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swolesome · 1 month

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Hi Swolesome,

I enjoy your content on YouTube, and I was wondering if I could ask for some advise.

I'm a writer among other things (another one of those things is also being a fellow bisexual disaster), and I do a lot of writing on this and other sites. But lately I've been thinking about trying my hand at starting my own channel on YouTube.

I don't exactly have high expectations for my future channel in terms of how many people will watch, nor am I anywhere near expecting to acquire much in terms of monetary gain. I don't exactly expect to gain the following the likes that Contrapoints or Philosophy Tube have gained over the years

But I do have ideas to share for video essays topics (original ideas and work with sources cited of course, I've been keeping up with that particular discourse). I guess what I'm trying to say is I could use a little advice as someone who is just starting out. What to do, what to say, HOW to say things? I'm not the best actor, but I think I'm fairly descent in terms of presenting things (I've also been pretty good at writing both fiction AND essays both online and in school).

Also maybe some tips on actually creating videos.

Thank you :)

Hey! So glad you reached out, and thank you so much--I'm really happy to hear you enjoy the content I make. :) Also stoked to hear you're looking to start a channel of your own! It sounds like you're coming at it from a very realistic place, because it's kinda thankless work, especially in the early days. Some people know how to game the algorithm, but I am sadly not one of them, so I don't want to lead you astray on that front (FD Signifier would be a good source there, he has some more recent videos talking about content creation with some tips and tricks included.) The advice I can confidently offer is to be yourself. And I know that sounds like cliché right out of an after school special, but I mean it. What do you love? What perspective do you bring to a subject? If you're more of a presenter, you might find yourself connecting with educational content. If you're a writer, you might be drawn to storytelling or poetry. One of the nice things about videos as a medium, if the focus is specifically art and communication, is that they're so flexible. I fell into my style of videos because I genuinely love connecting with people and encouraging honest examination of thoughts, emotions, and how they interact; this is why I never say anything unless I mean it. Even if I later come to change my mind on a subject (which definitely happens), I think it's important to give people the same honesty I'm trying to encourage in them. Every YouTuber has an onscreen persona, of course. We all contain multitudes and it's important to have your self-self and your visible-self, if that makes sense, both for your style to come forward and for your mental health. But the content that will be the most enjoyable and rewarding will be whatever you can bring sincerity to. While there is certainly something to be said for acting as a talent in itself, I personally love creating and viewing YouTube content that gives a glimpse into the person making it. It doesn't have to be baring your soul (not unless that's what you want), but rather something about yourself that you're secure in sharing: an artistic talent, education you've received, your sense of humour--that part is up to you.

And don't get discouraged if there's something you want to talk about that other people have already addressed. This is something I still struggle with, worrying that my voice is just adding clutter, but we need more people sharing their passions and insights. Every perspective brings something new and increases the likelihood of someone else connecting with the subject. Whether you're everyone's cup of tea or someone's shot of whiskey, you're reaching others. Finding your voice is the key to getting started, recognizing its value is the drive to keep going. Oh, and on the tech side, if you had to select only one thing starting out, make sure it's a good mic. For a hearing audience, good audio is often the deciding factor as to whether or not someone will watch. You got this! 💙

#video creation #video creator #youtube #getting started #find your voice

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joiultra · 5 months

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Political capital reflects access to power, organizations, connection to resources and power brokers. Political capital also refers to the ability of people to find their own voice and to engage in actions that contribute to the well being of their community.

Mary Emery & Cornelia Flora, Spiraling-up: Mapping community transformation with community capitals framework. In the journal Community development, 37(1), Spr 2006

#political capital #find your voice #community transformation #free palestine #free turtle island #free congo #free sudan #free tigray #free hawaii #free us all

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sandramiksaauthor · 11 months

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Journaling for Beginners: find your voice, change your life, and manifes...

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daughterofanarcissistwoman · 2 years

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I’m not afraid of them anymore.

I’ve become who I needed when I was a child.

