April 17, 2014

ON THE PLUS SIDE

(Thursday writing prompts for “What Does This Remind You Of?” will now be bi-weekly).

Well friends and family, the time has officially come–I officially have my very own YouTube show. And it really did just come out of the clear blue sky and fall into my lap.

A really good friend of mine/website owner/budding entrepreneur named Tone, who I am exceedingly envious of, emailed me a few weeks ago asking if I wanted to be a YouTube host for my very own show.

Well, obvs.

Here’s the down low: Tone’s got a growing website with articles on Sports and Entertainment called Power Ranks, and he’s transitioning to video. He wants to get a few different shows going on the site, so he emailed me out of the blue saying, “I was thinking about some stuff and I realized you’d be perfect for this. Mainly because you have a strong point of view: wanting to help other people. I think you’re ready made to do this thing!”

And I couldn’t believe what I was reading. My ‘I want to help people’ vibe actually got picked up by someone. I mean, when I think about doing any sort of creative side project, I always want to do it by following Simon Sinek’s advice and start with why. Why do I blog? I’ll admit, it’s an outlet for me to siphon out stress from every inch of my body, but it’s also so that people out in the world can rest easy knowing that not knowing what you want to do with the rest of your life is okay. Why do I want to create a website for people with no direction? Because I myself have no direction and I want to freakin’ help people.

So when this YouTube show opportunity came along, I thought, why would I want to create a YouTube show? Because I want to freakin’ help people see things differently, which totally vibes with all of my other projects, and Tone hit it right on the nose. So my show is  called On The Plus Side, and it’s about seeing the ‘plus side’ to your average horrible, day-to-day situations. Because I see a ton of people all of the time stress out about things that shouldn’t need stressing out over. And sometimes the way they  negatively react to exceedingly normal situations just makes things worse.

Now, Tone told me about this weeks ago, but I’m only just writing about this now because I got home from filming it last night and the experience was so flippin’ trippy! After coming up with the idea for the show and writing the first episode, I practiced a bit beforehand and thought dude, I’ve totally got this. But when those lights are in your face, and someone on the other side of the camera is looking at you and signaling “go” it’s like you’re the fucking president about to speak in front of millions of fellow Americans.

You just get so fucking stuck!

Stage fright immediately took hold of me and I couldn’t remember any of my lines. And standing in front of the brightest lights imaginable, you can’t help but wonder if the person on the other side of the camera is counting the lines in your face or potentially watching sweat seep slowly out your pores.

It’s scary!

And even though this guy is a good friend of mine, it’s like I immediately froze up in embarrassment for having to be myself in front of a camera.

The first few times we did the opening bit I had to take like 3 breaks because I couldn’t be myself. I was so flustered. He kept saying things like “Don’t be hard on yourself” and “I can tell when you lose confidence” and those kinds of things just make you want to lose more confidence, let me tell you!

Now as bad as all that sounds, I realized that in order to completely be myself with this entire production, I would really just need to breathe and talk it out with him when I was feeling weird or uncomfortable. Because if you pretend like you’re not nervous and the nerves end up coming out, it’s like you’re living a lie.

So I just told him every time I was feeling the need for a ‘blot’ break to dab my nose and forehead, or when I was feeling like I needed to take a minute before doing the whole thing again. And that made everything easier because he was open to me doing anything I had to do to get into the right mindset.

And I’ll admit, after I did the opening bit 14 times without getting it right, I never thought I’d get into the right mindset. But somehow I caught my stride. I sort of pretended that I was just talking to him and not whoever may stumble upon this show, and it was a lot easier.

But the whole experience was trippy. He even admitted that he understood how hard it was because we are not used to having the attention focused solely on ourselves. (Especially with all of those damn lights). And as much as everyone loves a bit of attention….he was right. I didn’t want to be focused on, and breaking out of that “don’t look at me, don’t judge me” mindset was really tough, but after an hour and a half I was ready to take on anything.

And now I can’t wait for you guys to see it! And Tone is a professional. He’s a perfectionist. This show is going to come out much better than anything I could ever throw together, and I’m super excited to see what he does with it! That being said, it’s scheduled to air this Monday, so you can bet you will be hearing from me shortly after that with a link, some thoughts, and hopefully non-critical feedback.

Hopefully.

The last thing I want to do is be critical of myself because I want to do nothing but love. So if I come out looking worse than I hoped, I’m going to remember how amazing I feel right now for having shed a part of myself that was afraid to step out into the limelight. Dreams are built on fear and vulnerability right?

Good, cause that’s exactly what’s coming.

Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

Latest posts by Monique Muro (see all)

  • http://www.poweranks.com/ Tone Hoeft

    I don’t know who this Monique character is, but I heard she’s mighty talented :-p

    • http://anovelquest.com Monique Muro

      Aw, shucks! :)

  • http://thegoodluckknot.weebly.com Melissa Field

    What!!!! This is awesome! You rock!!! I’m so inspired by this post. You’ve already helped me and your show isn’t even on yet. So cool Monique. Seriously, I’m stoked for this. What a great post too. I could relate to everything you said.

    • http://anovelquest.com Monique Muro

      Aw thanks I’m so glad, Melissa! I just want the show to be positive and helpful, and hopefully it will be! :)

  • Kait Marie

    Can’t wait to see it!!!!!!!!!!!!! <3 <3 <3