Announcement, Update •

My problem with exposure and why I find it hard to post

I have tried at multiple stages in my life to grow a platform online, but have never been able to follow through.

I find it hard to share what I make, whether it be on a YouTube channel or on my very own website. Usually I start off with a little spark of motivation that helps me carry out the first step, but nothing more after that. I enjoy the feeling of being productive, like having a project to chip at in the background, and making it the best it can be. But I hate coming up to the part where it’s time to share it – and so I never really do.

In this post, I’m going to be as honest as I can about why I have been neglecting this site and all my other platforms. I also intend for this to be this website’s key post that contains my goals and intentions for being here.

Why I find it hard to post

Posting anything is usually a big deal for me.

A few days ago, I uploaded a video to my YouTube channel (not the first: there are many other ones hiding under the “privated” option). It was a little animation I made that I hadn’t intended to show to anyone when I first started working on it. As long as I liked it, I was happy, and no one was going to see it anyway, right?

Halfway through the process, I got that spark of motivation to start up my YouTube channel again. Suddenly, I thought that my animation would be the perfect first video to post.

After that, I started obsessing over every little detail a lot more. Now that I’d introduced the idea of showing it to other people, I didn’t like it as much, because the way I saw it, it was no longer “mine.” I wasn’t making it for me anymore, I was making it for my (nonexistent) audience.

Finally, I got to the stage where I was happy with the animation, or more so tired of working on it. I remember saying to myself: “OK, once the colours are finished, there is no way I’m adding shading and a background. That would take way too long.” …you can guess what I added after that?

But then I realised something: at the end of the day, no matter how perfect it looked, it was always going to be just 2 seconds long. So when I came around to editing it, I went for a more humble iMovie style, as I didn’t want to over-hype such a short animation.

My first attempt at posting the video was on a channel that no one even knew I had. I was still nervous. I wasn’t confident in the animation at all and even found it kind of stupid. I was, in effect, purposefully hiding the video from everyone. So what happened was only logical. The video got 0 views from anyone but me. I took it down a day later. But not for that reason.

I couldn’t ignore the feeling that I was already trying to be someone I wasn’t. I’m NOT a minimalist editor. I enjoy the editing process a lot, and ever since I learned how, I’ve always dreamed about going a bit over the top with my videos.

Then I understood that even if a 2 seconds long animation doesn’t “deserve” to be hyped up with high quality edits and a built-in behind-the-scenes look, that’s at least more what I would do. Keep in mind that all I mean by “high quality edits” is that I used Filmora Wondershare instead of iMovie. But that’s probably just me again trying to downplay my work.

The most important change this time around, though, was that I decided to post the video on my main channel, which at least one person knew about.

This was all a step in the right direction. Now that I’d made something I somewhat liked, it didn’t matter to me as much the amount of views it got. So I uploaded it. And guess what? The views part was no different, except for one thing: it had a like and a comment from my brother. For me, who shares about 2% of the stuff I actually make, that was an accomplishment.

So to answer the question, Why do I find it hard to post? The main thing is that I don’t like my work, at least when I make it with other people in mind. But I know that I’m going to have to work on this if I ever want to get something more out of my projects. And that brings me to the question, What do I want out of this?

Why I post

I made this website a few months ago in 2024. It was originally titled Adventure Savy, and apart from the fact that having a personal website is just cool, I made it because I wanted to share bits of my life and document my progress in achieving the goals I had at the time.

Today, things are a slightly different. Instead of exclusively sharing my thoughts, I want to share bits of my projects. It’s less a website for me, and more a website for my work, which is anything from drawing to animating to writing, to anything else I discover along the way.

I’m still asking myself what I really want out of this, if anything. I mainly just post and if people find it, they find it, and if they don’t, they don’t. I don’t put any effort into that actually happening, because I’m scared of that happening.

I’ve always done the bare minimum when it comes to growing a platform online. I post the thing, and I leave. I don’t want to show it to anyone. I don’t want to promote it. I don’t want to bring attention to – or even put that much effort into – something I’m not sure others will like. Otherwise that would mean some kind of commitment, and I’m not a fan of commitments. I prefer for exposure to happen “organically”.

