This month marks my 18th anniversary on YouTube, the longest, strangest stretch of my life. It’s been rewarding, frustrating, lucrative, disappointing, fun, depressing, competitive, emotionally draining, personally invasive, and psychologically disturbing. Of course, this describes most people’s job experience to some extent.
It’s hard for me to comprehend that there are plenty of YouTubers today who were babies when I posted my first video in 2008. They have never known a world where YouTube didn’t exist.
One of the things YouTube has afforded me is the opportunity to meet and become friends with creative peers of all different ages and backgrounds. Making videos is a common language that connects generations in a way that provides perspective. I’m impressed by most of the young people I meet. They seem to have an emotional awareness and intelligence that I never had in my 20s. Or even now. Although I’m learning a lot from them.
They are also media savvy. People born within the past two decades have had their lives regularly documented in video and photos. Every kid knows how to pose and react when a phone is pointed at them or when they point one at themselves. It’s just ingrained.
I have like two photos of me as a kid lol.
I’m exaggerating, but it seems as though hauling out the camera was something reserved for special occasions or events. Posed photos standing in front of the Christmas tree or blowing out birthday candles. And you only had one shot to not look like a dork. I grew up in a highly dysfunctional family so my experience may not reflect other Gen Xers.
When I was 10, I was gifted a Kodak Instamatic camera, but my parents treated film as a precious luxury. It’s like giving a child a toy but never springing for batteries. Oh, and if you wanted to take indoor pictures, you needed flashbulbs and those things didn’t grow on trees, ya know. I remember going to Disneyland and being generously bestowed one roll of film. 24 pictures. It came with a stern admonishment to “not burn them all in one place”. Jesus, film was like gold.
The mundane archive of life
In 1990 I got a degree in commercial photography, no doubt partly to spite my parents’ compulsive film rationing. In San Francisco, I would regularly burn a dozen 36-exposure rolls of film on a single runway fashion show. Well over 400 photos. And while that was both liberating and profitable, it doesn’t come close to how many photos I regularly shoot today.
I was curious how many photos and videos are in my Google Photos and this is not a number that is easy to find. Maybe it’s not even available. The closest I found was in my account settings where it says:
665GB used of 2TB
30,000+ Photos
500+ Albums
Even Google kinda throws up its arms after 30k and concedes, “I dunno”. I suspect I have a lot more than 30,000+. Hardly a day goes by where I don’t take a photo or shoot a video of some sort. And my experience is probably typical of most of us.
Google likes to create these “Remember this special day from 2014!” kind of thing where it picks out photos that will surely make me teary eyed with nostalgia. I love it when one of those pics is a parking garage sign reminding myself of where I parked. Or a random cappuccino. There’s an honesty about being reminded of a mundane action from 12 years ago that would have been otherwise lost to history. This is the true value of documenting our lives: being reminded that life is mostly a series of unremarkable instances occasionally interrupted by the extraordinary. This is real, unlike social media which pretends to flip the nature of our lives by trying to make everything noteworthy. Also, I will never reject the endless parade of “Cuddles and Purrs” cat pic stories Google hits me up with.
On March 17, 2015, this wall damage was important enough for me to take several photos. I have no idea why. That total lack of context is irresistible.
Since 2008 I have posted over a thousand edited videos (all extraordinary) across six YouTube channels. Videos that have crossed the barrier from personal into “content” for human consumption. Let me influence you!!! Sometimes when I need some b-roll, I watch one of these old videos and experience a certain level of anxiety. I recognize myself in those videos, but also, who is that guy?
“What would I do differently?”
I’ve recently been rewatching my entire Weekend Woodworker video series. I literally haven’t watched these straight through since I created the course back in 2017. (Wait, what? Nine years ago? Ugh.) I’m in the process of reviewing them with fresh eyes to create even more…content. My thought is to make sort-of reaction videos to them (without finger pointing over my shoulder) discussing what I would do differently today.
It’s always a bit existential watching my past self building things. Again, it’s the little mundane things that I notice the most: how my shop layout has changed, how my tools have aged, random clutter in the background, a band-aid on my finger, and (weirdly) even specific boards. It’s tempting to be hyper-critical over my personal appearance, but I’ve largely learned to cope with that bit of unsettling hell.
The main thing that I’m surprised about and actually pretty proud of, is how difficult it is to find anything I would change about how I built those projects. I accomplished everything I set out to do: teach woodworking in a highly detailed, step-by-step manner, addressing any questions and concerns that were likely to arise.
But there are always options in woodworking. So instead of “what would I do differently”, I’m asking myself, “what are some alternative methods of approaching certain procedures?” Some of this is informed by The Weekend Woodworker community who always offer suggestions as well as voice concerns over things they struggle with.
For instance, one of the most common challenges with the Harmony Garden Bench is applying finish. So much so that finishing it has become a certain rite of passage among course members. I reviewed my presentation and tried to think of what would be a better way to apply stain and polyurethane in between all those seat slats. My conclusion? It’s one of those finishing jobs that just kinda sucks, but I would probably do it the same way.
Slop that stain on
The logical alternative is to pre-finish the boards, or even pre-finish some of the boards, so I came up with a detailed plan (download my new PDF!) for accomplishing this, complete with measurements pointing out the areas to avoid applying finish so that glue will bond to bare wood. This solution will appeal to a lot of people who are concerned with all parts of the project being finished with the same level of precision and protection. I get it.
But honestly, the thought of building projects this way doesn’t appeal to me. It tends to slow down the entire momentum and add an extra layer of complication to the overall process. I like the workflow of cut → assemble → finish. Interrupting that with a finishing step after cutting hurts my brain. Not to mention, you’ll still need to touch up areas after assembly anyway.
I always like to encourage people to go into an antique store and examine beautiful furniture that was built over 100 years ago. Look underneath those tables and dressers at their secondary surfaces. They aren’t pretty. The craftsmen who built them were professionals who often left gouges, saw marks, and blotchy varnish drips. They always had an eye on the end user’s overall experience and what was most important to them.
This also reflects my general disposition and key tenet to woodworking: don’t get hung up on things that nobody will see. It’s okay to splash some exterior finish between those slats (I offer several viable techniques) and be done with it. There may be some runs and drips, and you won’t be able to buff those areas to a silky feel, but they are still well-protected from the elements. Nobody is going to shine a flashlight in those crevices and be horrified by your sloppiness. Rather than trying to sand every part of our lives smooth, maybe we should focus on the areas that matter.
I understand that not everyone shares this philosophy. The thought of intentionally providing less effort to something is anathema to their entire outlook on life. “If something’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.” Fair. You won’t get an argument from me. Expressing the best versions of ourselves can mean different things.
Old photos and videos of ourselves can be revealing. Instead of lamenting what we would have done differently, it’s far more interesting to reflect on how our past selves led to our current selves.
Anyway, I’m enjoying this process of revisiting my course videos and offering even more options for beginners. If you’re already a member, look for these to show up soon! And if you aren’t already a member, there is no better time to join than right now. In just six weekends you will have a solid foundation of woodworking and be confident enough to tackle the world. Future you will be happy you tried something new.