I'm trying to utilize I found that for me the problem that I'm having trying to figure out my style trying to figure out what shua films means and what it looks like but I think the pursuit of finding a style is so surface level that at the end of the day it doesn't really matter and I know that's kind of like weird to say because you know all those you YouTube Giants that we look up to they have like something distinct about
them or a feature that they use but I think most of the time it wasn't something that they focused on finding it just happened to be something that they enjoyed or something that was a part of them but instead of spending all my free time trying to think about it and go through the millions of options just getting stuck in that revolving door of what it could be I had to step away from looking at other people there's no other you that was so cheesy and cliche but it it it's true stop trying to be
so impatient with finding my style and I even worry about it in the first place but really just slow down just slow down find myself in all of this Mumbo jumon cuz being a creative is not easy being a creative is not for the faint of heart we don't do this because we just stumbled upon it one day I don't get paid to create these YouTube videos I do them because I have to I have this desire to make these things that's how I know that I'm an artist I'm a creative I have to make
these things sometimes things in life are just too beautiful and precious and you kind of just want to be in the moment and keep it for yourself if I like a moment mean me personally I don't like to have the distraction of Kim just want to stay in it so my advice for people who have been doing YouTube or even if you're starting out in this upcoming year of 2024 I highly recommend maintaining a life don't worry about finding your style there's going to be a lot of distractions a lot of things that are going
to pull you different directions or if you're at the point where you need to find yourself create things that keep you true to yourself the audience that you're looking for they'll find you and they'll truly connect with you you and I thank you for coming to my TED Talk