Chasing Dreams: A YouTube Channel Record

Baby Steps

Now, back in 2013, I was introduced to the YouTube channel called Jacksepticeye by my now ex girlfriend's younger sister. If by some strange reason you have no idea who that is, he is an Irish youtuber that caught my eye one day while playing a game called Happy Wheels.

I quickly came to love his over the top attitude, and wacky antics as he reacted almost in a hysterical manner at what had happened in the games he played. I loved them so much to the point that on several occasions, I went out and purchased the games he would be covering at the time.

All the while that my time on YouTube grew longer and longer, a thought occured in the back of my mind. "What if I tried to make my own YouTube channel?"

You see while back in high school, I had two very strict and overbearing parents, who were both very quick in their methods of telling me if one of my dreams made no sense, or was just plain stupid. So, out of fear for what they'd say to me, I quickly dismissed the idea as stupid and childish.

Now as the years passed me by, the thought would come up now and again, and I would occasionally find myself daydreaming about how cool it would be to have my very own YouTube channel, and how good it would make me feel to be able to entertain thousands of people, and maybe inspire dreams in others. But, as always, I called it a stupid dream.

In fact, it wasn't until the middle of 2018 that I finally decided to jump off the deep end and start up my channel. I happened to be working at a nursing home in their Maintenance Department, when I became friends with a woman who worked in the Admissions Department. We would have these off the wall conversations, with a few meme wars mixed in here and there for kicks.  Eventually she told me that she and her sister had decided to make a YouTube channel podcast called Socially Awkward Sessions. Seeing them take the leap brought back my old memories, and made me regret not jumping off sooner.

So a couple of days later, and I had decided to pick up my old Airsoft call sign as Archangel. The name Archangel itself is a reference to one of my favorite Mass Effect characters, Garrus Vakarian, plus I was the Airsoft team sniper, so it made sense.

Into the world was birthed Archangel Gaming. The channel name that I had fantasized over for years was finally into the world. I began doing mobile let's plays by using the DU Recorder app to screen capture the mobile games I happened to be playing at the time. I even messed around with the Cyberlink Power Director app to edit my videos together, and to make an intro.

I was so proud that I immediately told my friends, and co-workers, and my fiance. The channel launched in late September of 2018, and was only the first stepping stone on a long journey that still isn't anywhere close to being over.

Naturally, as with anything, I went through a honeymoon phase with my channel as I set myself up with a nearly impossible to keep up with work schedule. Three videos a week, and for the first three weeks, that was easy as pie. Three videos? No problem. I'll just record one week in advance so if anything happens, I'll be able to bounce back. So things were going along pretty smoothly for a while, and then at the beginning of October, I got down with a bad case of Strep Throat. It was so violent in fact, that I couldn't even speak. It even brought me to tears whevener I had to breathe through my mouth.

And so, for a week, my throat incapacitated me, and prevented me from recording videos of any kind. Once I was up and on the mend, I still had no time to record, because I had to pack for a family vacation. While on vacation, I was unable to edit anything as to keep this a secret from my parents, whom are going to continue to be an issue until late October 2019.

So I eventually just fell off the hype train, and stagnated for a while in limbo for what felt like an eternity. All of November I pushed on without a single video. Then, as if a gift from the heavens, Rockstar released Red Dead Redemption 2. I spent an ENTIRE month playing through it, and enjoying the world that Rockstar had created. Close to the end, I came across a channel called Prestige Clips that linked a website I'd never heard of before called, XboxDVR.com. I became curious and entered the site which, to my surprise, allowed me to download my game captures straight to my phone.

This revelation prompted me to change my Channel name to Archangel Entertainment, and for the longest time, it stayed just that. I took my Red Dead clips, wrote a script, found some more video editing apps, and made my first game review. Since then, I continued on, making reviews to video games with the much easier to handle video deadline of at least one a month. That way I could do more if time allowed, but I would ultimately only be morally obligated to produce one review a month.

This went on for a while, and I actually managed to gain 10 subscribers during that time. Although, this was working for me, I had been told by several of my friends that my channel was difficult to find. I searched my channel and found out that there was a much larger channel named Archangel Entertainment, with a little over 5,000 subscribers. This discovery helped me to understand why nobody could find me. So, officially I changed the channel name for the third, and final time to what it currently is now, TitanFire Entertainment.

And that's about it for the rough origin story. But as the description stated, this story is far from over. I'll be sure to come back and update this regularly to keep everyone interested. And if anybody actually does find this and read it, then thank you for making it this far. I'd love it if you'd drop by the channel and at least give it a view.

Until next time :)