LegendOfWinning@LegendOfWinning
7 years ago, I was still living in my mom’s house, preparing to move out. And because of the way the house was built, my brother’s room was close enough to where I never felt comfortable recording while anyone was home, because I am self-conscious about my speech impediment. Also, I genuinely didn’t want to bother anyone by talking for hours while trying to finish a video.
Unfortunately, that same grace wasn’t given to me one night while I was trying to record a video about the Sixers being eliminated from the playoffs. My mom and brother were having a conversation loud enough to get picked up on my microphone. At the same time, I also had a SeatGeek obligation to fulfill, so I needed to get videos out ASAP.
So I packed up my setup and rented an Airbnb.
On the drive there, I kept thinking maybe I was doing too much. Maybe I should just wait another day to record. Those thoughts only got louder once I arrived. The Airbnb had no furniture and tiled floors, so the echo was unbearable. At that point, I was already down over $100, and honestly, I felt defeated. I kept thinking about just going back home and recording tomorrow.
But I kept trying to piece together another idea.
I thought about getting a hotel room, but with the rooms attached, I could potentially get kicked out for recording while people were trying to sleep.
And then my dumbass came up with the greatest idea ever...
Why not just get a motel room with an end unit
So I drove all around Riverdale, College Park, and eventually landed in Union City, where I luckily found a cheap raggedy motel. They had a vacant end unit, and nobody was in the room next door either.
I got everything set up, sat down to record, and immediately realized it was still echoing. To make matters worse, the motel was so close to the highway that you could occasionally hear cars flying by too.
I felt like such a dumbass lol
I stress ate for like an hour and didn’t even want to go back home because I was embarrassed that I couldn’t even record a video, but right before I packed everything up, I had one last idea.
I grabbed every pillow in the room and surrounded the microphone to cancel out the echo and background noise... it actually worked. I recorded and edited until 11am, right before I had to check out and got a video out that day
Looking back at that night, this is so dumb lol... At the time, I was still uploading on my original channel, and my upload schedule was inconsistent, so I genuinely had no idea how the videos would perform.
It took me years to find this photo again, so every time I thought back to this moment, I always wondered why I was so persistent.
Maybe it was because I knew the inevitable conversation about what I was doing with my life was coming from my mom as she didn't really know what YouTube was
Or maybe it was because Agent was constantly blowing up my phone trying to figure out where we were going to live together.
But now that I’ve found the photo again, I vividly remember what I was actually feeling that night.
I didn’t care if I failed Agent, I didn’t care if I failed my mom
The reason I took that photo and kept it to myself was because I never wanted to feel like I failed myself by quitting.