I touch on this topic differently and in much less length in one particular part in my upcoming avant-garde, genre-blending, unprecedented (meaning I thought I’d never write a book, ever) Second-Person, Metafictional, New Weird, Comedy, Horror novel (which I’m on the 3rd/4th draft now and getting closer every day to really being done).
I didn’t write much for the first 30 years of my life because I was basically lost. I always wanted to do something fulfilling creatively, but for various reasons, I just never knew how or where to direct that, or my energy. There were 2 things I remember writing in my youth which I enjoyed, but that was pretty much it (I mention what they were in my upcoming book).
Fast forward to my 30s and the early 2000s (again, this is touched on in my book, but also in some videos I think, and posts here on my blog), and I found myself writing short-form poems, song lyrics, and the beginnings of a short story or two. This took place over the course of, oh I dunno now, maybe… seven, ten years. But because self-publishing didn’t really exist back then, and I was working full time, and my writings weren’t all one particular genre, and who’s gonna read them, and blah blah blah, I gave up on the notion of ever becoming a writer, and pretty much stopped.
Then I stumbled onto YouTube at forty years old, and that became my sole creative outlet starting in September 2011. I opened my channel on a whim, just as a small little side project. Not to make money or profit. Of course, I had a full time job at the time, too, but still. Actually, as my channel grew, I was finally given the opportunity to turn ads on sometime around May of 2012 or so, and I was conflicted with doing so! I hated advertising back then, and I still do! But what choice did/do I have if I want to make an income doing what I finally enjoy? So I had to make a moral compromise and do something that partly goes against my own principles (which everyone ends up doing to some degree in this society, such as someone who loves animals working in a slaughterhouse because it’s the only job in town, and that’s just one of thousands of examples).
Back then, I thought YouTube was trash (and metaphorically or allegorically speaking, it’s becoming a digital landfill just like other mediums when you think about the ridiculous amount of content these days). That it was just a dumping ground for home videos or whatever. I didn’t realize people ran channels. So I decided to open my own on a whim. The channel was just a creative outlet for whenever I was in the mood to make a video, which is the same mentality I have to this day (I will do what I want, when I want, when I’m in the mood to do it). The 5 or so videos now since deleted were time lapse photography of clouds. I don’t even think there was any music. Just 5-10 minutes of cool time lapse of cloud formations, which I still love (but don’t make or watch anymore). A few months later I discovered ASMR (which I experienced all my life but rarely do these days) and saw people making videos to trigger it. I thought there was a lot of potential to express myself creatively, and so I did!
To say the flood gates opened would be a severe understatement. I started to create my own characters (most using masks created by mask makers though Margaret’s masks and costume were all mine), and soon built my own fictional universe which was loosely called the ERU, the Ephemeral Rift Universe, until it officially became Thalmultaria (based on a random word I came up with during the video titled “Guessing Random Things About You”).
I eventually took a huge risk and left my full time career in 2016, since at this point I was making more money from ASMR Videos (I’m talking twice or three times my salary I forget), and it was a steady source of income since about, I dunno now… 2014? 15? Funny thing, if I was your typical greedy capitalist, I would have kept the job and done the ASMR too, and had double the income! But unlike many people, I actually have ethics and morals despite being a godless ape, am part anarchist and anti-capitalist, am not greedy, and money, fame, all that bullshit doesn’t concern me, and so I ditched the job and directed my full time blue and white collar job mentality to my channel.
From around 2015 or 2016 I ended up working (recording to editing) primarily in our basement, and absolutely obsessed with making the best, pristine stuff I could in lieu of having an actual production studio. I wanted my videos to sound just like any clean album, movie, or audiobook does. I talked about this in some videos, but I would spend an unhealthy amount of time making sure every 1/4 second of audio sounded perfect. So for example, an hour long audio would take 10-12 hours or 2 days to produce if I was using 2 microphones. It takes about 5-10 seconds to review and edit 1 second of audio. I would hear a second of audio who’s peak was too loud, or there was a stomach gurgle, and I’d go back, listen again, have to cut it, replace it, or reduce the volume, and continue on. Not every single second, mind you. And because I lost my hearing in my left ear due to an Acoustic Neuroma, I had to do this process twice if I was using two microphones. But I didn’t mind at all! I like working when I’m doing something I enjoy.
