Just some thoughts~

Hello lovely people, I just wanted to share a little thing I've been struggling with! You may have noticed that I haven't been uploading as much over the past couple of months. The reason for this is that I've been struggling a lot with motivation after I received a strike on my YouTube account.

My "Arlecchino Loses Control" video was taken down after some noises were mistaken for sexual noises. YouTube actually took BACK my strike after reviewing the audio and deciding that it still followed YouTube Community Guidelines, so I THOUGHT this meant my video was completely fine. Since the viewer count had been extremely low due to the week-long review it took, I removed and reuploaded it. Then my video was taken down again despite it being literally the same video, and my channel received the strike again. But this time, sadly, YouTube decided the video did violate their Community Guidelines and the strike has been active on my account :'(

What this means is that my videos are lowered in priority recommendations, reduced in search rankings, and drastically affects my channel's ability to get seen by viewers. If you go to my YouTube, you'll notice that the past 3 videos have dropped 90% in views, and this is likely because of the active strike on my account. I've tried appealing multiple times because the video definitely doesn't violate Community Guidelines, but to. no avail. So I have to wait until the strike naturally disappears, which will be in mid-May. I wish I hadn't reuploaded the video so that my account would remain strike-free, but I can't turn back time, so I'll try to be patient.

But yeah, this is really affecting my motivation, to be honest! I spend quite a lot of time writing scripts, recording audios, and editing. A single 15-minute audio can take around 7 hours in total from start to finish these days, and it's really demotivating when the video doesn't receive as many views as I thought it would. I try not to think about that too much since my goal is really just to make people feel relaxed and have a safe space to come to, but it can be hard not to. Ahhh!

I've also been struggling with several back-to-back medical issues these past few months, which just exacerbates this state of demotivation. Grrr! But I'm doing my best to stay healthy and take care of myself, even if some days can be a huge struggle. My body is still recovering from 2 health conditions, and I'm getting a lot of energy back.

But anyway, I'm so incredibly grateful to you all for sticking around. It really means a lot to me that you are still enjoying my audios and supporting me! I'm really excited for the strike to disappear from my account and will do my best to keep my head up. Thank you so much!! I'm so happy that you are here with me!