Creative Recovery Lessons from Vlogtober: Letting Go of Fear and Perfectionism

A month of daily vlogging became more than a creative challenge — it became a quiet recovery.
Here’s how showing up imperfectly, one short video at a time, helped me rebuild trust in my creativity and let go of perfectionism.

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Starting Over on YouTube: A Lesson in Creative Recovery and Self-Trust

I’ve carried a quiet desire to start YouTube for almost ten years.
I filmed. I edited. I deleted. The cycle repeated.
I kept waiting for life to look perfect — to feel perfect. But it never did.

Here’s what finally changed: me.

My life still isn’t perfect. Neither is my space. Honestly, I’m not either. And frankly, I’m done trying to be.

But I was tired of my own excuses — the endless “someday” thinking. In my early twenties, I wanted to share my life, not to go viral, but to remember it. Hostel bunks in noisy cities, reflective walks along the harbor, chipped mugs in cafés in sleepy little towns — I wanted proof that I was really there, really living it. And still, I never shared a thing.

Now, in my thirties, I’m done waiting. Done letting fear and perfectionism — that “not yet, you’re not good enough” voice — be the loudest in the room.

Part of that shift came from The Artist’s Way, a 12-week creative recovery program designed to unlock creativity and dismantle the blocks that keep us small. The other part came from my closest people telling me to be more vulnerable, to let people in. You could say… recovery is going well.

But healing creativity isn’t just about writing morning pages — it’s about practicing what you’ve learned. So for October, I made a deal with myself: for one month, let go of fear and perfectionism so I could step into a full, creative life.

And what better way to start than finally pursuing my oldest creative dream —YouTube.

Vlogtober — a month-long video challenge where creators post a new video each day in October — felt like the perfect opportunity. But I’m a little older now, and a little wiser. I knew better than to dive straight into long-form content. I wanted this to stick, not spiral into burnout again. I needed to be intentional about how I approached it, and short-form content felt like the natural place to begin.

I gave myself three simple rules:

1. Upload a video under 3 minutes every day, no matter what.

2. Follow the 80% rule — if I’m happy with 80% of it, that’s enough. Perfection kills the spark.

3. Check the analytics if I must (the social strategist in me can’t resist), but don’t overthink them.

I thought I’d have to push myself through Vlogtober that it would be another discipline I had to force. But instead, something shifted. With every upload, I could feel my energy returning — the creative hum I’d been missing for so long. The more I showed up, the lighter I felt. Burnout began to slip away, replaced by joy. What started as an experiment slowly began to feel like recovery in motion.

I was proud of myself for showing up, even on the days I wanted to skip because “it didn’t matter, one missed upload won’t make a difference.” But it would’ve.

Each upload was a small act of commitment—a promise to my creativity.

Turns out, that’s what I needed all along.

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Balancing Strategy and Creativity: Choosing Curiosity Over Control

Days 1–10, I was at war with myself. I thought I needed a plan — clear topics, polished scripts, tight hooks. My strategist brain was loud. Or maybe… that was just perfectionism, disguised as preparation.

I kept reminding myself of the 80% rule: we’re not redoing lines because I don’t like how my voice sounds, or because my hair falls wrong. This isn’t about control. It’s an experiment in creativity.

The first two weeks became a tug-of-war between my left brain — the planner, the analyst, the social strategist — and my right brain — the dreamer, the maker, the intuitive one.

I needed my creative side to win.

My strategist side wanted to collect data points from every upload — what topics performed best, what editing style held attention, what moments got people to stay. She wasn’t wrong; she was just tired. She’d been leading for too long.

So, I asked her to rest for a while. I let my creative side drive instead. I chose curiosity over control.

Every upload became a rep — proof that perfectionism was losing its grip. This challenge was about showing up for the version of me who once dreamed of doing this. The one who wanted it so badly but never felt “good enough.”

Now, I was proving to her that I am.

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Authentic Creativity: What Happened When I Stopped Chasing Growth

Eventually, something shifted. Fear wasn’t as loud anymore. Perfectionism quieted down. They became background noise, slowly fading out.

