Hello, everyone! MD here and I wanted to share the first video that I've posted in a long time…
I'm starting my YouTube channel back up and the goal is to post content consistently. I've enjoyed building and growing Explearning over the course of a year and a half, and as we continue to build that channel, I thought to myself, why not reignite the Mary Daphne channel?
As a content creator, it's a great passion of mine to create content about subjects that I'm inspired to post about regularly.
Full disclosure: as someone with many interests, I've struggled for awhile to find a central theme for the Mary Daphne channel.
When I first started it back in 2009 I was a recent bright-eyed college grad on a Fulbright grant in Turkey, ready to explore the unexplored. Placed in the charming university city of Samsun, I was inspired by the cross-cultural differences and similarities underpinning Turkish and American cultures. So, in the evenings, to unwind after a long day of intensive teaching, I picked up my FlipCam (remember those), sat on my red couch with my red curtain backdrop, and filmed. Then I'd edit my cultural videos and post them on YouTube and Vimeo. It was so much fun that I continued to do that for the entire year, which inspired me to create a fun English as a Second Language (ESL) series called Best Seat in the House for the University TV station, OMU TV. The ESL show showcased various iconic clips from American cinema (i.e., from Wizard of Oz, Splendor in the Grass, Vertigo, etc.) and unpacked various phrases and idioms to teach English through song and video. It certainly was a great foray into show running and great on-camera experience.
It was experiences like those that helped me secure an anchoring position for a major Turkish TV network my penultimate year in Turkey (I worked there from 2009 to 2015), and learned so so much. I'm incredibly grateful for that once-in-a-lifetime experience.
Suffice to say that the numerous jobs I held during my six-year stint in Turkey (mostly Istanbul) did not leave much downtime in the way of creating new content for my YouTube channel. So it basically sat somewhere on the internet, collecting dust.
Then Explearning came along and I was super amped and motivated to create and post consistent content for the YouTube channel because there was a clear path, a clear need, and a clear niche. Clarity is key!! That got super busy, and still is, but now that we have systems in place for it I decided to give myself a new challenge:
Get the Mary Daphne channel up and running.
We were recently on a family “trip” in the woods (read: quarantine retreat), very Summer 2020, wouldn't you say? I kept thinking about what direction I'd like to take the Mary Daphne YouTube channel.
Having a lot of interests is great, but not that ideal when you want to build a YouTube channel.
You'll hear numerous YouTube experts and YouTubers talk inexhaustibly about the importance of finding your niche, and narrowing your focus down to something uber specific.
There are channels that just talk about pickles. Yes, you read that right. Pickles. Not fermented foods more broadly or farmer's market hauls in general, but one specific veggie! Talk about a narrow focus, amirite?
And in the YouTube universe that seems to work. Believe it or not, it's a proven tactic to success on the Tube.
Well, let me tell you. That. is. hard.
If you have a lot of interests and can't narrow your focus for what you'd like to share on YouTube, it's hard.
But it's important and less confusing for people to understand what your channel is about.
So, I thought about the main themes of what interests me. Lifestyle design and insights appeal to me but I'm not a lifestyle blogger or vlogger. I love traveling (but who's doing that now, anyways…yeah so 2020, I know!) and I don't really feel like going through all my old footage…tbh! And I love tea, but I'm by no means a tea expert, and honestly the thought of making every. single. video be about tea and tea preparation kind of bores me…
But you know what I've gotten increasingly interested in the last few years, starting from my late twenties? Health, wellness, fitness, and overall wellbeing.
So that's what I landed on!
I know, I know. It's not quite “niche-niche” but it's something that I don't find myself getting bored of anytime soon.
If you watch, you watch. (And that's totally awesome!). And if you don't, you don't. No biggie.
This channel is a creative outlet for me. It's a place where I can try new filming styles, editing techniques, and share my learnings with people who find this stuff as interesting as I.
I figured I'm doing this stuff anyway in my life that I might as well film it and package it into something maybe raw, maybe pretty and digestible and let it grow. I'm done letting this channel collect dust!
It's fun finding new challenges and finding spaces to be creative. That's my jam.
You know something, I also want to figure out how to “vlog” because I definitely don't know how to do that yet. Might as well try and see what happens. Right? Right.
If you've read this far, thank you. Thanks for being here. I appreciate you.
Alright, so let's explore the unexplored together!
Sparkle strong,
Mary Daphne
Thank you for reading!!