#tell your story #find your voice #inner child healing #reparenting #inner teen healing #healing shame #healing fear programming

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thoughtsofanunorganizedmind · 1 year

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張哲瀚 Zhehan Zhang《憂傷的晴朗》Official Lyric Video

Zhang Zhehan!!!!! ♡♡♡♡

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#憂傷的晴朗 #Melancholy Sunshine #張哲瀚 #zhang zhehan #find your voice #Youtube

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tattoorue · 2 years

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#domestic violence warrior #domestic violence survivor #I’m free #I found my wings #goodbye earl #I love my new life #never again #stop domestic violence #find your voice #use your voice #I lived to tell #my story #if I can do it so can you #end domestic violence #speak up

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the-healing-mindset · 2 years

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Source: https://www.facebook.com/SOULSHAPING/posts/655040582653266

#Jeff Brown #quotes #healing #recovery #growth #self-empowerment #self-exploration #self-expression #self-awareness #empowerment #find your voice #life #living

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danu2203 · 1 year

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#READ #WRITE #FIND YOUR VOICE

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thestoryinsideyou · 2 years

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#find your voice #tellyourstory #creative writing #my writing

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danalockhart411 · 4 days

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Was It Abuse? *TRIGGER WARNING*

*TRIGGER WARNING: This blog post contains themes of abuse, unaliving, and emotional trauma. Reader discretion is advised*

There are things in my life I don’t want to talk about. It’s not necessarily because of shame, or guilt, or fear of judgment. Some things just feel like they should remain private. Some things are just better left in the past. However, there’s a lot of things that shouldn’t be cooped up inside, especially when it might help someone else survive their own struggles. I offer this story, in hindsight, in hopes that someone in a similar situation can recognize they are being mistreated and work towards freeing themselves of that burden.

I was in a relationship for three years with a man I believed I loved. I still, to this day, do believe that I loved him, as underneath all of the traumas that I’m about to talk about I still felt a calmness and security when I was with him. However, I struggle to find any reason why I loved him now. I struggle to justify it. I just loved him, without reason or thought. If someone asked me if I believed it to be real love, or if it was just what I thought love was, I wouldn’t be able to give you an answer. It was my first real, long term, physical relationship with someone. I was definitely naive, and perhaps just happy to have a someone. In hindsight, I wonder if perhaps I was just feeding on the high of finally achieving the “dream” that movies and TV shows told me should be my dream: first kiss, dates, intimacy - and I was on track for achieving it all; these things I was denied in the course of growing up as a result of being a victim of bullying and solitude when I was in school.

FIRST TIME I cried the first time I told you I loved you And I didn’t know why. But you would be my biggest regret— I just didn't know it yet.

And while I could voice a myriad of evils that this man committed against me, he never hit me and, as I recall, never even raised his voice at me. As time marches on, however, I find myself hitting walls when it comes to trusting and developing relationships with others because of what he did do to me. He manipulated me, made me feel small, and tried to isolate me. He belittled my dreams, tried to convince me I was going crazy, and at the end of it all smeared my name through the mud to justify why he cheated on me.

I recall on two occasions - once when I was asking him for the hundredth time to help out around the house like he had promised, and another time when I was hosting his birthday party and it didn’t exactly go the way we had planned due to venue issues outside of our control - the way he looked at me, with narrowed eyes, made feel like I was in danger. It made me flinch, it made me feel small. It shut me up, and he got what he wanted. Me, dropping the subject, and cleaning up the mess by myself.

BEFORE THE STORM I feel a change in the weather Signaling a coming storm In the way the wind rushes From your strained lips And the lightning flashes In your narrowed eyes. The world holds its breath, Preparing for the thunder.

He tried to drive a stake between me and my father, as he saw how good of a relationship we had and wanted to be more important than him. My relationship with my father deteriorated during that time, as I tried to justify my relationship with this man, who my father could clearly see was manipulating me and it pained him to see it. I often had to play referee between them, trying to keep the peace, but always felt like I was the only one losing. My relationship with my father recovered after the breakup, but it did take a couple years to build it back because we were both so emotionally raw from it all.

