Late night thoughts

Today I woke up at 4 am, out of nowhere. I could still feel sleep lingering somewhere in my head, but in that moment I knew that I wouldn't get more of it straight away. It's not a good sign to just wake up that early, I need a certain amount of sleep to maintain happy thoughts and to keep myself positive. When I wake up around this time, I start to think about my life and that at then it usually seems as if my optimism hasn't woken up yet. I'm just not able to see any good in a given situation then, my worries become huge and I'm overwhelmed. On the other hand I didn't want to get up, because that would've meant a serious lack of sleep and that's something I try to avoid as much as possible. To try to calm myself down I started to write the thoughts that I had into this post, because I didn't see any reason not to write about my fears and worries, as they are a part of me. Just be warned, if you are an easy target for negativism, then keep out today. So, here is what was going on:

The first thing I worried about was finding a flat. In my life there is always one main issue and right now, it's the shared-flat problem. I've now visited about seven flats, usually that's when people have found one, but of course not me. That lead me to think of what you all need to find in life. The perfect flat, a good job, friends, a significant other... There are loads and loads of decisions to make and that can be overwhelming and scary. Other decisions were already made by me, what if they were wrong? How do other people manage to survive the pressure of just being alive? Do they even feel the weight, do they think about the little decisions they take on a daily basis that are defining their lifestyle? I then went deeper into some topics.

Right now I'm working as a cleaning woman at a hospital, when I'm done I'll have worked there for five months. Other women are working there for ten, or even twenty years. I could never do this job for that amount of time; I cannot even imagine doing the same thing for three years. Doesn't life get boring and everything becomes bland? How does one be happy with only five weeks of holidays per year? Maybe it's just me, or maybe I'm just too young or to inexperienced, but I just don't understand. What do you do when you can't find a job? I tried for six month, but my parents kept my back. When you are older and you can't find anything, what do you do then? 

As I seem to be surrounded by couples lately I also am thinking a lot about guys these days, as you might've noticed in my past couple of posts. I can't help it, but most of the time I just can't see myself with someone else. How do you manage that the other person doesn't annoy you, or vise versa? I'm not so difficult to be friends with, but I think I'd be an annoying girlfriend, don't ask me why. Also I started to wonder how I would tell my parents if I ever had a boyfriend, how I would tell my friends. At this point just the situation seems incredibly ridiculous. 
What about later, at some point I might get married, have kids. Did you see the world we have around us? You know what could happen to those poor little creatures. Or what if my husband changed as much as my Dad did? What if I changed completely? I said being optimistic requires energy that I don't have in the morning, so I'm not always putting myself down as much.

The last thing I worried about was the whole growing up, going to University, having to find new friends problem. To this day I never really had troubles finding friends, I need some time to adjust but then it's not that hard. Still I worry a lot about that. What would the whole Uni experience be without the people around you? In my head not very funny. What will happen after Uni? I did not even start and I'm already afraid of it ending that is just crazy. 

At some point around 5 am I fell asleep again, but I really hate having all my fears building up that much in front of my eyes. The good thing is, life doesn't stop because of my fears, it goes on. As I had to get up at around eight, the shadows of the past night had vanished back to where they belong, the far ends of my brains, and I could go on as usual, at least more or less. During the day I finally remembered a song that goes hand in hand with my experience. I'm posting a cover version made by kickthepj below (I prefer it to the original one).

Cheerio.

the "joys" of being a youtuber

So yes, this is about me making a YouTube video. If you are not interested in these things at all, you might skip this post. Also it might become quite long as I spent the last two weeks working at this project. You'll find the video at the end of this post if you are interested, feel free to watch it.

First I want to explain why I did it. Usually to start something I need to be challenged, as having a goal is essentially to me. When kickthepj uploaded his draw my life an announced that he'd be giving away his notebook he drew in I knew that I should at least give it a try. This decision was followed by many second thoughts about my accent, and especially the fact that I don't enjoy drawing a lot. In the end I thought I might as well give it a go, as I still wanted to do it somehow.

I then started planning. First I watched various videos of other youtuber, until I felt comfortable enough by the fact that most of them weren't very well drawn either. I figured that the best way to get a video in the end was to record my voice first, edit that and then draw whatever I thought suited the text. In the end I'd cut the filmed drawings that they matched the voiceover.

