<center><h1>**Throwback Thursday:  That Time I Started a Gaming YouTube Channel**</h1></center>

*Before I get into today's blog post, I wanted to say that I would love some feedback on whether you are enjoying the posts.  Do you want more frequent posts? Longer posts? Don't want me to waste your time? Let me know! Thanks*

I always wanted to play video games for a living.

That was my dream when I was in 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th grades.  Even further into high-school than I'm willing to admit as well.

I watched a lot of YouTube back in those days.  I wanted to have my own gaming channel.

Issue #1 with that want was I didn't have a way to record gameplay.  I didn't have a microphone to record commentary.  Oh, and I had a squeaky high voice that would have been a turn off to most gamers.

And I was not very good at actually playing video games...

So I watched a lot of YouTube and daydreamed about eventually becoming the next Hutch.  Or OnlyUseMeBlade.  Those were my homies.

I had all but forgotten about these guys through college.  I stopped playing as many games.

Then, I heard that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered was coming out.  

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That was a year or so ago.  It changed everything.

- - - 

Things had changed quite a bit from high school to a year ago.  

I had a job.  

I owned a home.

I was making good money.

And I had a bunch of extra time on my hands.

I was browsing YouTube one day and saw an advertisement for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered.

Now I was a maniac for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare when it came out back in 2007.  I played that game a sickening amount.

It was only natural that I get the remastered version.  Advertised as the exact same game, just with better graphics, I was hooked.

Only one problem.

I didn't have an Xbox One or PS4 to play the game on.

Luckily, I had a job, a home, and was making good money.

I splurged and got an Xbox One, pre-ordered the game, and purchased an Elgato capture card to be able to record my gameplay.

I made a few videos and slapped them up on YouTube under the alias of "IntellectualYak"

Don't ask me where that name came from.

It just manifested itself when I needed a gamertag.

- - -

The videos were absolute shit.

You can still see them here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVb1dVhkZ5C1GIDJvH1gvjA (As you can see I never got famous enough to have my own YouTube URL)

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I have somewhere like 2000 lifetime YouTube views on that channel.

That's good for a grand total of $24.47 in revenue.

The minimum to cash out is $100...

I'll probably never hit that.

- - -

I've since sold the capture card (at a solid loss).

I dabbled in the YouTube gaming life for a minute and I failed.

It wasn't as much fun as I thought it might be.

I didn't have the same passion for it that I did back in the day.

I'm 100% glad I did it though.

I learned a lot about marketing and breaking into new industries.

It's hard as shit.

That's the biggest lesson I learned.  

Life is difficult and will kick you down as often as possible.

I didn't love making YouTube gaming videos enough to get back up when life kicked me down again.

And the best part?

That's perfectly okay with me.

I learned one more thing that I don't need to spend anymore of my precious time on.

Maybe one day I'll go back to making YouTube videos, but it sure as hell won't be playing video games.

- - -

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