Mid 2013, a time I was saying goodbye to my YouTube channel, which I had started with a friend. Why? Long story short, we both got busy with our other commitments, that there was just no time to work on video ideas, film and edit them.

I had gone to America (at the time) prepared that I’d be filming my travels. I had done extensive research on the spots that I was visiting. As my trip progressed I collected more and more footage. But there was a little ache in my heart, what’s the point in taking videos when there won’t be a channel. I wasn’t really sure if I had the confidence to start my own channel and upload videos frequently.

After our trip, weeks passed and months flew, before I knew it, it was already October. I was constantly asked if I had sorted out the footage so it could be deleted off the memory card. My response would always be I’ll look into it next week. It wasn’t that I was so busy that I didn’t have the time to look at it, I simply wanted to avoid it.

One fine day, I sat down and told myself to just play around with the footage from the first city, San Francisco. I tried making it into a story of some sort. How else could you possibly give out as much information as possible about what to do when visiting a city. And after a few hours San Francisco video was born. It wasn’t the best video, no not at all. But none the less it was my first step towards a new beginning. My mind started bursting with more video ideas related to my American travel. I spent some time to check my footage, and see if there were any other videos I could do apart from the ones I had already planned.

Slowly and steadily, my American trip videos came to life. It was time to start looking into creating a channel. How do I start a channel again? I seemed to have suffered a temporary memory loss. I didn’t know the first thing to do when it came to creating a channel. I started at the beginning, create a new Google account which would be dedicated to my YouTube channel. After that it was a matter of just sitting down with calm and clear mind and working through a check list of actions that needed to be done when creating a channel. Thus, on the 26th of January 2014, my YouTube channel, MiliG channel was born.

The United States will always have a special place in my heart. Not only is it one of my favourite countries, that I would love to visit and explore again, but it is also the starting point for my YouTube channel.

My aim was for this channel to primarily be a travel channel with other youth related videos from time to time. I branched out and did videos on topics that in my opinion would resonate with the youth. These included rants and movie reviews. However, I never enjoyed doing these videos solo. It was something I enjoyed doing when I was running a channel with a friend. It’s easier to bounce off each other’s energy when there’s two people making such videos, and to present it in a comical way. Frantically, I started brainstorming, what other travel related videos could I possibly do. At the time I didn’t know how many more upcoming trips there would be or how often would they happen. I contemplated whether presenting videos on travel using photos would be a good idea. Of course it wouldn’t. So I thought, well when you go travelling, you need a place to stay so why not start a section called Hotel Reviews. 

By this time I had made city videos, rants, movie reviews and hotel reviews. I was not enjoying making rants and movie reviews at all. I struggled to be creative with them. I desperately needed another travel related section which would ultimately pursue me to make more travel related videos. This is when I started making travel tips videos. These seemed to be a hit from day 1. But as with YouTube sometimes your videos are a hit and sometimes they are a miss. In my opinion, travelling to any city and/or country comes with it’s own set of tips. If you’re heading to somewhere soon, check out the playlist below to see if I have provided tips to travel to that particular place.

Now days, I only upload videos related to travel. Whilst my other videos i.e. rants and movie reviews are still live, they are stories no longer told. My journey of finding my YouTube channel and channeling what goes up there has been long and painful. At the start there was a lot of adrenaline, and within 2-3 months into it I decided to start doing two videos a week. The quality of my videos deteriorated. One thing about me is that if I’ve made a commitment I will do my best to honour it. Doing two videos per week drove me insane, and suddenly I decided to do 3 videos per week. These decisions were mainly because I wanted to drive more traffic to my channel. I wanted people to gain an understanding about travelling to certain cities. I was all over the place. I put too much pressure on myself and I lashed out. This ultimately caused me to go on a hiatus.

This is when my love hate relationship with YouTube began. I wanted to make videos yes, but the thought of making them three times a week and getting less than 10 views was too time consuming and not enough of an incentive to keep going. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. There were times, I just wanted to click on that delete button and start anew but how would that help? I decided I just needed some time to relax and think and something would occur which would spark some inspiration again and that happened time and time again.

The moral of the story, the year long journey has not been easy (it’s been one and a half years now). There were times I wanted to stop but it would always be at such moments, when I would either receive a really beautiful comment from someone who’d watched a video or an email asking my advice or just something that I never expected. It was this that kept me going just that one extra day. YouTubeing has helped me branch out and do other things as well, including this blog and if there was a way I could do this for a living I would. For now, as a hobby is just fine. As I write this blog, I’m gearing up for my next achievement with my channel, which is 100 videos.

Whether you’ve been a subscriber from the start or you’ve just come across this blog, I appreciate the time you’ve spent watching/reading my content. I hope my videos help you with your travels near and far and you’re able to get some tips and hey may be I could get some from you too! Before I leave, here’s a quick video I made, showcasing where we’ve been together in the one year.

Until next time,

MiliG