swimming, family dinners, and admiring the babies

This year, I undertook a great migration: I moved all my videos from Vimeo to YouTube. It was a necessary shift, as I’m no longer paid to make videos, and YouTube is wonderfully free.

There’s no easy way to move hundreds of videos. I downloaded them one by one from Vimeo, archived my professional work on a soon-to-be-forgotten hard drive, and carefully uploaded all the family and school videos to YouTube. The process took dozens of hours, but the result is an extraordinary treasure chest for my family.

Fifteen years ago, when I was learning videography, I made films for contests and the dream of going viral. Now, I understand those videos were always for my family. My grandsons love them, laughing at our antics while repeatedly asking, “Where was I?”

There’s a profound lesson here for any creative person. We create from love and ambition, but the world often tells us that if our work isn’t popular, it lacks value. I reject that. I still paint flowers on my basement wall and knit mittens for babies. As a writer, I’ve known seasons of good pay and wide audiences, and now I often write into silence (I’m still extremely grateful for every comment and every subscriber!). But the essential question remains: am I creating for others, or because it makes me a more reflective, happier person? I choose to believe the act itself matters, because in creating, I am creating myself.

So, inspired by those videos, I turned on my posh camera again this summer. I don’t expect this video to interest many—unless you’re family, in which case, it’s hilarious and fascinating. And a warning: the August video will be more of the same, now featuring Hansie’s return and baby Mads’ arrival. It’s a record of swimming, family dinners, and admiring the babies—the greatest treasures life has to offer.