My Youtube channel has literally hundreds of subscribers. This is amazing. In the interest of celebrating the wins, i'll take a moment to reflect in writing here. # The algorithm... works? The algorithm has been "giving me a chance". For the most part all my videos have a view cound that was some multiple of my subscriber base. My most poplar video to-date got over 2k views while I had less than 100 subscribers. To me this indicates that the algorithm is giving me a chance, as a new creator. to acquire viewership. So, how is my production pipeline going? # Scaling back content creation In my [[Goals 2025|Goals for 2025]] I made it clear I wanted to get 100 videos done this year. That's about 2 per week. I'm nowhere near on track for that. I'm currently not even getting one video done per week. This is intentional, as I dedicate more time to technical training in preparation for job interviews. The question of _why_ I'm doing a job search in the first place deserves its own post, but the short version involves these reasons: - I want more peer connection. Having respected coworkers is a great feeling. - I want professional and personal growth. Working in a role at a company helps provide this[^1] - Relatedly, I feel that my wandering over the past 6 months hasn't led to tremendous ~~personal~~ professional growth. - Oddly, I may be wrong about this. Perhaps I should say it hasn't led to tremendous professional growth, because my personal growth has been substantial... ok, changing it. As such I've been dedicating significant time to the dreaded job search preparation. This involves grinding programming interview questions, which takes time. Assuming I do end up accepting a job offer, the plan is to continue to make videos. Part of the motivation for joining a company is to surround myself with new ideas, some of which could become videos. To make it explicit, despite not working on any videos at the moment I have not given up on Youtube. This is a deliberate choice to refocus my efforts for a couple months. Deliberate is the operative word there. Deciding to deprioritize content creation for a time is very different than failing to create due to lack of motivation. # Keep the backlog growing All that being said about deprioritization, the growth of my subscriber base has shown me the importance of: - Putting out regular content - Having a backlog of content It is _only_ due to the content I've created over the past few months that new people are exposed to my channel on an ongoing basis. Youtube really builds on itself: The more content you have out there the more opportunity for people to discover it. [^1]: It will of course depend on company, team, role, etc. Not a magical solution, but some of the most intense professional growth I've had was during my last full-time, in-person role in SF.