Why am i nervous? Maybe it's because it's been forever since you filmed. Hey everyone, Marisa
here and welcome if you are watching this video by some miracle, I hope you're all doing well. So,
it's literally been so long since I last posted a video that I got an email from YouTube yesterday,
um, letting me know that it's been six months since I uploaded and that I've actually fallen
below the um like partner program requirements and so if I don't kind of do something in the next 30
days they're going to basically unenroll me from the program. So full disclosure, yes I am kind of
making this video to kind of get the ball rolling again and hopefully make it so that I don't have
to reapply to the program but the other reason that I'm making this video is that I genuinely did
not mean to take a six-month break from posting videos. It was unplanned and unexpected I feel
like this year has completely flown by and I can guarantee you that every every month this year
as I have kind of set up my planning system for the month, I have written down the videos that I
want to make that month and then by the time I get around to even thinking about filming or editing
anything it's already like the 20th of the month and i'm like where where is time going. Is this
something that happens when you get older like does time start to literally move faster i don't
know but that's kind of what it feels like so i would really like this video to serve as kind of a
jumping off point to kind of see if i can get back into the swing of making videos and actually just
to give a little bit of context before i continue rambling at you um i'm not really sure who's gonna
end up seeing this video i'm obviously hoping that this gets pushed out to subscription boxes
if you are still subscribed to me but if you are just a random viewer um who has stumbled across
this video um hi like i said at the beginning my name is marissa i have been posting videos
on this channel since 2013 2014 so we are like nine years in roughly which is absolutely bonkers
when i started this channel it was predominantly a booktube channel meaning i talked about books
and reading i did a lot of reviews and tag videos and um monthly wrap-ups and things of that sort
and then as time went on i also started incorporating like anime content and some like
journaling and planning content um because those are also uh aspects of my life that i am quite
passionate about and really enjoy sharing with people as time has gone on my content creation has
gotten increasingly sporadic i think it started to get bad in like 2018ish and then by last
year it was really really bad and i think this year might be an all-time high because i posted
one video go me but i have definitely had little flurries of activity and then i've dropped off
for like months at a time unannounced unplanned just long video making hiatuses and honestly every
time i hit one of those video making skins i think maybe this is it maybe this is like the universe
telling me that this is not something that i prioritize anymore it's not something that i want
to spend time and effort on anymore um because you know there is that old adage like if you if it's
important to you you will find a way find a way to make time for it um and obviously i have not been
prior prioritizing or making time for making videos i also noticed that a lot of the
community the booktube community specifically that i kind of came up with um has started to
kind of disappear off the internet a little bit um and that makes sense i mean i'm going to be 31
in september so you know we're not teens anymore we're not even in our early 20s anymore um but a
lot of the booktube community that started around the same time i did in like 2013 2014 2015 um
people who i watched religiously and trusted for their reviews like there's only a handful of us
that are still making videos um and probably an even smaller number of those same people are
making videos regular regularly well one thing hasn't changed i still can't say that word so i
think between feeling a little adrift without a strong sense of community anymore and just
life getting in the way of making videos i felt very conflicted about about keeping this channel
going and yet every single time i feel ready to actually throw in the towel and just say
you know what we're done making videos i get a little spark of inspiration and i think you
know what that would make a really cool video or that would that would be a video idea that
i would like to watch and make um and therefore i have stuck around in this weird limbo situation
so consider this video my formal application to get back into video making um i i'm not really
gonna set like a strict quota for myself but it would be awesome if i could get maybe like
a random video and a monthly wrap-up or roundup um up on the channel i think that would just like be
a really great way to start i think another reason i might be feeling freshly inspired right now is
that i'm actually back in my own space again um so during the pandemic um in like 2020 um i moved in
with my brother so we were the dynamic duo and while he was really accommodating towards me
creating videos and other content um like really good about you know i needed him to be quiet for
an hour or i needed to film downstairs so he had to be upstairs um i just was really creatively
uninspired in the unit that we were living in i should specify i was specifically uninspired to
