Top 4 Reasons I Started My YouTube Channel
Updated: Apr 14
Hello, World! Welcome to my online journal.
I've missed blogging...well, not really. I haven't missed how I used to blog, thinking up topics and trying to craft the most useful and appealing content. I have missed having a place to share my thoughts, my ideas, to process all the things going on in and around me (and if you've followed here from my previous blog, you know that's a lot). In creating this new space, especially in line with the launch of my YouTube channel, Cyn Shoots the Stars, I decided to call this a journal rather than a blog. That feels different to me, more intimate, and more in line with what I need now that I'm fully embracing my goals as a photography and aspiring filmmaker. To that end (the one where I'm more vulnerable and straightforward about my plans and my mission and my inner workings), I wanted to share the top four reasons I wanted to create a YouTube channel.
I want to document this era in my life, these adventures I'm undertaking and how the road unfolds. I dream about looking back at this content on the night of the release of my first feature film or the opening of my online shop or the build of my next van. I want to have these memories preserved for after Edward's gone, and I want to leave something behind for my own daughter, in my voice, in my storytelling manner. I also want to begin to share my story in a way that feels worthy of it and honorable to it. I've kept so much inside of me for so long. It took decades for me to even begin to look at my history of complex trauma. I was 38 when I was officially diagnosed with PTSD and 40 when I learned about the added distinction of complex-PTSD. The past years have stripped me to my core, and I am only now realizing the significant role silence plays in my retraumatization. It's time for me to begin to explore my story in a way that feels safe and natural, and for me, that's cinematic storytelling.
I want to create long-form content. I want a space to play and experiment and spread my cinematic wings. I've loved movies since I was a tiny child. I wrote about the significance of monster movies on my previous site, maybe I'll report that and link it here. Movies, and later music, saved me. They gave me something to hold onto, to dream with, to escape into. I want to make film, and what a better place to start than with my own life. And I want to document the process of learning new skills, whether that's film or photography skills or traveling to new places or figuring out to live on the road in a minivan. I don't want to just show the polished stuff. I want to create a portfolio of my work, but I want it to encompass my journey, not just the end product.
I want to give people hope. I (now) know there's a lot of adults who grew up like me, or in some similar state, and I know there are countless children currently living through the hell I did. And I know YouTube has a massive reach. I think back to five-year old me, and I wonder what it might have meant to her to see someone like me, someone who not only made it out but who is actively pursuing her greatest goals. We don't talk about the trauma of childhood poverty, about the lasting damage of being hungry or not knowing when you had to move again. We don't talk about the way child rape and sexual abuse forever changes the lens through which you see life, including your own body and what's possible for you. I was 45-years old (so literally last year, 2022) before I started to see through the clouds of all of it and imagine a different way of life for me, one that wasn't rooted in lack and survival. People who lived and grew up, or are living and growing up, like me need to see people like me. I want to be one of the ones who made it, so I can be a beacon to those who are searching for a light in the dark.
Related to #3, I also need to be my own beacon. Living with PTSD is an ongoing journey, and sometimes when things go dark, they go really dark. I want to create a catalogue of beautiful art and moments, so I can see myself happy, sort of like leaving myself breadcrumbs to continue to find my own way out of the dark.
That's it, that's my four top reasons for starting a YouTube channel. Check out Cyn Shoots the Stars, and join me and my best friend, soulmate, and canine life partner, Edward, on our adventures. Check out my first video below.