I was going to say that on certain websites, blowing up out of nowhere can happen, and that it has happened to me, but now I’m thinking that actually isn’t true.

I used to have an animation channel, around 2017-2018 when they were getting very popular (I didn’t do it for that reason; I just loved animating). My channel was very steadily on its way upward, and I was confident enough in what I was doing to actually engage with my audience, plan collabs, and further hone my skills. Unfortunately this might have worked a little too well, for my numbers at least. I’d had my channel for about a month at that point, and during that time I had been exposed to a whole new side of the community.

I wasn’t really able to stand my ground back then, so I decided to take a different direction with my channel which wasn’t originally what I had planned, in order to keep up with everyone else’s expectations. 

Eventually I realised it wasn’t the most positive place for me to be in, and I was scared that my success would trap me there. So, I ended up deleting my entire channel.

Like I feared, YouTube can become a commitment at a certain point, but to survive that, you have to enjoy what you do. And if you do enjoy what you do, what reason would you have to quit other than being overwhelmed and out of your comfort zone?

I’m not often proud of what I make, in the sense that I would go around and show it to everyone and not care what they say because I think it’s nice and that’s all that matters – like showing photos of my cat. I usually feel another kind of proud, like I love that one novel I wrote or the fan art I made for it on Procreate, but does that mean I would ever show it to anyone even if my life depended on it? No way. But that prompts the idea that… maybe I should anyway.

Final thoughts

There’s a decision I’m hiding from. Once I figure out my why – why I want people to read what I write, and watch what I make – then I could either take the quiet route, where I continue posting like this and let it reach people organically (which almost definitely won’t happen, at least for a very very long time), or I could get my work out there in the way I know I could if I really wanted to… and I don’t know if I do yet.

I hope I’ll be able to update you soon, but know that if I do decide to do something more with this website, I have a lot of exciting things planned!

My problem with exposure and why I find it hard to post Read More »

Update •
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Learning how to code

It’s been so long since my last post and that is because as I mentioned a few posts back, I’m getting into coding. I didn’t expect to be having this much fun with it. That, along with learning French and finally getting a job, is the main reason I’ve been unable to get to writing a post.

So why am I learning to code again? Right now, I’m learning HTML, moving onto CSS now, and after that, JavaScript, so I can code my own websites. I’m also interested in possibly making apps in the future. This website you’re on right now is made from a WordPress theme, since I knew nothing about those languages when I was making it, so I was very avoidant of solutions to do with coding. I’m still at level 0 pretty much, but if I continue learning then I might even be able to improve this site in the future. 😀

Interestingly, what’s helped me the most with learning code is learning languages, or more so knowing how to learn. Common advice I saw when I first started researching how to code was “learn how to learn.” It’s not that languages and coding languages are the exact same, though there is definitely coding advice that applies to language learning advice and vice versa, but through studying French I’d already discovered my learning style. I know what to learn first, how long to study it for, good memorisation exercises, whether to start with a course or jump right into a project and learn what I need as I go, etc.

When I made my first video game, I was still a noob at both language learning and coding. So even though I’d followed along with a whole 7 hour Unity tutorial, yes I was able to make a game (well, more like Google and coding forums were able to make a game), but today I can barely type one line of C# fluently. It’s luckily the opposite with HTML. I can create at least a simple website without having to look anything up, like how I can talk about my day in French without looking up translations. If you’re interested in hearing some of my methods to achieve this, stay tuned because I might make a post about it in the future! The most amazing feeling is when you come across a problem in your code, after you’ve acquired the building blocks for a language, and you’re able to mix things together and use what you’ve learnt to find the solution yourself, even if it’s far from the most efficient one.

Anyway, as for everything else, it’s been a while since I deliberately went out to take photos with my camera. I can’t really use the excuse that it’s been “winter” either, because “winter” for Perth is basically just summer but 5 degrees lower, with the occasional grey or rainy day. But I’ve still kind of been acting like it’s winter, and so has Astro, my cat, who’s fluffing and fattening up, and also getting darker (fun fact: Siamese “change colours” depending on the temperature!) Unfortunately, he was a bit sick and injured recently. But we took him to the vet and he’s feeling & looking way better now.

