Overcoming insecurities – official launch of my YouTube channel

For a long time, I have been telling myself that I’d love to learn more about a new medium to share my experiences. For years I’ve been writing in this little corner of the Internet, sharing my passion for travelling, for words and for photography. But whilst my feet itch for movement, my brain itches for more – more learning, more artistic ways to express myself. I had been playing around with video, posting a few things here and there on Youtube… but without my voice, without my face. Because that was truly scary. Truly uncomfortable.

But this year, I made resolutions. Not just vague ones, like I usually tend to do. And one of them was to truly be unafraid to explore my creative and artistic side and let go of the insecurities holding me back. This was an idea that had been in my head for quite some time… to the point that I did film quite a bit in Southeast Asia, thinking that perhaps I’d make a few videos about it. Now that I finished telling the stories here on my blog, I have started to tell them on my YouTube channel as well.

But if there is any other person out there struggling with, – when looked at closely – some truly silly but strong insecurities, I have decided to list below my own.

My face, my voice, my accent…

Sounds soooo silly writing it down in here. I’ve never liked to be in front of the camera. Behind it, that’s where I belong. Insecurities about my appearance have been a presence in my life, but I am starting to let go of them. As well as the insecurities about my accent. I’ve been writing in English for a long time, even though Portuguese is my native language – this is because my adult life has been in London, to the point that often English comes more naturally to me. But speaking… it is another story. I’ve always been more of a writer, someone who works with the silent whispers of words in my head. I’m not much of a speaker. I suppose my foreignness here just makes things even more difficult. I’m learning to let go of it. My accent is part of who I am – someone who speaks and thinks in different languages, someone with a wealth of experiences so many can’t even begin to imagine.

So… well f*ck it! I am going to do it, and hopefully, this will help me with my confidence as well.

The fear of not specialising in anything, wanting to do everything

I had this idea that I am a person who writes and takes photos… not someone who makes videos. But then I started to reflect back to my childhood years. At some point before my travels, I was at my parents and my sister was putting on some homemade videos of when we were children – and guess who was filming, guess who was interviewing family members? A very young me. A seven, eight, nine-year-old me.

And I was also writing poems, stories, and drawing, and holding my dad’s camera to take photos. At some point, it seems I lost touch with the child that was so interested in everything… as an adult society wants you to believe you have to always be productive, spend time on things that matter, and specialise rather than be a generalist. This was always a struggle for me, because I love so many things… and can’t seem to be an expert. But now, I’m becoming aware of how this way of living steals so much joy from us – our hobbies are not supposed to be perfect, and are not supposed to follow a set of rules… in fact, we don’t even have to be good at our hobbies! Yes, we have to be productive at work, and be some sort of expert in the field we work on, that’s our income… but this for me has always been about my passions, my most natural cravings. So I don’t care if I don’t do it right…. because I don’t think there is a right way to express ourselves, to create our own artistic projects. It’s a privilege to even be able to dedicate time to them… this is my life and I’ll do with my free time what I want.

The fear of judgement

Not going to lie. This hasn’t gone anywhere. I haven’t shared these new videos in my main social feeds, because I’m scared of what others will think of me – especially with some of my close friends. Still a process. I’m hoping I can eventually overcome this. Any advice, I would of course appreciate it very much!

So far, I’ve made videos about Phnom Penh and Angkor Wat. You can watch them here and even subscribe to my channel if you want. I’m learning how to speak less, how to treat them less like a written blog – there are so many stories and details about my experiences and my feelings that I share here… but would make my videos hours long if I did the same there. I’m practicing it, with some bravery… I don’t want to fail on this resolution of mine 🙂

I will also continue to write here because this is my true passion – writing, the photography. At the end of the day, I want to create – with or without an audience.

Love, Nic