You Tube and me #2: Amixem
I am glad I am not the only one hoarding crazy ideas on my phone, just in case.
“This note has sat in my iPhone since 2016”.
That is a quote from Amixem, a French YouTuber I started to follow a few months ago after one of my best friends introduced me to him. Not him in the flesh ( I wish): after she introduced me to his Internet work.
And I hear you ask. But who is this YouTuber and what does he do?
Well, allow me to use another quote from him, he used to introduce himself to a fellow YouTuber: “I am the French MrBeast, but with no money”. I hope you know what he means by that; as in he produces similar type of content, but hopefully not the toxic behaviors of the American Internet superstar that became public in the last weeks.
And circling back to the opening quote of this text: this is how he introduces a video published on his YouTube channel earlier this year.
The concept? He created a treasure island and invited a selection of his subscribers to try and find the treasure hidden on this fake piece of land, not really lost at sea. It was fun to watch, but not my favorite video from him, far from it.
However, the quote from this video stuck with me. I found it incredibly reassuring. It made me look at myself with a kinder and more positive lens.
As this simple sentence made me realize maybe I am not the queen of unfinished projects after all. Maybe my dozen notebooks with half-finished texts, ideas, and concepts scratched on their pages are not proof of all my failures and missed attempts at being creative. Maybe this is not just impossible-to-decipher gibberish.
Maybe I only need to reframe the narrative of these notebooks and their content: they are a wealth of ideas and concepts that only need to mature or that I thought of too early in my creative growth path. At some point, I will be ready to bring them over the finish line.
Browsing the darkened pages of my notebooks now and then is something I should commit to for that very reason. This is the only way I will spot a rough diamond and turn it into a finely polished gem once I am ready.
Of course, some of these pages are just bad ones, let's be honest. But even terrible ones are drafts I can learn tons from. Above all, they are proof of my creative grit.
As I came up with this realization - I need to give myself grace and kindness-, I noticed that this quote was actually a reminiscence of my first year in high school. And of one of my first classes of French literature, more specifically.
It reminded me of the first quote (yes, there is another quote!) our teacher made us write down and that is now rising from the depth of my memory:
« Hâtez-vous lentement, sans perdre courage. Vingt fois sur le métier, remettez votre ouvrage. Polissez-le sans cesse et le repolissez. Ajoutez quelquefois et souvent effacez. »
This valuable piece of advice that I did not dare translate myself (I trust you will be capable of Google-translating it!) is from a 17th-century French literature theorician: Nicolas Boileau.
And I have a feeling it tells the exact same thing as the Amixem’s quote…
Great ideas take time. It takes effort. It requires several attempts and setbacks. You will need to cut out more often than add on. But this is the mark of quality work. And having ideas sleeping for years in a dark drawer does not mean you are poor at what you do. It might even be the opposite.
Go for the long run. Do not sprint for 15 minutes of fading fame. Aim higher and believe in yourself and your ideas. Always. And keep in mind that the best advice and pep talks come from a variety of places and in a variety of forms.
Keep going. Keep trying. Keep falling. And grab that pen again!
Wanna watch one episode or two or more?
Here is the link to Amixem’s YouTube channel.
Curious about the episode with the quote? Just click here.
And just because, here is one of my favorite videos from the latest he published on his channel.