Yesterday, I reached 10k subscribers on my YouTube channel, almost exactly two years after posting my first video.

I know it was two years ago to the week because I wrote about in my first diary.

"Today I held up my promise and finally made a YouTube video...Sometimes you just have to say 'fuck it' and do things when you're not fully ready." - Diary entry from 4/17/24

Up to that day, I had put off starting my YouTube channel to try my hand at writing on social media because I didn't know how to make videos. I didn't even like social media. I thought it was a waste of time, but I didn't know how else to start so I convinced myself it was the right move.

I thought the platforms might teach me how to craft content but after months of posting on them I was burned out and had a new addiction to checking in on my accounts.

Relief came when I got married and took a much needed vacation in Paris and the birth of the Renaissance–Florence, Italy.

I wanted nothing to do with my phone or the internet while I was honeymooning so I bought a notebook–my first in decades–so I could write about our travels without the temptation to check in on the world.

For the next two weeks I wrote short recaps of our days traveling.

I had never written in a diary before so my initial entries read like log entries rather than instrospective conversations with myself. Once we arrived in Florence something changed.

The AirBnB we stayed in was on the top-level of an old apartment looking out at the red rooftops of the city with the stunning Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore towering above.

After taking in the magic of the moment, I noticed something else unusual about the apartment–there was not a single digital device in sight.

"My favorite part of this apartment is the lack of tv. It has a writing desk, tons of books, and art supplies. It makes me feel inspired to create rather than distract myself." - Diary entry 3/31/24

After that day my entries got longer, more instrospective, and exploratory. I started having conversations with myself that brought a stronger awareness to my internal narrative.

Through journaling I realized I didn't want to be making short-form content on platforms I had no interest in, I didn't want to be glued to my screen playing some metric game, and I definitely didn't want to let another day go by without taking the leap into the unknown to finally start the YouTube channel I had been dancing around for a year.

When I got home I got straight to work and within a few days I had published my first YouTube video.

There was no audience and I still didn't know what the hell I was doing, but it didn't matter. I was finally doing what I really wanted.

I was finally writing my new story.

Before that trip it never occured to me that keeping a diary could be a valuable use of time. It seemed self-indulgent and gossipy, biases I probably picked up from popular media growing up in the 90's.

Now I think old-fashioned diary writing might be one of the most underrated journaling methods.

Memory is fickle. Every time you remember an event you're actually remembering the memory of the last time you recalled that event rather than the event itself. A diary is a time-capsule that records your experiences, your thoughts, and your feelings the day they happen preventing the self-editing of memory that is natural over time.