When I joined a writers group, this man tried to interfere in that as well. He discouraged me from going, and from hanging out with the friends I had made outside of the group. He was extremely jealous of a married couple I became friends with, accusing me of being interested in the husband. It felt like he was trying to keep me all to himself.

He put so much on my shoulders because he refused to help me out. We moved in together (probably way too soon) so that we could share responsibilities, and all the things he promised he would do - dishes, mowing, cleaning - he didn’t do any of it. He helped pay one bill, a meager $150 towards rent which equated to about a third of cost of living there each month (yes, he made about as much as I did), and he glared at me with such hatred every single month as he handed me the cash for it. We fought a lot about responsibilities and him not pulling his weight, which only seemed to make him mad and me depressed, with nothing ever getting solved about it.

When I was pushing hard to get my book published through an Amazon-sponsored publishing program, he became upset that I was spending less time with him because of all the editing and preparation I was doing to try and win. In our three year relationship, he couldn’t give me one month to prioritize something a little more than him. This program would have landed $5k in my pocket if I had won, but that didn’t matter to him. He was more important than my future as a writer as far as he was concerned.

*extreme trigger warning starts*

More than once he expressed a desire to kill himself. He told me once he had stood in the kitchen in the middle of the night, staring at the display of knives in our home, thinking about harming himself. He was chronically depressed, but refused to get help, even when he had great insurance to pay for counseling. So, I was his only anchor. The one to talk him down, show him he was loved, that life was worth living. Somewhere in the last year of our relationship, I began to feel trapped by it. I was afraid that if I broke up with him, he would kill himself, and it would be on my head. I was so afraid of his behavior that I was concerned that if we were to get married and have kids that he would kill himself someday, leaving me with the burden of it all, to try and tell our kids why they didn’t have a dad anymore and try and take care of them alone. Not to mention the toll on my emotions as he was suffering so much despite how much I tried to make him happy. It was like I was never enough.

*trigger warning ends*

For a quick lightning round, here are some more things that happened:

He told me multiple times that if I ever got pregnant he would leave me. I thought it was a sick joke. I mean, it had to be a joke, right?

When he got a tooth pulled, I took care of him while he was passed out for 6 hours after the surgery, making sure he wasn’t choking on the cotton balls, and replacing them regularly while he slept. When I had my wisdom teeth pulled, after we got home from the doctor he immediately went to bed and I took care of myself the rest of the day.

He insisted that his parents were crazy and always hated his girlfriends and warned me to be careful around them, but I met them several times and at several family functions and they were always kind and generous to me.

He lied to me about a financial form and had me sign it to show his rent expenses under the guise of it was for logging financial information for work purposes. It was for him to apply for a loan for his own house.

I helped get him a high-paying job at the local police station as administration clerk. He told me that during the interview process they had him do a lie detector test. The detective could not tell the difference between his truths and his lies.

After three years, he decided to cheat on me with a woman he worked with. A woman who was engaged. They had an affair on several occasions over the course of 4 months, before and after her wedding, until I eventually found out. We went on a few double-dates together. I thought I was becoming friends with this woman, as we three hung out together several times, and once they started having the affair she stopped wanting to see me. He blamed me for it, claiming that I had done something to upset her. This “something” was my ignorant question of what I should wear to her wedding. I was spiraling from that, as I truly didn’t understand what I could have possibly done wrong asking that question. I attended that wedding without him, as he had to cover for her at work. I was alone and rather miserable the whole time because I didn’t know anyone. I gave her a very personal gift, and told her that I loved her friendship. Imagine how I felt about the wedding when I realized what had been going on.

Perhaps the worst part of all of it was how I felt immediately after finding out he had been cheating. It was relief. Yes, the betrayal hurt like hell. I cried nonstop for a week, and cried every day for a couple months more. But more than that, he had done something so irrevocably wrong that the relationship was over because of him. I didn’t have to worry about what he would do anymore, because it would all be on him. I never had to worry about him again. His betrayal, in a sick, twisted way, was my ticket to freedom. It was over, and I was free.

CHARLATAN When you broke my heart All I felt was relief; For despite all the pain, All the lies, All the ways you hurt me, At least I knew it was over And I could move forward.

