I Didn't Want Anyone to See Me Without a Plan

Prefer to watch? The video's below. Prefer to read? Keep going — this one's for you either way.

The one thing I've realized has been holding me back from doing almost everything is the middle. It's the actual process.

With starting a YouTube channel, for example, this part right here — where it's messy, where I don't have a script, where I don't know my niche, don't know my audience, don't fully know who I'm making this for — is the part that scares me. I know it's lifestyle content and personal development. But it's not streamlined yet. I'm not the version of myself who gets on a video and confidently says "I'm talking to coaches and creators and entrepreneurs." I'm not there yet. And that's the thing that's actually held me back: do I really want to share the messy part? Do I want to share the journey of starting, before I have the outcome to show for it?

Why hiding the middle was so silly

That question is so silly when I actually sit with it. When I started my aligners, I looked up on YouTube what the process was like — and what I found was somebody else talking about their journey. How it started, how it was going, what to look out for, and then the end result. And I realized I'd been treating sharing my own middle as something selfish to withhold, when it's exactly what everybody actually wants to know.

Think about most stories of celebrities, millionaires, billionaires — people don't just want to see the finished version of them. They want to see themselves in that person. If someone started in a garage, and you have a garage too, suddenly it feels possible that you could start there and end up somewhere — maybe even better. It's a matter of perspective. I'm working on not being afraid to share the transformation, because that's actually how you build community.

Why this matters more with everything going AI

Especially with so much being AI-generated now, we're in a sense searching for the humanness — the human part of life — because it's getting harder to tell what's real from what's been created by someone using AI. So I'm here to battle through the process, the awkwardness, the rambling. I won't be editing my videos. I'll just press record, and wherever it ends, it ends, and then I post it.

I have a tendency to take something small and blow it out of proportion — if I see something out of place on camera, or the sound is a little off, or someone outside the door makes noise, I'll break it down until it feels like a reason to scrap the whole video and start over. And then I never actually post. I never practice. I never move from where I am, because I have no experience actually doing the thing.

What I'm working on instead

So I'm working on just doing it. Getting it done. And reminding myself — and hopefully you — that it's okay to be where you are. There's no reason to be ashamed of where you came from. There's no reason to be ashamed of being in the middle. And when you get to your goals, there's no reason to be ashamed of having those things either, because you're making a path for someone else to see themselves in you — almost giving them permission to go after their own goals instead of clutching so tightly to excuses.

I've had excuses that functioned like roommates in my life. They're not going to get you anywhere. They're just there to keep you company, to make you feel comfortable and fine right where you are — like you don't need to do anything else, like you're taken care of — and yet you never actually get anything done.

Why I'm doing this anyway

I'm at the place in my life where I'm ready to get things done. I still don't fully know where these videos will go. I don't have a clear niche yet — just lifestyle content and personal development. And while I work through figuring out how to speak, practicing, practicing posting, I don't want to deny myself the process. The journey is part of it.

I've been at my job for almost four years, and I love it. But it also makes sense why I've been getting the results I've been getting — because I haven't done anything differently in four years. My excuses, my companions, they've comforted me into thinking I'm stable. I don't know if "stagnant" is the right word, but that's not the life I see for myself. And it's not what I want my niece to see when she eventually finds these videos — hopefully not too soon.

I want her to see herself in the journey. I want her to think, that's my aunt — if she was brave enough to stand in front of her phone and make a video, I can be brave enough to do something else, give a speech, go to college, become a doctor, whatever it is for her. It doesn't have to look like what I did. I just want to plant the seed that it's okay. It's not going to be perfect. We should just aim to do the thing, because that's the only way I'll actually figure out if this is the kind of content I want to make, or if I want to do something else entirely. The only way I'll know is if I actually do something.

👉 Your turn: is there something you've been holding back from starting, or sharing, until it looks more "figured out"? What would it look like to let people see the middle instead of waiting for the after-photo?