create videos in that space because it was really quite dark we didn't get any direct sunlight
and in my bedroom in particular i feel like i got like three hours of good
sunlight in a quieter time of day and i could just never make filming work around that very awkward
window and sound schedule we had a lot of kids in the neighborhood and while obviously like everyone
was at home for two years i can understand they need to like go outside and scream there
was literally like never a quiet moment in which filming was a good idea trevor my brother was um
still recording a podcast with his friend at the time and they literally would record at 10 o'clock
at night because there was no other quiet time during the day i did make a few vlogs at the end
of last year when i was starting to relaunch my etsy shop and i think you can tell in those videos
that the lighting in the whole unit was just poor like it was it was really hard to film anything i
feel it felt like everything looked super grainy especially because i still film on my iphone i've
never taken the leap to buy a camera um i just felt like it made everything more difficult and
was therefore a huge like the amount of friction between me having an idea and actually making
the video was too great and ultimately i basically never overcame it but my brother's actually trying
to move out of state so um as of like a week ago i am back in an apartment of my very own i
am so very very lucky to have found this unit i am a third story unit so it's a little bit warm
in here i'm not gonna lie i'm a little bit sweaty right now but um like this whole wall on the side
is all windows i have three little like port windows i guess you could say along the top of
this wall and then there are also two huge windows in my bedroom plus more port windows so there's
really not a bad room to film in in this house like i could even film well the house unit um
i keep in film in the kitchen if i really really wanted to there's probably enough light in there
it's one got good lighting two it's for the most part really quiet here especially during the day
so i think um i could even see myself getting up a little early before work to home videos in here
i do have at least one video from the old place pre-filmed um it was the netflix anime challenge
it was the next installment in that series so that will be edited and put up at some point i'm still
gonna use that footage um but for now that's the tentative plan that's what's happening man
um i'm just feeling really creatively inspired right now i've been doing a ton of art making
um like in the evenings after work and i have been actually reading a little bit again uh so
i'm just i feel like i feel like i'm finally hit the the light at the end of the tunnel after like
kind of a weird last couple of years and um yeah i'm excited to get back at it so i didn't mean
to ramble that long um because originally this video was gonna be an unhaul because when i moved
into this place i swear i didn't have this many books when i packed like i had 14 boxes of books
um which for a third story walk up i really tipped my movers well because 14 boxes of bucks 12 14
boxes something like that i didn't buy anything more in between moving out and moving into this
place and somehow not everything fit on the bookshelves i think what happened was i actually
put my cookbooks on a shelf instead of just like randomly stacked on a table somewhere so that's
probably where i lost a bit of shelf space but i'm also feeling a bit overwhelmed by my physical
owned tbr right now i have a whole setup on notion where i'm tracking like all of my own books
whether they're read or unread and in the unread category right now i have like 262 unread books
which is too many and it's kind of it feels like actually after carrying them up the stairs it
literally feels like it's weighing me down so i have decided that i'm gonna be a little bit more
hardcore about getting rid of books in the coming days um i kind of only want to keep
things that i think i might go back to or that i um just you know feel like i don't want to let go
um but if it's kind of like a okay book then i'm i'm actually going to start letting some
stuff go because quite frankly it was a very long drawn out painful moving experience and
the worst part of it literally was just moving the books so we're gonna see if we can kind of control
the collection i've been really good about not buying more books but i would like the option to
add a book or two here there and not feel like what are you doing you knucklehead you have no
room for them anyways so um i think i'm still gonna tackle a little unhaul at the end here if
you're still watching okay let's go this is a very random collection of things um
let's start off with the most random i have two hardy boys books these are not obviously the
original hearty boys series these are from what year were these from these were from
2005. i think my brother got these for me at his school's scholastic book fair so super mega
throwback um but i kept these for years and years they've been to like two different apartments with
me um because they're fun and they were really enjoyable quick reads to read when i was in like
middle school and i don't know why but i never felt like i was ready to get rid of them um and
now i do feel like i'm ready to get rid of them so i might flip through them one more time before
