I’ve started a new YouTube channel, JohnLaceyTV. This isn’t the first additional YouTube channel I’ve started, infact it’s not even the first YouTube channel I’ve started to feature my real name. I wanted to take a moment to explain to you (and myself) why I have started it, why I am using it, and why I’ll continue to use my other account too.

I have JohnLacey.com and JohnLacey.net. This is slightly confusing, but there are reasons for this. Some of them relate purely to my own vanity (being frustrated to discover I’m one of a billion John Laceys on the planet and wanting to try to own the name online). Some of them were practical, logistical… I only registered JohnLacey.net initially because I was moving all my sites and wanted a new email address to use with all my online accounts. There is an element of link building involved too. And these things are all… well, they are what they are, I suppose. But they’re not really that important.

The real difference, in my eyes, is the function of the two sites. And the content. This is my personal blog. This is a dumping ground for random thoughts. I joke that I’d close down my ‘personal blog’ except “where would all my existential angst end up then?” And this is true. JohnLacey.com is obstensibly a professional site for someone who has shunned professional life. I voluntarily left the work force to explore some whims I have. But on that site I write about writing, about wanting to write, I write about creativity, I collect interesting quotes from people I admire. There is a creative focus there because I want to be a creative person. I’ve been trying to express this sentiment for a long time and every time I do the words ‘lofty’ and ‘ambitions’ come to mind. At times I can’t begin to imagine what an artist is or does, but I know I want to be one. I know this when I watch Sunday Arts in awe and with a degree of envy. I watch people make sculptures and paint and draw, and I think… ‘wow, this is amazing!’

And then there is JohnOfJordan.com… This is about YouTube and community. Not about ‘the community’ really, so much as about ‘my community.’ I interview my friends about their hopes and dreams and video technique. I include tips and thoughts and ocassionally a video of my own. The point I want to make is that I never had any desire to become a video maker. I wasn’t one of the drama kids in high school. I hadn’t done any acting since the primary school play Nowhere Boy (where I was given an important supporting role until the moody director, hell bent on living his dreams through school children, recast my role and made me an extra). My attraction to this site was all about people and not the ‘famous’ people waving down from their ivory towers, but the people who were just like me somewhere else in the world sharing their lives, sharing their world, sharing themselves. (And I suppose this is what people like Rohan and Christopher Mast mean when they talk about YouTube being a “social networking site.”) I’ve come to enjoy video production and be deeply fascinated by it, but it was always in service of connecting with people and people I cared about.

But still those ‘lofty ambitions’ hover. Still that artistic aspiration exists deep within me. JohnOfJordan is community directed, and that is what I love about it. But I guess I started JohnLaceyTV so I had a forum where I could be more self-directed. A place where I could be myself, under my own name, and perhaps shed some of the YouTubian concerns I had fostered with JohnOfJordan. It is oddly liberating to start again, to start from scratch. Working on a video that I’m proud of and putting it on a channel four people have heard of makes me think about the work, the art, more than the views… (I think viewers of either will appreciate content that is collected slightly thematically too.)

I always felt this great pressure to ‘be’ one thing and to be ‘the best’ of that one thing. I struggled with that idea for a really long time, because everyone is an ‘expert’ and everyone thinks you should be an ‘expert’ too. And not just an expert but ‘the’ expert. And for me the most rewarding thing has been not choosing between competing desires, but finding a way to explore as many of them as I can. It is about trying to honour all of the pieces of me.

[Disclaimer: There are a lot of trite cliches in this blog post and sadly they're not even used in ironic ways. I blame the hour.] If there’s one thing that characterises me it would be my tendency to wear my heart on my sleeve. If I’m happy you know about it. If I’m miserable you’ll know about that too. I sometimes feel bad that I am so transparent. Usually after I’ve made some declaration of affection that is met with resistance or ambivalence. I’ve put all my cards upon the table, I suddenly have little mystery and you have all the data on me you need. And that’s fine. I don’t care. If you want to take that information and use it to manipulate me that is your prerogative. I don’t think in that regard I will change much. And I don’t really care about that either. It is what it is. I am too old to change. The thing that I struggle with is the disparity between people telling me to ‘be myself’ only to turn around and tell me to ‘play it cool’ or ‘man up’ or whatever… It has actually reached rather comical heights, to the extent that many of the people have who were championing the be yourself idea have decided that my being myself is probably a symptom of mental illness. No, really. It is difficult not to be a little insulted by that.

But maybe I’ve dropped the ball too. I mean how can these people who I’ve spent so much time with know so little about me? And is it really that awful to be emotional, to express emotional responses to stimuli in your life? To me if I am sad it is important that I articulate that sadness. If I am angry that needs an outlet too. I learnt this the hard way, through a childhood of suppressing and ignoring things until they did drive me crazy. And it was how I first became creative as a teenager. My art was entirely about exploring and mapping my own emotional landscape. Is that really so awful? At the time it was quite profound, it gave my life meaning. And I guess it continues to give my life meaning.

I can understand the desire to want to ‘fix’ people and problems. I guess it is quite pragmatic. But frankly it feels like you’re just fobbing me off. And maybe you are. I mean, that’s okay too. All I know is I’m being harrassed to do something on a daily basis that I do not want to do, and do not intend to do, and that I’ve gone from being able to tell you anything to wanting to tell you know nothing. I’m a little sad and disappointed about that too. But it is what it is, I suppose. I don’t know what I can do about it.