As you all may or may not know, I'm a YouTuber.
My YouTube channel is /ThePrincessofVariety.
It can be found under Variety Princess as well.
My YouTube channel wasn't always what it is today. I initially started my channel with a completely different idea in mind. I also had no idea it would become what it is today -- something I'm so proud of and so passionate about.
Let's take a trip down memory lane.
First YouTube Channel: How it All Started
To be fair, I have to give my ex props. Even though he's a pretty horrible human being (sorry, I couldn't resist). He is the one that pushed me to invest my time into YouTube. It all started back in 2013. I needed something better to do with my time. A new hobby. But I wasn't sure what. I had done some random YouTube videos here and there. Such as trying to get noticed by Samuel Larsen when he was on The Glee Project or trying to get noticed by Kingsley so he'd include my video in his Overexposed series. But I had never really taken YouTube all that seriously.
Sure, it crossed my mind from time to time, but I didn't really know what it took. And back then, being a "YouTuber" wasn't really a "thing". There were people on YouTube, but nobody really knew too much about YouTube back then. In other words, it wasn't looked at as a "career path" the way it is now. It was a place people posted videos. That's it. People got judged heavily for being a YouTuber back then. Now, most people want nothing more than to be one.
I thought all you had to do was be pretty and funny to be "one of those YouTube people". As you can see by my tumblr post back in April of 2013. 
Since childhood, I loved being in front of cameras. I've always had lots to say and that I wanted to tell the world, and I love helping people. I believed this was a good mix for a channel.
I didn't realize the amount of sheer time and dedication I would eventually end up putting into this thing called YouTube. My ex convinced me to make a channel when I expressed interest in creating one. My plan was to take it seriously this time. It was time for me to figure out what my channel was going to be about.
Around this time, I had no idea that gaming was a thing on YouTube. Everyone that I watched did funny skits, gave advice, or ranted about random things they encountered in their daily lives. I chose something that resonated well with me. Since I've always loved giving advice, this was the perfect time for me help other people out. I am a Virgo after all, so the want to help people fix their issues comes second nature to me.
Change of Plans
After deciding on this idea, I realized that nobody knew me. I had nobody to ask me for advice. It never crossed my mind that I would actually have to build a following first for people to not only feel comfortable enough to come to me and ask for advice, but also to find me in the first place. This resulted in my first video being some random video asking people to send me ideas of what to post. I know, lame right? Eventually, I ended up hiding this video altogether. Nobody sent me any ideas, as you may have guessed.
This resulted in me posting random videos concerning different interests of mine. I started out with my favorite show, Bad Girls Club. Season 10 was coming to an end, and I thought it would be fun to talk about the season and my thoughts on the upcoming reunion. After posting various BGC videos, I posted a random video giving new viewers on my YouTube channel an idea of who I am.
Shortly after this, I posted a video with tips for people transitioning from high school to college. Granted, I was finishing my last semester of high school at the time. Things were coming along and I was getting over 1,000 views on a few of my videos. Being on YouTube more as a YouTuber was causing me to consume more YouTube content posted by other creators. I was about to discover something that changed my life.
Wait, gaming is a thing?
I don't know how I came across Lifesimmer, but little did I know, finding her channel was going to change my life. Lifesimmer was a girl I came across on YouTube that had an entire channel dedicated to playing The Sims. As someone who grew up playing Sims, I was hype. Lifesimmer didn't use facecam and simply recorded let's plays of her playing the game. I remember thinking her style of playing was so cool, her sense of humor was great, and her voice was so pretty!! She inspired me so much.
I researched everything I needed to record Sims content on my crappy laptop. Once I taught myself how to, I started posting Sims content on my channel. Yes, I went from posting Bad Girls Club reviews to Sims videos. However, that's not to say I stopped posting my BGC videos or my random tips/advice videos. I continued doing what I was doing before. I was just adding to the mix. My Sims videos would get thousands of views.
Even though I had no idea what I was doing, had crappy equipment, and was releasing content that didn't have the greatest quality, I was having fun and that's all that mattered. YouTube was starting to become something I did sporadically in my free time, but took seriously nonetheless. Did I take it as seriously as I could have? Of course not. But I took it seriously enough for a high schooler that had no idea what they were really doing.
Eventually, I reached 100 subscribers. To most, that sounds like much of nothing. To me, it meant everything because I never thought I'd reach 100 subs? Getting 100 subs on YouTube is actually pretty easy, and I could do it a million times over. But at the time, it was the biggest most unobtainable thing in world to me. That was when I realized, "Wow, I can really do this."
A Reoccurring Theme
Eventually, I dumped my sucky boyfriend I had been dating at the time. Good riddens, buddy. I appreciated all he had done to encourage me, but he had some serious issues that I no longer wanted any part of. So now, it was time to rely on my encouragement from myself.
When I first created my YouTube channel, like an idiot, I made the channel name my name + his last name. Deep down, I knew I was making a huge mistake, but I also wanted to believe that he and I would stay togethurrrrrrrrr forevurrrrrrr. Even though I was only 17 at the time and he was....a complete psychopath? Enough of shading him though. My point is, I wanted to believe the name I chose wasn't going to impose any issues later.
Boy, was I wrong. I wanted nothing more than to change my URL and my channel name, but I didn't have the option of doing that. I had branded myself as this particular name. My YouTube URL was that name. My intro in my videos had that name. There wasn't much I could really do. And this was before YouTube gave you the option to change your URL one more time like they do now. Besides, I needed to change a lot more than my URL. I needed a whole new YouTube channel, sadly.