Since my brother is getting into writing stories, I offered some time ago to draw pictures to go along with one of his projects, and so now, everytime he finishes a new chapter or scene, I get on to drawing it. This has been really fun, and I’m glad that those two years of learning how to draw has paid off. I just wish I had taken it less seriously. I feel like I could have reached this level in a much shorter amount of time and in a less torturous way. Seeing his stories has also made me wonder whether I should start writing again as well. I’m exploring a concept right now, so we’ll see how that goes!

Overall, I’ve been having a great time recently. This post doesn’t cover everything, I was away for a LONG time. I really enjoyed writing about Astro, so expect to see more posts like that in the future. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you soon! Bye!

Mavionne

Learning how to code Read More »

Review •
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All about Astro

Hi! I’m pretty busy recently so I’ve decided to write an easy post. This time, it’s about my cat Astro, AKA Big Boy, and about the Siamese breed in general. I just thought I’d share some of his infinite cuteness with the website.

As an introduction: Astro is Siamese, half seal-point, half chocolate point. He’s more oriental-looking than the applehead Siamese, but I heard he was bred to be more bulky, so he doesn’t have the health problems oriental shorthair cats can sometimes get. We got him in December 2021 but he was born that year on the 29th of September, which means he’s currently two years old.

He’s an extremely active boy and his favourite thing to play with is his “chicken”, which is literally just a rubber chicken tied to the cord which fell out from the pants I used to wear. He loves to chase and jump after it… he also likes to chew it so every once in a while we need to replace the chicken with a fresh one like we did yesterday.

Astro is always on high-alert. Though he’s cuddly, he’s often in the mood to play, meaning if I make one tiny move towards him he’ll bolt away. He loves scaring himself. Once I chase him into another room, he finds a hiding spot that I sometimes can’t find and other times can, but I always pretend not to notice him. As soon as he hears me walking out of the room, he comes out of his hiding spot, hits the back of my foot with his paws and then runs out in front of me, like he’s teasing me for not finding him!

Siamese are very smart, one of the smartest cat breeds of all time. Even within the very first days of having him, when he was a little kitten, he’d already learnt how to play fetch with his rubber chicken.

He likes plotting ways to get onto high places, namely the roof. It’s his first task whenever we move house. He can get down by himself but he prefers crying at us to help him down because he knows we’ll eventually get sick of it and force him down by shaking a treats packet. Though, in previous houses, we used to lift up random items like chairs and blocks for him to jump on and be lowered onto the ground. But he’d get treats after that as well.

In the morning at around 8-9 a.m. he meows for me at my door. Once I let him in, he gets really fluffy, not in the intimidating way, and walks around in circles, kind of shrinking into himself like a slinky or caterpillar. During this time he rubs his head on my legs, sometimes licks me, and jumps up on my shoulder while I get everything ready for the day, it’s just the cutest thing ever. Once, I carried him to the lounge room to play, but I had to get a drink of water first. I put him down and started walking to my room to get my water bottle and he ran after me, and tried multiple times to jump at my face like he was saying, “Where are you going? COME BACK NOW!!!” That’s another thing he does: watch out when he locks eyes with you, because this means he’s about to jump at you, which is more terrifying than you can imagine. I’m pretty sure he loves scaring us and hearing our reactions. He hates you looking at him from high places like this:

Overall, I LOVE Siamese cats. As long as you have enough time on your hands, they’re an incredible breed, best temperament, and of course stunning appearance. They need at least twenty minutes of play every day but they reward you with a lot of snuggling and being cute in every situation. They do need to be trained to go to sleep at night and not wake you up early, but this means you need to wear them out during the day. Having a favourite toy helps a lot. I do wish we had got him another Siamese to play with while we still lived near his breeder, so if you’re thinking of getting one, get two! Once you have one cat, it’s barely any different to have another.

That concludes this post! See you soon!

Mavionne

All about Astro Read More »

Announcement •

My first blog post

Hello! This blog post is the last thing I need to do before publishing this website! I’m really happy with the way it looks even though I know it’ll probably change in the future. It’s only taken me only around 10 days to complete, but of course I had already planned out the design beforehand so I knew exactly what I had to do.

See you on the live site!

Mavionne

My first blog post Read More »