You may have noticed we stopped vlogging on our YouTube channel. This was kind of a big deal because our channel was how we shared about our every day lives and was the back bone of what I shared on this blog. YouTube was always our big memory keeping method and not doing it was a heartbreaking decision, but at the time, a totally necessary one. We haven’t vlogged on YouTube in over a year, and I wanted to share a little bit about why that happened.
Long-form content was difficult to maintain
I keep saying we haven’t vlogged on YouTube specifically because while we haven’t been contributing long form content to our channel we have been somewhat active in sharing shorts and Instagram reels. Making the switch to doing that was one way that I felt like we could still be documenting our life a little bit but making it more manageable.
After our son was born two years ago our life completely changed as we knew it. We no longer could contribute hours of our day to doing our own things and editing videos, etc. I specifically had a really rough adjustment period and wasn’t able to mentally tolerate taking care of a small child and all of the other tasks that I had arbutrarily put on my plate over the years. So, we had to evaluate what was necessary at the time. And one of the things that felt like it could be put on pause was our vlogs.
To make up for the sad decision of not vlogging, we decided to try to make Instagram Reels that could be repurposed at shorts on YouTube. These were quick and easy to make, required little planning and stress, and allowed us to document mini moments of our lives. We love creating these and will probably continue doing them as long as possible.
I wasn’t doing great mentally
Probably the biggest reason why we didn’t keep up with our vlogs after our son was born was because I was not doing great mentally. I struggled with postpartum anxiety immediately after Greysen was born and postpartum depression for almost the entire first year of his life. Keeping him alive and happy while also doing the same for myself felt nearly impossible for the longest time. I felt the pressure of doing things “the right way” as a new mom from all directions and didn’t know how to cope with that.
The stress and pressure to know what I was doing when I totally did not while also sharing my daily life online became too much and ultimately I just had to step away from sharing on YouTube. Short form content and little Instagram posts allowed me to share what I wanted and give off the appearance of “everything’s okay” when it totally wasn’t.
After over six months of struggling I finally found help in counseling and therapy. I feel more like myself now than ever before, so we’re ready to evaluate some of those changes I made and decide if we can get some of our previous “normalcy” back.
We lost focus on why we were doing it
Vlogging has always been a means of memory keeping for us, but sharing online and caring about the opinions of others slowly sent us down a path of forgetting our true purpose. We focused on creating videos that others wanted to watch rather than just creating videos to have as memories. I remember planning out shots and thinking up story lines that would make the videos entertaining but gave me little wiggle room to feel authentic and like myself.
Feeling the pressure to be a perfect mom and present myself in that way online created a divide in our purpose for these videos. I wanted to share real life, but not the parts of me struggling (which was most of the time). So, we lost focus on why we were even doing this and decided that stepping back and just not sharing at all was the best course of action moving forward.
Our plans for the future
I honestly truly 100% do NOT want to make any promises… but that being said, I do have this desire to share again. Baby #2 is on his way and will be here soon and thinking about not sharing these moments has me kind of sad. We have so much content from when we were pregnant the first time that we aren’t ever going to have with this pregnancy. I’m getting more and more okay with that, but there are still times when I want to pick up the camera and share. This is why I’m not making any commitments but I do want to come come back to vlogging.
Our tentative plan is to continue making short form content like Instagram Reels and YouTube shorts, while also having long weekly vlogs. These weekly vlogs won’t have any theme or storyline or pressure on them to share something in particular. Just a vlog of our entire week and the moments when I felt like picking up the camera.
I think that this will be managable and easy to maintain even though it’s long form content because we’re simply piecing together clips from our week rather than trying to make some elaborate video about a certain theme. I’m also doing so much better mentally that I don’t mind sharing the messy bits or showcasing that sometimes I just don’t know what I’m doing as a mom. All of this will allow to get back to the focus of why we started vlogging to begin with—to share our lives and document our every day moments.
