I broke my camera earlier. It’s a pathetic story, if I’m honest. I had just turned it on, and my hands were slippery, so it fell – from about six to ten inches above the floor – and hit a wooden floor lens-first, jamming the lenses. And it’s broken now.
Of course, me being skint and jobless, I can’t afford to repair it or buy a new one, which is a blow.
For many people, a camera is something they use occasionally – special occasions, family holidays, that sort of thing. But for me, a camera is a tool of the trade. I use it every single day. I’m a vlogger, and though it’s just a compact digital camera, it happens to have HD video. I’ll put up with the crappy microphone until I can buy a camcorder.
At present, I’m vlogging every day, until I go away on the 17th July and won’t have internet. Or I was. But my camera is broken and unless I go for webcam videos (which no one likes watching), I’m a wee bit stuck for options. Basically, I’ve buggered up my camera and there’s nothing I can do.
Normally, I’d put a little alert on my YouTube channel saying, “Sorry, guys, I broke my camera. No videos for a while.” But I started an everyday vlog – VLOG ALL OF THE DAYS, I called it.
Who’s holding me accountable? Well, I guess my subscribers, though there aren’t many of them and they’re pretty lenient.
What am I getting out of this? Not much. I mean, I’ve gained a couple of subs, but that’s beside the point.
What am I giving up for this? My time – each video takes about an hour to make including editing, and then has to be uploaded, so that’s using up my internet allowance (I believe we went over for the month several days before it ended). And my blog topics – I usually am overflowing with ideas, but I’ve used them all in vlogs, hence the infrequent posts here.
So why am I so annoyed that I’m unlikely to be able to complete these challenge that I’ve set myself?
Well, I work by motivating myself. If I set myself a wordcount goal I’ll hit it or pull an all-nighter trying. If I say I’ll vlog every day, I will vlog every day, come rain or shine … or glom of nit. I wrote in my journal every day except one between 22nd January and 12th May because I said I would, and I didn’t want to break that promise to myself.
If I skip one day, it’s easy to skip another. And another.
If I fail one challenge, I’ll stop attributing importance to them in my head, and I’ll fail others.
That’s the way I see it, and though I know it doesn’t always work like that and some things are unavoidable, I guess this is a reason I haven’t lost a NaNoWriMo or Camp NaNoWriMo yet, despite breaking my computer last year, and spending a week on a boat without internet, during which I wrote about half a novel in a notebook (before spending a solid day typing the whole lot up).
I hate failing. I hate giving up on things, I hate admitting I can’t do it, and while I know this is a weakness, it’s also a strength, because it’s a reason that I’ve succeeded.
I’m addicted to vlogging, I guess. I get addicted very easily, I’ve an obsessive personality. And now it’s been temporarily taken from me, save in the form of webcam videos that are horrible to make and horrible to watch and not worth the time, I’m feeling, well, annoyed.
Plus, we’re going out to dinner for my sister’s birthday today, and I’ve got no camera.
The one occasion anyone would want one, and it’s sitting on the coffee table, dead as a dodo that’s been roasted and eaten.
Botheration.