i take them to the library to donate um but yeah i'm getting rid of both of these i only ever read
these two books in the series um but i felt like they were a decent updating of kind of classic
characters for a 2005 audience i'm sure if i go back and read one of these now it might seem super
super out of date but um at the time i remember it being like hip and young and like this one
this one talks about the big air games which i think is supposed to be like a take on the x
games and then this one was like in a desert cult so they were fun
i mean like definitely for middle school early high school marissa i was like heck
yeah these are fun books but um just don't need to lug these around with me anymore
but i'm also getting rid of some shakespeare um so i took a full course on shakespeare in
college i had a fantastic professor who made shakespeare really interesting and approachable
and um funny uh which granted shakespeare is actually decently funny if you can get around
just trying to figure out what his characters are saying um but to be completely honest i do
not remember this one at all this is cymbeline um i don't remember if i read this in college or
in high school um but i'm never gonna read it again like honestly i'm never gonna read it again
i have a giant collection of all of shakespeare's works like in one big gigantic tomb um
tome tome not tomb oops tome i have a huge tome of the collected works of william shakespeare because
i was the english book award winner in high school and it's got like my name inscribed and
like it's signed by all the english teachers from my high school so i don't want to get rid of that
um so i don't need that giant book plus this little thing that i'm never gonna read again
i'm also getting rid of the tempest which is i think this was when barnes and noble first started
doing their like annotated shakespeare's completely honest never read this one
um vaguely don't nope i'm not even gonna pretend don't even know what it's about um i'm just gonna
get rid of it because like i said i have the giant shakespeare if i ever really wanted to read it
i would but honestly i probably won't oh wait dude i have notes in here
never mind take that i take that back i have read this i just don't remember it so getting rid of it
then to continue the utter randomness i am getting rid of a brown man in russia lessons learned on
the trans siberian by vijay menon this was sent to me for review by glagoslov publications which
is a uk-based publisher that focuses primarily on russian and like other slavic um works now i like
i said receive this review i received it over five years ago at this point i have no real interest in
reading this anymore and it's been long enough that i feel like they just know a review isn't
coming i actually have quite a few review copies on my bookshelves that i really need to
get through because i've had them for years now and i do feel bad about those um but i'm just i'm
probably not going to read this so i'm just going to get rid of it i will donate it to my local
library and i'm sure it will find a good home and then lastly i have an entire series here that i
i'm kind of sad to be getting rid of but i just know i'm not gonna go back and reread it
and that is the last policeman trilogy by ben h winters now this was published by quirk books
and this was actually like one of the first pieces of um review material i was ever sent
in my career career as a booktuber um this uh i believe came with the first two books first
because you can see the editions are slightly different um and then when this came out later
the third book i did receive this separately um i have read books one and two and i have never
actually finished book three which is how i know that i'm never actually going to go back to reread
the series in its entirety now this is a kind of interesting series it's a series um set in a
i wouldn't say post-apocalyptic it's like an ongoing apocalypse
and everybody's kind of been like screw the law squirrel morality screw just normal
social norms um except for one man who is the last policeman who is still investigating crime
um so it was quite enjoyable from when i remember the first book at least um i don't
really remember much about the second book except that it definitely like got weirder and i don't
remember anything about the third book so i just think that i will donate these like as a set and
hopefully um they will either go to the library or they will go as a set with somebody um in
like the local library book shop um but i yeah i just don't i honestly don't think
i will ever go back to reread these and i do believe the only reason i have lugged them to
three different apartments at this point is just that they were the first some of the first review
books i ever received and um they're a little sentimental in that in that way but i'm trying
to be better about letting them go so that was my mini unhaul as well as a little life check-in
um thank you for letting me ramble at you and if you have made it this far in the video super mega
shout out to you thanks very much i honestly have no idea who's actually going to see or sit through
this mess of a video i honestly don't remember how i ended these videos so that's all for me folks i
hope you are having a fantastic day wherever you are that's how i do it i hope you have a fantastic
day wherever you are and i will hopefully see you in the next video okay bye for now bye oh gosh
you