A toast to the new year

Hello, everyone!

Apparently 2024 is on its way out - which doesn’t seem possible! But unless my calendar is lying to me, that is in fact the case. I’ve never been one to do year-in-review type posts or anything like that, and boy has this been... a year - but it has genuinely been one of the most impactful for me, both professionally and personally. So what the hell, getting a little sappy I guess.

The new office/production facility/warehouse/studio (still haven’t really decided what it is) was the best decision I’ve made in a long time. This job has never really felt that real to me - making videos was the thing I did in my off time for fun, not a career - and so it never gelled in my brain as The Thing That I Do. Simply having “work” be a place that is only for work has done wonders for my mental health. And getting to say “I have an office!” grants me some feelings of legitimacy/professionalism which, though I sometimes question my motives to desire those feelings, I can’t say isn’t refreshing. Impostor syndrome never ends, folks!

All of this is thanks to you. TC would absolutely not be possible without your support - so thank you.

And could you believe I have had the office for a year? Lease started Jan 1 - wow. I can confidently state that at this time I am fully settled-in, with routines, even! Though (and this is a big reason I’m writing this text post) I unfortunately have one of those chaotic brains which means the stuff around me which is not relevant to the task at hand becomes invisible. Which means… the office is in a state and needs a bit of a reset. That, combined with a few personal projects which suddenly needed to move up to right now before I then join a family road trip, means I’ll have to deprioritize Content Making for a short while. January is usually a pretty good month for YouTube creators to slow down, so I might as well take the opportunity to get things sorted. But I wanted to make sure I made my intentions clear before anyone thought I had disappeared - you may not hear from me until around the middle of January.

2025 will hopefully be many things but one thing it will be is The Year of the Car - I have long been wanting to make videos on the amazing complexity of (not-that) modern engine management systems. You can imagine the many motivations I have for that - lots of misconceptions out there and persnickety opinions I’d like to challenge! - and now that I have the space to film a car in my own controlled environment, well I’ll be on the hunt for something. I have some pretty specific things I’m looking for so depending on how the search goes I may enlist your help finding a good match, but I’ll let you know if it comes to that.

But, before this drags into the next decade, I hope you all have a happy and fulfilling new year. And thank you so much for your support!

-Alec