And then after seven years or so of primarily working in the dull basement, and obsessing over the audio, and wanting to do more than creatively-limiting 1 character videos, and not wanting to acquire more crap just to make one video which goes against my anti-consumerist principles, tired of having to ask anyone who was home to be quiet when I had to record (like our son during summer break or my wife on her day off), tired of working in a freezer during winter (because I edited in the basement where it was quiet and I had to turn the furnace off which was super loud and which also affected the upstairs living space), and wanting to go outside more (I think I started to do more non-ASMR, non-character stuff), picking up the short-lived, rekindled passion of fishing for 5 months in 2025, then stumbling into writing, the pivot away from creating videos just gradually happened naturally and organically. There was no plan. There never was. Not even to become a writer. No plan to stop making character videos. Just a snowballing, culmination of everything I said above.
I didn’t burn out. Well, maybe with the painstaking audio editing portion, which I will never do again. But I didn’t burn out in the sense of ideas (ho ho, wait until you see this first book of mine, you wanna talk idea and concept dense (not trying to brag, just saying)) or wanting to perform as my characters, or making videos. Not at all. I still want to make more character videos! I just can’t right now because I’m writing! And it’s been 13 months now and I gotta get this fucking book done, LOL!
I didn’t have any sort of mental break or mental health episode either. I am fortunate and lucky to never have had any mental health issues whatsoever, never needed meds, none of it. All I’ve ever had was periods of being down or depressed because of unfulfilling work and jobs coupled with moderate alcohol use (which I stopped drinking altogether as of January 2025, though I was never an alcoholic like I said).
It was almost as if this universe or something deep inside of me was trying to tell me something. Like a sleeper agent. I bet if Carl Jung were alive he’d say something about my unconscious mind and yadda yadda. And I’d agree, after of course wondering how he came back to life (Professor Clemmons maybe? Corvus? Margaret?).
Creatively speaking, I ended up in a physical box, while my mind continued to evolve, and once again I found myself wanting to do more than I could on YouTube. I wanted to do skits with my characters, movies, I envisioned a series based on my universe, an anime even. But I’m 1 person. I probably should have been a director. Well, a writer actually, but back then I didn’t think about writing at the time or that I could write. Besides, I’m against so much bullshit in society that I probably would hate doing a film and having to work with people I don’t know and probably wouldn’t want to (i.e. pretentious, overpaid actors with their mansions). Once again I was finding myself back in that “wanting to do more” mentality, and making videos was no longer as fulfilling and satisfying creatively as they once were. I mean, if they were, I wouldn’t be writing. Simple as that.
Then everything changed in October 2025.
Completely out of the blue and on a whim I decided to listen to Tupac Shakur for the very first time in my life and I did one of those reaction type of videos, which I’ve never watched and rarely make myself. At some point after, I thought back to my old writings and basically said to myself, and in a video I believe, that I’m going to copy & paste all of them into a document, and self-publish them! Just because you can self-publish now (or were able to for I dunno how long, ten years or so maybe?) and for the simple fact: I can. I wasn’t planning on being a writer. I just thought I’d do it real quick, and go back to making videos. I actually read some of these writings aloud in a video, but since privated it so to keep them for the book. I did think once or twice of doing a video about my old writings prior to the Tupac video, but never putting them into a book to self-publish. I never had that thought until October 2025.
Then the 2nd most amazing and liberating and completely life-changing thing happened creatively: I started to write!
I talk more about this aspect in my book. The next thing I know I’m heading into December 2025 while I’m still trying to run my channel and I’ve got an actual story going! Fast forward to today, November 2026, and I’ve got a legitimate novel (that’s well over 100,000 words, and isn’t bloated with unnecessary or colorful prose, or just to hit a certain word count or fill up a page).
Then the 3rd splentastic thing happened: I realized how much absolute and infinite creative freedom I have with writing fiction!
I get to play god.
I get to write and say things you just can’t do with the video medium, and I’m not talking about hate speech or slurs. I can write about circumstances, places, and have characters do and say things you just could never imagine or do in a video or on film. Well, you could have them say in a video the things I’ve written, but YouTube is not the medium for it.
