I'm Quitting BookTube

Hey hi hello friends. 

I know I don't tend to talk about more serious things on here, but I know I need to address this. If not for you guys, then for my own sake. I've decided to stop making BookTube videos.

I realize just last month I had planned a comeback, I cracked down on the algorithm and actually put a lot more effort into my channel, so here's why I'm all of the sudden (to you) quitting. 

I haven't been quiet about my mental health, and the problems I face with it either. It's not a secret that I suffer from severe anxiety disorder and borderline manic depressive. I have very high highs, and very low lows. The reason I tended to have such huge gaps in my filming is those lows. I would have periods where I wanted to quit before, but I would just ride them out because in the next couple months, I would have a high period where I would be super productive and my creativity would spike. But instead of just riding out this low (and a very, very low it is), I'm making the executive decision to rid myself of this obligation. 

For the past few years, BookTube has been my escape from my problems. It was a safe space for me to interact with fellow book lovers and just have fun. I feel like it's devolved from that. I don't feel comfortable on any platform anymore really, but YouTube as a whole has become a dark web of hate and spite for me. 

Please don't take this as me ignoring the state of the world. That's not what this is. This is not an attempt to forget about what is going on. My decision to remove myself from BookTube has nothing to do with the Black Lives Matter movement (which I wholeheartedly support in every way I possibly can) or anything related to that. I won't lie though and say this has nothing to do with JKR and the blatant transphobia that has been circling. But I'm not going to go into that, mainly because as a cis person I feel it's disrespectful for me to truly comment on such topics, and suggest for you to search out trans, non-binary, and other individuals that identify outside of the cis spectrum if you want an explanation and/or discussion. 

I've only been seeing hatred, bigotry, and transphobic/queerphobic/racist things on my timelines everywhere and frankly I'm pretty sick of it. I can't imagine what it is like for POC and trans and non-binary people seeing these things. 

Anyways. I haven't been feeling motivated to put myself up on social media talking about books when there are so many other things out there that need attention. And I just haven't been motivated in general. Like I said, it's a very low low for me at the moment. It has been for pretty much the whole year. And honestly I don't see myself getting out of it any time soon. There's only so much I can handle, as an individual. And it took me a really, really long time to recognize that I'm allowed to prioritize my mental health. Like, decades of time to realize. 

So that's what I'm doing. I'm prioritizing. I am downsizing my platform in the book community to only Twitter and this blog. I will also still be using Goodreads but that's always been just for me, anyway. Honestly I kind of want to get rid of Twitter too, but it's like my only news source outlet, and I still want to interact with you guys. I will be putting all of my videos on private, because I don't have the heart to delete them permanently. Maybe I will one day, or maybe I'll get out of this low and realize I still want to make videos, and bring them back. As of now, though, I'm quitting for good. 

I still plan on watching BookTube, but I've downgrading a lot. I was subscribed to hundreds of BookTubers, and of course I wanted to watch all of their videos, so I would just go through my subscriptions daily and put every video I saw into my "Watch Later." And then I would watch them, but they got backed up so easily because I would be adding 10-20 videos every day. This would lead to anxiety over not watching every day, which would cause me to avoid watching videos, which would lead to more videos being added and so on and so forth. It became a truly vicious cycle. So I weened down my subscription list to only those I really, absolutely, truly enjoy, and I'm now only subscribed to maybe 20 people. As of right now, my "Watch Later" has about 45 videos in it. It's still a lot but it's manageable, I think. If it turns out even that is unmanageable for me, I will decrease as needed. 

Okay, I know I rambled a lot so I'm sorry if I talked in circles or if some of what I said didn't make any sense. I haven't slept in over 48 hours (yet another thing I've been having worse problems with). I just want to reiterate that I am in no ways trying to make excuses, for myself or for those who are spreading hate. But I'm not posting anything on BookTube anyway and this way I'll stop feeling that obligation. 

That's it, I guess. If you have any questions, either leave a comment or DM me on Twitter.

Until next time.