Potential Hiatus (Blog) (Patreon)

Hey everyone. I'll likely go over some of this in detail in an update video on the channel at some point but the title of this post pretty much sums up the short version of it all.

For those of you who have supported my channel with pledges, I figured I'd just discuss some of it here first of all.

Chances are my channel is going to be dormant for a while, and I'm not sure for how long exactly. Maybe a couple months? Maybe until next year?

I'll explain why below.

MY DAY JOB:

Obviously 2020 has been a  bit of weird year for everyone, but for me I've had some ongoing problems going on since last year, truth be told.

I don't go into my personal life outside of video creating all that often but for those of you who don't know, I've been pretty unhappy with my day-to-day life for the last year or two now, mainly due to my day job and the unnecessarily stressful nature of it.

Essentially, staff costs are constantly cut, yet the amount of work to do keeps growing... meaning a group of 4-5 people have essentially been left to do 7-8 peoples jobs, all while having queues of up to 40-50 people all angrily telling us that we're not working fast enough.

There's been a lot of frustration, anger and depression on my end thanks to that, and things like constantly covering for members of staff that left 2 years ago, but still have not been replaced... and generally always being the one people look toward every single time there's a gap in the rota that needs filling.

I don't mind doing this every now and then, but it's basically been expected of me to cancel all of my plans every single time I have a day off for the last 3 years now... and I'm fucking sick of it, really.

This is also partly why I was so happy to walk away from my job for 3 months earlier in the year, even without being paid. For the sake of my mental health I'm still glad I did it, and would easily do it again.

All of this, on top of the fact the company was doing basically nothing to protect us from COVID... and to this day aren't really enforcing any social distancing measures within the stores, outside of a few stickers on the floor... so screw it.

A NEW JOB:

I've left.

I found another job, and handed my notice in. I will no longer affiliated with that place in a couple of weeks time.

This does however come with come caveats which I immediately knew would likely affect my channel, and have been sat here stewing about them for several weeks now trying to figure out what I'm going to do.

TIME:

The main thing that is affected is quite literally the amount of time I'm going to have from now on. My previous job was 18-32 hours per week, depending on my overtime.

This meant that (when my days off weren't snatched away from me at the last moment) I'd usually have at least 2 or 3 days, and maybe an extra afternoon free each week to play around with video ideas, and work on them.

My new job is fixed at 40 hours per week, on fixed shift patterns meaning I'll likely only have the "normal" 2 days a week free, along with what little time I'll have during the evenings.

This could be enough time to still make videos but I do think I'm going to have to scale down a few things to realistically still be able to make them on a semi-consistent basis.

TRIAL PERIOD:

Due to the nature of how I found my new job, I'm essentially going to be a temp worker for 3 months. And after that point, I'll be given a  contract to keep the job and become a proper employee of the company.

And, as this is a different kind of job to my previous one... this first 3 months is going to be a lot of training and learning on the job so I'm unsure if I'll really have the energy to do any work on videos after doing entire weeks of this stuff.

Once I've got into the swing of things I can better assess what I'll be able to do with my free time.

CONSTRUCTION WORK NEARBY:

On top of this, there is (as of yesterday...) a new house being built from scratch, around 200-300 meters away from where I'm sat... meaning there's going to be a lot of construction work being done over the next few months, I reckon.

I expect this to be very loud during the day, which means on my days I do have free... I may not be able to record or film anyway, and by the time it's finished in the evening it'll probably be to late in the day to do any of it.

A WEEK OFF, NEXT WEEK... but...

And finally, if all of that wasn't enough... While I do have a week off from my current job next week which would have been my last real chance to solidly work on videos for the next few months....

As of 30 minutes ago while writing this post, a repair has been scheduled for my new PC, which means for the entire week... I'll be without it for up to 2 weeks anyway!

To be fair, it needs doing. Despite much help from a friend, it keeps blue screening, and it seems to be something to do with the installation of Windows itself so... who knows. Not my issues, I'll let them deal with it as it's still under warranty.

So basically EVERYTHING has basically gone wrong at the same time!

CHANGE OF PLANS:

I did tease it last time, but I'll just go ahead and say what that video would have been.

It would have been Spyro: Enter The Dragonfly, with the idea being to tie the videos release into the launch of Crash Bandicoot 4... because it's Spyro 4...

(Which reminds me, holy shit Crash 4 is out next week. I genuinely forgot!)

So, for now I suppose I'll just keep playing other games I'd like to eventually talk about and think up of how things may change from here on out. Ideally I'll keep my production quality high, but probably just scale things down a bit.

Perhaps less of the skits and intros that literally take entire weeks to edit, and focusing more on voiceover segments, talking about the games?

With the new found income I will probably invest in a better camera, and perhaps some lighting and a better capture card for better quality footage? (I'm fortunate in the sense that where I'll be working I'll be able to buy some of those things at a discount too)

But... like I say, things are a little uncertain for myself and the ol' Petronious channel at the moment. Especially in the coming weeks.

I suppose, like everything else this year... the timing of certain events has worked against me. My PC died mid-production of the Destroy All Humans series, right as I had all the time in the world to make those videos, which really set me back... and now it's being sent away for repairs just as I have one last week to make another video.

Which means the last video that might be happening for a while is the Universal Studios one which even now still hasn't broken a thousand views. Oops.

THE PLUS SIDE:

While it's nothing concrete, as I don't like making long-term solid plans these days...

I have been enjoying playing some games I'd like to talk about at some point. And while my new PC is being sent away for repairs, I can at the very least use my old one to continue recording gameplay of those games.

Thanks for the continued support over the years.

Once I am able to make videos again, I will also be re-assessing this Patreon page in regards to how often I make BTS content, or if it's even worth asking people for pledges any more... Like everything else, I'm unsure right now.

Cheers everyone,

- Pete.