It took 54 years (my age when I started writing in October 2025) for the scattered pieces of my creative life to finally come together. I know this sounds dramatic and emotional, but it’s really not. I mean, we are emotional creatures, so there’s some emotion behind all of this, we’re not mechanical robots after all (just organic ones), but they aren’t the driving factor.
And to go back to the bit about me being part anti-capitalist, biting the mouth that feeds (my disdain for advertising, capitalism), taking a risk and giving up my job: by not churning out videos and focusing on writing, I’m even more happier because I’m actually saying no to money, which coincides with my anti-capitalist principles.
I’m not done with my channel. I never said I quit ASMR or anything. Aside from everything I said above (the basement, the video medium being limiting), until this book is done, it’s all brain cells on deck and focused on it, especially since it’s been thirteen months now! Once it’s published, I’ll have some time to do whatever videos, audiobook, whatever, before I dive back into the 2nd book which will be about the Thalmultaria universe and all my characters. Not to mention the Human Molt Universe piece of speculative fiction and worldbuilding I recently thought up, and the Memoir I want to write in 2028 or so. And whatever else that I plan to do beyond this book and the years to come if I’m lucky to still be alive! (Again, I say this a lot lately because it really is luck to be alive and avoid accidents, disease, etc.).
I’ve said before how YouTube and the past 55 years of my life were a waste of time, and on one hand they were, in terms of how I should have always been a writer since I was young. However, on the other hand, I lived to be 55, lucky to have a wife and be a father (of a son), and am extremely lucky to still be alive knowing how people drop dead every single day due to all manners of illnesses and unexpected accidents. And in addition to being so lucky and fortunate, I created all those characters, I finally realized I can write, I have the confidence and ability to do so (with the help of AI teaching me things like what an Em Dash is and scolding me for dangling modifiers), so at the same time it wasn’t a waste of time. It’s both.
It was all meant to happen.
Everything that ever happened in my 55 years of life since I was a kid to now happened, and that’s how it was meant to play out. I don’t regret a single fucking thing. There’s no point, because regrets can’t change anything, so why regret or feel guilty? Makes no sense. And no, I’m not a socio- or psychopath, LOL. I shoplifted as a kid stealing a couple books or snacks, met my wife, had a son, quit jobs, got fired, drank alcohol, got high, smoked cigarettes, made money, had fun, cried, laughed, partied, went to concerts, broke an arm, got bullied, lost my hearing in one ear, passed a kidney stone, and so much more, and I don’t regret any of it. It’s what happened. It’s choices I made. It’s other people’s choices that impacted me. And here I am. Can’t go back. I wouldn’t want to anyway because I fucking hated school. I sure hope reincarnation isn’t a thing because I would never want to go through school again. Not that I was picked on every day, not because it was Catholic school, just the notion of suffering through 5 or 6 hours of being taught useless shit outside of basic math and language. History, science, algebra, dead apes (presidents), the square root of who gives a fuck. Where’s the life skills? Where’s helping me as a young creative to find something I am good at? Where’s teaching me how to cook, or why it’s important to floss and brush regularly because our saliva remineralizes our teeth and can help prevent early tooth decay (something I just learned at 55). Society really wastes a lot of our time, but I digress. And no hate to the teachers! Hell no! Without those motherfuckers who are the real ones that deserve to live like royalty in mansions we wouldn’t know how to math, read, write, or talk or function (Okay I exaggerate a little but you get this gist).
So there you have it.
And if you are struggling in the same way I did in regards to wanting to do something more than whatever it is you are currently doing, I wish you nothing but the best of luck in all your endeavors. I know, how can someone like me who has contempt for our species (it’s actually 60/40-70/30 hate/love, see my About page for more on that) wish someone well and luck? Well that’s because we’re here! We have to live. So might as well do something happy and fulfilling with our lives (while continuing to do things that hold our species in contempt, LOL). I don’t hate people or individuals like that, especially the downtrodden, children, the disabled. It’s an overall dislike for our species, and mainly for institutions like government, religions and their dogma, and capitalism. But that’s a whole separate discussion.
Best,
Paul
P.S. I hope this is written well. Forgive any grammar or misspellings in this or any of my posts as I ain’t got the time and this ain’t a newspaper or academic website. I could give a fuck all about grammar & spelling for the most part outside of my book.