I can't tell you how difficult it was to reduce my life to a vlog length video. Six minutes may appear long for a YouTube video, but it is really short for nineteen years worth of content. I wrote various attempts, some were really funny, others were just terrible, but in the end they all didn't work out. I somehow couldn't fit it all in chronologically and still make sense, so I decided to divide my life into segments. I wasn't pefectly happy with the final result, but it was ok.

The next thing I had to do was recording it. I wanted to use a little microphone I own, but when I tried it out it didn't work, so I had to record it with the intern microphone of my laptop. I'm therefore sorry for the quality. When I listened to my own voice my disappointment was big . I could hear all the background noises and my accent just sounded terrible, and eventually I found mistakes in the voiceover I worked on for about six hours. I was about to delete it all, but I already told my friend about it and she wanted to help me do the drawings the next day, so I just had to work on. Another thing I had to do was finding music I was allowed to use for the background, as I didn't want my voice to stand alone. Check the video description if you are interested in the side I used, it's really good and of course, it's free. Another thing I can recomend is the audacity for sound editing. I've used it before when I tried to sing a cover of a song and it's quite easy to understand. Have a picture :D

 Looking for a free audio program? Audacity I'd say

Filming the next day was chaotic. At first the lightning was terrible (it's still not great, but we improved, trust me). We had to move my friends’ family dining table in order to fix that problem. Then we had to set up the whiteboard somehow, and place the camera somewhere so that I could still draw on the board. We decided that it was best to put the tripod in front of me, between my legs in order to get the best possible shot.  I used her dad's camera which is really good one, but at some point it run out of battery and we had to recharge it. Of course that delayed our work even more. At the end it took us about 7,5 hours to film those six minutes. Oh and yes, if you wonder why the camera is so shaky, even though we used a tripod? I kept hitting this thing with my arms whenever I grabbed a new marker, because that's how I roll.

look, it's a work space

In the evening of the same day I got home and thought to myself that  could just start editing. I had checked the internet for a free program and basically all I found was that windows movie maker was the best solution. Of course when I tried to open the videos with it, it didn't work due to it not recognizing the .mov files. Once again I was really frustrated. I downloaded another free program, which I didn't understand at all. Then I tried another one, but my laptop, which isn't the youngest anymore, could not use it. In the end I spent solid three hours from midnight to 3 am, downloading a free thirty days trial of software called Pinnacle Studio 16. I decided to use the time it took my computer to download the program to make a little Logo, which you might glance at the end of the video. It's really simple but I felt like I wanted to have one that really rempresents me, so it's all fine.

I started editing the next day. At first I felt like a monkey in front of a keyboard, I had no idea how to speed up the single parts, how to shorten the clips and how to edit at all. With the help of the manual and online tutorials I found out what I was supposed to do and eventually I started to really enjoy it. Of course my laptop rebelled against it and decided to become a heater, it even kept freezing every half an hour, but luckily it never crushed.

How video editing looks like (for me)

I was fascinated how each single part got together, I even felt a little proud on myself. It didn't fit perfect everywhere, but now I can watch a video I made more or less all by myself. Of course the quality is still not the best, but at least I tried, and trust me, I tried hard. I've spent about 25 h of work into this little thing, and looking back I'm glad I did it, challenge accepted and fulfilled.
Why do I even care to share this on my blog? I've once checked the entries to this little competition and I've seen several people having "this is my first video" in their title. At first I wanted to do that too, to get attenuating circumstances, but eventually I decided against that. Yes, this was my first ever attempt to make a video, I've never really been involved with such things, but I don't want anybody's pity. Nobody forced me to try it, nobody told me to upload anything, it was my decision and as I said, I'm still proud of it, so I shouldn't try to be overly humble about it. I was proud enough to upload it on YouTube and to enter in a competition, so I should stand behind my work.

So this was it, my experience in doing a little filmmaking. I'm sorry if I was ever annoyed towards any youtubers for not finishing a video in time. I've learned my lesson. If you are interested in more details, or if you have a question, my comment section is open. Who knows, this might not have been my last video after all. Thanks for reading

Cheerio.