There. I said it. A 41-year of a 2 kids mum wants to be a YouTuber. Make of that what you will.
I have been thinking about this for about a year. Maybe two. The kind of thinking you do quietly, while you are folding laundry or driving to the supermarket, where you imagine a version of your life that includes a ring light and a tripod and you having something interesting to say to a camera.
I have not told many people. I have told my husband. I told one friend. Beyond that, I have been carrying it around like a secret you carry when you are not yet sure if you are allowed to want the thing you want.
I am 32. I have two kids - one in school, one still home most days. I have a part of my brain that is permanently occupied with whether anyone has clean socks. I run a household that runs on a very specific kind of invisible labour, the kind that nobody notices until it stops, and I am the one who makes sure it does not stop. The window for becoming a YouTuber, by every conventional standard, has closed. I should be focused. I should be tired. I should not be thinking about whether I would film in the kitchen or the spare room.
But here we are.
The honest reason I want to do it is small and embarrassing. I just want to make something that is mine. Not ours - the family's, the household's, the thing-everybody-shares. Mine. Something with my name on it that came out of my head, that exists in the world even on the days when I am also doing eight loads of washing and remembering that the youngest needs new shoes again. I want a small corner of the internet where I am the person, not the role.
I know how that sounds. I do not care. I think a lot of mothers around my age know exactly what I mean.
The dream, if I am completely honest with myself, is not big. I do not want to be Mrs Hinch. I do not want a sponsorship deal with a cleaning brand. I want maybe 20,000 people who watch what I make, who recognise me in a small way, who feel like they know me a little. I want to film the things I am genuinely good at and genuinely interested in - and there is a list of those, even if my brain has been telling me for a decade that nobody would care. I have decided my brain is wrong.
The thing nobody tells you about wanting this in your thirties as a mother is that it feels selfish. Not in a way that stops me. Just in a way that I notice. There is a voice that says this is time you do not have, energy you should be saving for the children, money you should be spending on something useful. I have heard that voice for years. I have decided to start ignoring it. The kids are going to grow up either way. They will grow up with a mother who has a hobby that is hers, or a mother who has been thinking about a hobby that is hers for twelve years and never started one. I know which of those mothers I want my daughter to remember.
The other thing nobody tells you is that the bar for starting is much lower than it was even three years ago. My phone records better video than half the cameras professional YouTubers used in 2020. Editing is mostly free now. The audience for niche, specific, unpolished, real videos is bigger than it has ever been. The age of the perfectly produced, eight-person-team channel is mostly over. People want to watch a real person who knows what they are talking about, filmed in a real kitchen, with a real life happening around them. That is a category I might actually be competitive in, given that I have a real kitchen and a real life.
So here is the plan, such as it is. I am going to film one video this week. Just one. It will be bad. The lighting will be wrong. I will say "um" too many times. I will probably hate it when I watch it back, and I will probably want to delete it. I am going to post it anyway. Then I am going to do another one next week, and another one the week after, and I am going to keep going for a year before I let myself look at the numbers.
If you are a mother around my age who has been quietly wanting to start something - a channel, a blog, a small business, a podcast, a thing that is yours - this is your sign. We are both going to be 34 either way. We might as well be 34 with 50 small videos behind us, even bad ones, instead of 34 still thinking about it during nap time.
That is all I have today. The youngest is about to wake up. I will tell you next week if I actually filmed anything.
Thanks to Darius Baltunisa for engaging to writting!
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