This wasn't my plan. I never wanted to have to start fresh. I had put so much time and effort into this channel that it crushed me to know the fate of it all. Most people advised me to just keep the YouTube channel and grow it more and then once I had a lot more viewers, switch over to a new channel so that more people would follow me to that new channel.
But my logic was that it would be a waste of my time for me to post a bunch of new videos on this channel that would eventually be dead to me? Why post new videos under a name I don't want to be known as? If I start out as this particular name, a lot of the people that subscribe to me are going to know me as that name. This name, I wanted nothing to do with. I thought it would be much smarter to transition to a new channel ASAP, so that I could start fresh right then and there.
I continued posting a bunch of random videos on my channel including but not limited to gaming, Bad Girls Club reviews, advice, movie reviews, tags/challenges, etc. while I took the time to figure out my next step. Eventually, my YouTube channel started nearing 200 subscribers. I knew I needed to switch channels now. Over time, I was starting to notice a reoccurring theme with my channel. My channel was never niched down to one type of video. I posted a variety of different things. I always advertised my channel and myself as a place where a variety of different things were posted because I liked a variety of unrelated things.
Variety, variety, variety. I just kept seeing that in my head. So I took the time to brainstorm and write out a long list of new name ideas I could brand myself as. There were some random ones in the mix, but a bunch of them were variations of Variety Princess. Princess of Variety, The Princess of Variety, The Variety Princess, etc. I reached out to a friend (now ex-friend but shout out to you, homie) with my list of ideas and asked them which one seemed the coolest or sounded the best. He went with The Princess of Variety. So that's what I went with. Hence my channel URL (youtube.com/ThePrincessofVariety).
The Princess Was Born
It felt so refreshing to start on a clean slate. With a name I actually liked that was the perfect representation of who I am: a girly tomboy that loves tons of different stereotypical, but also not so stereotypical things. I posted a video to my old YouTube channel informing my viewers on there that I was transitioning to a new channel. Many of them followed, which surprised me.
With my new channel, I started taking YouTube a lot more seriously. I upgraded my equipment, brainstormed a lot more ideas, and truly began thinking about what I wanted out of my channel. I didn't really post anymore gaming videos until I had my new channel for a year. My first real gaming content I posted was my let's play of Life is Strange. Up until then, I was posting tags/challenges, discussions/rants, Bad Girls Club reviews, and dance videos.
I went from recording videos on my crappy laptop (on my old channel), to my phone, to buying a DSLR camera, to getting better with my lighting, to where I am now with a setup that I absolutely love (**coming soon**). My channel still consists of all of the things I mentioned before. The only difference is that I don't really post BGC videos anymore, because the show has ended, but who knows what the future holds. There's still tons of Bad Girls Club drama going on that I could make videos about if I wanted to, because it's like the show never ended. I'm actually watching a recent video with some of the girls reacting to embarrassing videos of the other girls right now, while I'm typing this. But I digress.
My channel is a representation of me. Someone who can't and never will fit into a box. Someone who loves tons of different things that someone who's a girl, and also black, might not be "expected" to like or be or "supposed" to like or be. That's what my channel is all about. Showing that it's okay to have a channel that isn't about one thing. Showing that it's okay to not be stereotypical, because society expects you to be and act a certain way based on how you look and what you are.
Here and Now: My YouTube Channel TODAY
My YouTube journey has transpired into something I never would've expected. I now have over 1,000 subscribers on my channel. It has taken me awhile to get here, because for years, I struggled with consistency. Not because I didn't care to do YouTube, but because I had many obstacles in my way that I saw as excuses of why I couldn't create content to my full potential. I'm also a perfectionist, and when you're a perfectionist, doing what you love can also be very draining, because you want everything to be PERFECT.
Nonetheless, I have overcome all of the obstacles I've faced over the years that I felt prevented me from creating content the way I desired to. My channel still consists of a variety of different topics, and always will - however, I've since shifted my content towards a big focus on gaming, because gaming is life. However, as far as I'm concerned, my channel will never only be gaming. Could that change in the future? Of course, but I don't see that happening. Don't be surprised when you see me posting content that has nothing to do with video games.
Speaking of consistency and posting content -- I haven't posted any content on my YouTube channel since the beginning of 2020. As you all may know, I was in the process of moving, and I was staying with a friend temporarily. Unfortunately, a little thing called CORONAVIRUS impacted the entire um.....earth??? and that pushed my move along with a million other plans back significantly, which comes as no surprise. As I stated in my recent Life Update blog post, I got settled into my home a few months ago.
Now that I've been settled in for awhile and decorated my space to my liking, I guess now would be a good time to say, I will be back to YouTube much sooner than you guys think. Could that be tomorrow? Maybe. This upcoming week? Who knows. The week after? Possibly. Just make sure you have my notifications on, because who's to say I don't already have like a months worth of content already recorded and ready to post???? Ya neverrrr knowwwwww. 
Just make sure you're prepared for when that first video drops.
And when I come back this time, there will be consistency. I've spent a lot of time and also money to make sure that I don't have any obstacles or excuses that will hinder me from my passion any longer. But I know everyone says that when they're making a comeback. At this point, it's time to put up or shut up, and my actions will speak much louder than my words.
I have tons of content coming for you guys. More than ever before. All types of different high quality content. So I'll end this by saying.........stay tuned. 
xo babes, Variety Princess
I am so proud of you and how far you’ve come with your channel, and I’m excited to see what you have next for us! I can’t wait to see how much farther it’s going to take you ❤️