I started to feel confident. Not because the numbers were big, but because I trusted what I made. I was unfamiliar with the YouTube algorithm, so I let go when a video only got three views in twenty minutes. I trusted the work to find who it needed to.

And it did something to me — that surrender. It reminded me that creative recovery isn’t about control. It’s about trust.

YouTube also felt like a safe place to practice that. No one I knew followed me there, which meant I could fail quietly — or maybe try loudly — without worrying who might be watching. It became my creative playground, a stepping stone before I share my work more widely again. Sometimes it’s easier to fail in front of strangers than to be seen trying by people you know.

When I first started, I’ll be honest — part of this was strategy (I can’t always silence that side of the brain). I wanted to understand the platform, test my content ideas, and start building a foundation for growth. That’s the marketer in me.

But somewhere along the way, it shifted. The more I showed up, the less I cared about performance and the more I cared about presence. I was creating for me. And somehow, that’s what people connected to.

Some of my best videos weren’t the ones where I looked my best or had a perfect hook. They were the quiet ones — filmed in a baseball hat, no makeup, my skin flaring up — just me, talking honestly, vulnerable about my life. And people responded. Slowly, but genuinely.

It turns out the growth I’d been chasing came when I stopped chasing it. When I let myself be seen — imperfect, but real.

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What Creative Recovery Really Looks Like

I had to be honest about my fears — not being good enough, being perceived, being imperfect —and then trust that my creativity was enough.

Every upload became less about “what performs” and more about “what feels honest.”
I felt proud. Like my 23-year-old self was somewhere cheering me on.

I realized I had never stuck with something creative this consistently before.
And maybe that’s the real recovery: not chasing perfection, but showing up with trust, day after day.

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Healing After Burnout: Finding Joy and Creative Alignment Again

Toward the end of October, I felt a shift. Wait a minute, something feels different.

I had been running on empty since November 2024. Between my mom’s cancer diagnosis and a 9–5 that felt increasingly misaligned, I didn’t even realize I had sprinted past burnout until my April layoff forced me to stop.

I still remember those first weeks — the quiet panic.
I felt like a rabbit caught in a snare trap: terrified, disoriented, unsure what to do next.

But slowly, month after month, something began to shift.

Part of it was writing daily, allowing myself to be vulnerable again.
Part of it was rest, being intentional with my day and output.
Part of it was The Artist’s Way, spending time with myself, learning to trust the universe.
And part of it was this Vlogtober challenge, the daily act of showing up creatively even when I didn’t feel ready.

Somewhere along the way, peace started to find me again.
I felt something I hadn’t in a long time… joy.

I signed up for a six-week pottery class because I have always wanted to.
I planned a solo holiday trip to Chicago — a quiet celebration of making it through this year.
I applied for jobs not out of panic or pressure, but because they sparked something in me. They felt aligned with the life I’m trying to build, one where creativity still gets to lead.

It’s been almost a year since my mom’s diagnosis and since my burnout clock began ticking.

But this October felt different. Because I finally let fear slip away — just enough for vulnerability, trust, and a fuller creative life to take its place.

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Lessons in Creative Recovery: Choosing Trust Over Fear

So what did Vlogtober teach me? That creativity isn’t something you earn through perfection — it’s something you reclaim through practice.

That showing up imperfectly is better than waiting for a version of yourself that doesn’t exist. That the creative life I’d been longing for wasn’t on the other side of being “ready.” It was waiting in the daily choice to begin anyway.

This month reminded me that recovery isn’t linear, and healing doesn’t look polished. But every small act of courage — every upload, every vulnerable moment, every time I chose trust over fear — brought me closer to the person I’ve always wanted to be. Not perfect. Not viral. Just... alive again.

And maybe that’s what I needed most: permission to create, not for an audience, but for the girl who never stopped dreaming, even when she stopped believing she could.

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If you’d like to see the journey unfold — the baseball hats, the imperfect lighting, the honest becoming — you can watch the full Vlogtober playlist [here]. It’s not a highlight reel. It’s a record of recovery that reminds me (and maybe you, too) that we don’t have to be fearless to create. We just have to begin.

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