We had one conversation about why he did it before he packed his things and left. He blamed it on depression and not believing he was worthy of love. He told me his despicable plan to win me back over. He said he had been planning on breaking up with me to take a couple years to try and get his life together so that he could return to me a better person. This plan did not include ever telling me that he had cheated.

In a message I saw that revealed he was cheating, he called me a “bad girlfriend”. Me, the one that spent money on our livelihood while he got to splurge, supported him so he could finish college, got him his nice job, kept the house clean without his help, paid most of the bills, bought him gifts nearly every week, fed him, nursed him when he was sick, showered him with compliments, the list goes on and on. I even bought us a house, a fixer upper that just needed some hefty deep cleaning and painting to get livable, and he only helped me with it one day in the four months or so I was working on it.

We had a lot of mutual friends together. These friends all knew each other because of him, mostly drawn from his friends and his friend’s friends. Our breakup, and what he had done, put a huge stressor on the group. While everyone generally sided with me - some quietly, some outright calling him out for his wrongdoings - it still drove a stake into things for a short time. Events we were all going to do now suddenly only one of us could be invited. These friends knew I didn’t want to talk about it or know what he was up to, so I can’t say for sure how it all went down; however, I believe over time, he withdrew, or the group quietly decided to exclude him, and it became less of an issue. The damage was done, though. I felt different with them. Fragile, broken, and messy, like I was the leftovers of what used to be. They saw me at the ugliest part of my emotional recovery, and while they still stuck around, I still didn’t feel like it would ever be the same. I made a bit of a fool of myself as well in a romantic pursuit of one of them, and to this day I wonder if there would have been a chance there if he hadn’t seen me at my worst, or if it would have always been not meant to be.

Being cheated on when I had worked so hard on being a good, reliable, and caring companion really messed with my head for several years afterwards. It got so bad it impacted my job performance and stunted my career for a couple years. However, once I got over the initial spiral, I started building myself back up again. I made a promise to myself that I would no longer do things I didn’t want to do. I would no longer prevent people from stopping me from doing the things I wanted to do. I wouldn’t allow myself to get into situations that made me uncomfortable or afraid. I would try my best to search out for and listen to red flags instead of ignoring them.

I wish I had those three years back, that I had done something better with them. But they were a powerful lesson in self confidence and self manifestation. As a result of three years of emotional abuse, I became stronger. I had shrunk so small from that relationship, too timid and tentative to make a move, but I bounced back to be even bigger and bolder so I could reach out for the things I wanted. I had almost lost my voice, but I found it again and it became even louder!

He moved on and immediately started dating another “friend” of ours, getting her pregnant within a couple months, and marrying her. I can’t help but wonder if something had been going on there while we were dating as well. I haven’t seen him since the last time he came to get his things out of my house. I don’t know what I’d say or do if I did see him again. I like to think I would stand up for myself, but there is a bitterness inside of me that makes me want to yell at him like I never could before. To call him out on everything he did. But that is not who I am or who I want to be. I want peace over conflict. I just want to move on and keep moving on.

I’ve struggled with voicing any of this over the years. I didn’t want to talk about him at all, in any of my writings, for fear of immortalizing him with my writings. As far as I saw it, he didn’t deserve to be remembered, idolized, or even feared. He deserved to fade away quietly without a trace. But eventually it felt like, by not talking about it, I was only silencing myself. Silencing this voice that I had fought so hard to take back.

To this day it’s hard to say that this relationship was “abusive”. So many people have had it so much harder, so much worse. How can I put my experience in any way alongside theirs? What I went through surely isn’t worthy of a title like “abuse survivor”, but I can’t tell if that’s just because the term doesn’t fit the situation or if I just really don’t want to be an abuse survivor. To acknowledge having been abused, to be broken to such a degree as that. It feels like a tarnish on my name. However, the more I look back on it, and the more I learn from the toxic relationships/friendships I’ve had since then, I think I can finally say it. I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. I was taken advantage of. I was manipulated. I was scared. But I escaped. It took my abuser doing something that forced me to let go, but I escaped nonetheless.

