MONDAY BLOG: HAPPY HAPPY

Morning all! Happy Monday.

You might’ve noticed, but Bubblegun is late; it’ll be up this afternoon. I think most of you listen throughout the week anyway, rather than when it first goes up. Soz. Last week was taken up with editing the Ghunt, then we saw family at the weekend. You'll get a Writer's Club and Bubblegun Extra too.

Weirdly enough, we went for a picnic in Woollaton Park on Saturday, where we’d gone to look for gnomes a month or so back.

Talking of podcasts… you can listen to the new Channel84 Variety Show pod with Tom who organised the Ghunt. And, of course, it gets a mention. As it does in the new Dan Does video, which I am reliably informed will be up later today.

We’re hopefully filming this week, but it won’t be out for the general populace until next week. Speaking of, I think we’re going to move Paul and Sanja vids back to Thursdays, as we do seem to be colliding with Cheapshow.

Oh! And we’re doing a Super Quiz for EVERYONE on here this Thursday at 7.30pm. Put it in your calendar.

AND NOW…

So… you’ve probably noticed that the videos we’ve uploaded to the new channel have been… well… not big, heavy, documentary ones like we had been doing for a while. This has surprised the both of us. I honestly thought that’s the direction we’d end up taking, but… creativity is a strange thing, and I find it’s at the whim of where my head’s at.

Bubblegun was meant to be the outlet for the silly side, and when we started I thought it might be a reach… but it has proven to be WAY more enjoyable and ridiculous than I expected. In terms of it being just sheer unfiltered me, it’s closer to Found Footage than anything else I’ve done.

I don’t want to generalise – we’re all wired differently and we all have our own process, I guess – but I find it very, very hard to force content if I’m not feeling it. With writing scripts for other people, I’ve been doing it long enough that the skills part takes over – and, obviously, getting paid is a great motivator.

But when it comes to MY stuff… which I want to be authentic, the only way I can do it is to make it a reflection of where I’m at. I don’t want to put things out into the world that don’t come from a place of truth and authenticity. Creating stuff for me is about the joy of making it – if I’ve had to force it in any way, then it becomes a job. If I can even do it at all.

Yes, we rely on our Patreon income, but most of you – I think – are here to support me making authentic content, even if it’s not always for you.

It’s no big surprise that now we are doing BYAMPOD again, I’m getting to do the research I love, and the more serious/big idea side of my brain is being satisfied. This seems to have allowed me to play more when it comes to the videos and Bubblegun.

But… bigger than that, it’s just a reflection of where I’m at. Digi’s content over the past couple of years was made during the toughest, darkest, times of my life. It’s inevitable that it ended up morphing into something it hadn’t been. I found it hard to park all that, and just create without it being an influence. With my TV career grinding to a halt, I think I felt angry at the world, and that was reflected in what we made.

I needed to make those doco videos though. I couldn't make anything else at the time. I'm immensely proud of all of them.

The TV presenter Sarah Cawood - she used to present Top of the Pops and other things back in the 90s - did a post on Instagram the other day (I don't follow her; I read about it somewhere else). She's the same age as me, and was tearfully saying about how work has dried up for her, and she feels redundant. That's how I was feeling: surplus to requirements. Past it. Discarded. And because of the content we were making, I felt even the audience we'd grown didn't want me either.

I could really relate to what she was saying, and it has helped me feel less alone in it. Middle Age is tougher than I expected in that way; for many of us it's a series of ego deaths and rude awakenings. It's a time of reinvention, and re-prioritising,

But I understand that better now. I'm no longer in that place of darkness - I've had work this summer, thankfully, which helps - but also I've just reached the other side of where I was, I think. Thankful for what I have, not simply mourning what I've lost. Frankly, even with half of what we've been through, it's a miracle I held it together at all.

We've a great community both here and beyond Patreon. We had some really lovely comments on the Ghunting video, and it rammed home that we're at our most valuable when we're bringing just a little bit of joy into lives. I know some of you found us during Covid times, and say we helped you get through. I hope we can do that again.

There’s always room for improvement in any life – it’s a work in progress – but the fact we’re putting out videos that are lighter, sillier, and more playful is the best indicator I can think of that life is in a better place at last.

Money could be better. The Covid years, followed by the TV industry implosion, buggered us up in a big way. We’re still kind of broke – and don’t have much for extra little luxuries. We're still kind of in a holding pattern with my mum, for as long as she's still with us.

But overall we’re thankful for what we have.

I don’t think we’re done with documentary-style videos yet. We have a couple kind of ready to go, when we can find the time. But I’m also now thinking about them differently – wanting to approach them in ways that are more fun, and have more of our trademark style to them.

The world is heavy and bleak and scary right now, and I’m not sure we’re achieving anything by adding to that. I’m happy to provide some escapism and hope again.

So, why even bother with a new channel? Why not just upload to the old one? Why sacrifice all those subscribers, the potential views, etc. etc.? Because, again, it’s not about numbers really. We do this because we enjoy it, and hope that enough of you enjoy it that we can afford to keep making them. And, frankly, because there’s so much bloody baggage on the old channel that it has poisoned the well a bit.

Seeing the subs on Paul and Sanja ticking up is gratifying - just to have people there who are there for us, not hanging on in the hope of seeing other people or video game content.

Anyway. Right. Hope is the word for the week. Off to get Bubblegun sorted for y'all. Hope to see some of you at Chunky Fringe. Less than three weeks away now!

Paul