Update on the everything of it all

Hi, patrons! First things first, I want to thank all of you for your continued patronage of the years. I have been making videos online for twelve years now. I started small, as everyone does, for the love of the craft and without much hope of this becoming my full-time career. For the past six years, writing video essays has been my primary career and eventually my only career. I couldn't do this without my patrons. YouTube ad revenue can be extremely limited, especially for a channel with political content that often gets de-monetized.

Second, I wanted to give an update on what has been going on. It's nothing bad, it's just different. Every few years, I do a "soft reboot" of the series in which I take what I have been learning on my own time and debut it all at once. I wanted my latest reboot/upgrade to come along with a big video instead of a normal 20 to 30 minute video. The big video became bigger and bigger as I worked on it. That has lead to fewer videos this year so far.

Have you ever started cleaning your sink or bath tub and then decided that you should probably just clean your whole bathroom or your whole home? Or have you ever started writing a short story that became more of a novel? It's like that. 

The good news for you is that this is a per video Patreon. You don't pay me when I don't produce videos. So, this doesn't affect your wallet at all. The bad news is entirely for me, because even if this big video is an unexpected viral hit, there is almost no way for it to compensate the money lost for only having one video in February and no video in March. I do not foresee it being viral hit anyway. I think I do good work, and this video is shaping up to be something special, but those numbers just don't happen for me. Oh well. C'est le vie. 

You have nothing to worry about it, though. This will not be the norm going forward. Once the big video debuts, subsequent videos will still have the brand new style but will be only a little longer than my normal 20 to 30 minute videos on average. Aiming for 25 to 45 minute videos on average (depending on the topic) and approximately two videos per month. 

As for the big video itself, you will be happy to know that I finished writing it and that I am nearly finished recording it. Recording has been challenging, because I can't do it non-stop in one day like I usually do. My voice gives out. Recording a normal script of about 3,000 or so words only takes one recording session in one day, but this script has about 25,000 words. That is more than eight times the length of my average video. Unless I decide to do some significant cuts in editing, this will be a feature length documentary with a runtime of more than two hours.

In terms of visuals, the new style will be a combination of the vaporwave aesthetic that I adopted in 2019 and a more psychedelic aesthetic I have been putting together but have not yet shown. In terms of audio, I'm using new music I haven't used before, and there will even be sections of videos that are only music and montage. I need to do more to break up my videos so that it isn't always just my voice over video. The soft reboot will contain a lot of other changes. I am working on writing a document that will explain each change and upgrade, as well as credit the various influences. It's coming.

I apologize for the wait. I don't want to become a YouTuber who only makes a few big videos per year. Those channels can be great, but I don't think that's something I want to do. It's too all-or-nothing. This is just for this one big project. I don't want to give a public release date and then miss the deadline. Instead, I will simply tell you privately that I *hope* to have this done by the end of April and that the absolute latest I will allow this project to go on will be May. This will not be something you wait for all year. I can't have that, and frankly, I can't afford that.

Anyway, I hope this update will ease any worries you might have. Nothing bad is happening, it's all good things. It's just that good things take time. Thanks again for your continued support.

- Leon