I AM ENOUGH Nobody can love me more than me, But maybe that's why I am lonely. I can see every reason why I should twinkle in someone's eye, Because I see it every day in mine. I treat myself with awe and respect And so I expect nothing less. I know why my love is worth risking it all Because I risked it all to love myself. I see how it might be hard to compete With someone who loves as much as me, But if you can't love me the way I do, Then there's nothing more to say to you.

Maybe someday I’ll talk about the toxic friendship that helped me to realize all this. Someone who gaslit me and manipulated me to try and win my romance and ended up convincing himself he was successful and that I was only playing hard to get, leading to me almost getting a restraining order against him because he wouldn’t leave me alone. Maybe someday.

-D.L.

#abuse #emotional abuse #women poets #mental health #abuse survivor #trauma #healing #abuse recovery #original writing #female poets #toxic relationship #toxic love #toxic people #find your voice #move forward #move on #let it go #this is your life

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kissforvoid · 4 months

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forever and ever greatful that i have a voice 🫶🏼

a voice to support my self and my beliefs.

#find your voice #voice #thankful #grateful #GodisGood #love #peace #beliefs

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lunaprincipessa · 4 months

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ENTRY FIFTY-FIVE

Find your voice!

Use your voice!

I think any of us that have been through shyness and insecurity, abuse and isolation, a mixture of those things, or anything in between, have heard those two phrases. Probably even heard them more than once huh? But what do they mean exactly? Is there a difference between them?

"Finding your voice means you know who you are at your core, devoid of outside influence. Using your voice means expressing yourself, having an opinion, vocalizing your thoughts, being heard and seen in your own authentic way."

Interesting! Although they are different, I think it takes courage to find and use your voice regardless of age, culture, income, upbringing, or preferred form of identity.

So how do we do this? How do we find our voice and how do we use it once it's found?

Knowing yourself at your core takes some serious introspection. Introspection is the examination or observation of one's own mental and emotional processes. Though it is conscious level analysis, it can still help you get to know you! Remember, you can go about this however you choose to. You can go as light as personality quizzes or as deep as exploring the subconscious with a psychologist. The main goal here is seeing what makes you, you; "what makes you tick" as the old saying goes.

Now using your voice, I wanted to look that up. I came across "voice types." Kinda thought I hit a little goldmine there but it was about singing. lol Okay, so no different voice types but there are some critical skills to be considered and utilized while the searching and obtaining of said voice are under construction. They are as follows:

~ knowing when to speak up

~ knowing when to listen

~ being assertive and confident

~ effectively expressing yourself

~ being influential

~ collaborating successfully

Knowing when to speak up because ya gotta choose your battles! Sometimes, being safe and left in peace should be prioritized over being right. Knowing when to listen is vital as well. Listening helps us develop what we need for finding and using our voice by teaching us whatever it is we need to know in that particular moment.

Next, know the difference between being assertive and being aggressive! Know the difference between confidence and arrogance! Do not confuse the two!

Effectively expressing yourself means you're saying everything that needs to be said without insult. In addition, effective expression also goes without unnecessary or untrue information. You don't have to put a lot of thought into being influential by the way. Everything is a copy of a copy nowadays so in my view:

being your true self = being influential

And finally, collaborating successfully because sometimes you may need a helping hand from your support system, your tribe, your chosen family, your people! You need reliable people you can trust in your corner. That, and it builds a sense of community which is enriching to everyone.

So there it is! Find and use your voice! One thing I wanted to conclude with, because this has happened to me a million times being a survivor of (covert) narcissistic abuse and having frenemies at nearly every age...

Even if you feel no one will believe you, speak up for yourself anyway. Yes, choose your battles and know when to speak, but if it's one of those times to speak, trust me...

You will feel way worse not having said anything at all versus speaking up for yourself and no one believing you. You'll be glad you did, you'll be proud of yourself. It won't immediately change your environment, taking all the assholes out or something like that. But you will feel a little more strength and tolerance come out when you do. Best of luck to all of us out here.

More thoughts later.

#find your voice #use your voice

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