What I'm Working On
So yeah, my YouTube channel just exploded—more than quadrupled the subscriber count in basically a couple months—and I’ve leaned hard into this whole KPop + gaming vibe that I’m actually, genuinely enjoying the hell out of. I’m grinding with Fanward, cranking out marketing stuff and designs for some seriously cool brands (including one of my literal childhood heroes), plus writers, and staying active in the YouTube Discord (which is very much KPop central these days). On paper, things are moving forward in a big way.
Except… almost none of it lines up with what I wrote in my last “what I’m working on” blog post.
Instead I’ve been deep in games, binging music videos, having long creative/fun conversations with people, and—slowly but surely—letting the anxiety creep back in like it always does when I’m not building or writing anything with real staying power.
The good news? I’ve finally started getting back into that proper creative work again, and the difference in how I feel is already night and day.
And then it hits you: the reason this is dragging on forever is because you’re burned out on it. You’re straight-up forcing yourself through it. Not because the spark is there, not because you’re passionate or having fun—just because some stubborn part of you wants to cross the finish line and call it done.
That’s exactly where I’ve been with Deadrun.
The worst part? The game is technically finished. Templates, card mechanics, balance, everything core is locked in. It’s well-tuned, it’s fun, it’s unique, it’s got legs. But I have zero drive left to actually assemble it, polish the last edges, and ship the damn thing.
It’s not even that Deadrun itself is the problem—the concept still holds up, the execution is solid. It’s just… not what I want to be pouring my soul into right now. I’ve got a mountain of other game ideas screaming for attention, and I’m a one-man team who’s already juggling YouTube, the podcast, writing books, a full-time job, endless meetings, and trying to be a decent husband.
Deadrun is 250+ cards where I handle literally every single piece—art direction, writing, design, testing, everything—and because I want it to be the absolute best version of itself, if it’s taking this long just to wrap the final stretch, then it’s not the moment. I need to shelve it properly until I’m actually excited to face it again. That moment isn’t now.
My whole writing break these past few months was supposed to be “Deadrun time,” and I managed maybe a fifth of the remaining work before the burnout really sank its teeth in. So yeah—time to step away for real. Let it sit on the back burner until the fire comes back.
When you jump from 20 basically-dead subscribers to 118 people who are actually showing up, watching, commenting, engaging—in just a couple months—some quiet part of your brain starts whispering, “Huh. Maybe the effort isn’t completely pointless.” So yeah, sue me if I’m letting this little thing I actually enjoy bump itself up the priority list a bit.
Back at the start of the year, the channel was sitting at around 20 subs. I was throwing videos at the wall about whatever—my books (which I did care about), random creative rants, movie takes, all of it. Zero traction. Views were pitiful, comments were nonexistent, and the algorithm treated me like I didn’t exist. I talked up my books and it didn’t move a single copy. I talked movies and it didn’t earn me one new sub. The numbers matched the vibe: low-energy content from someone who wasn’t really feeling it.
Just like with Deadrun, I think the core issue was the same—passion wasn’t there. The topics were “relevant” to me, they mattered on some level, but talking about them wasn’t fun. I’m a writer, not a natural marketer, no matter how much I’ve tried to fake it. I want to create, not sell the idea of creating.
Now? I’ve narrowed it down to just KPop—reacting to music videos, geeking out over the production, the choreography, the sound design, the visuals, all of it. And suddenly I’ve got actual energy to bring to the videos. I’m excited to record, excited to edit, excited when people show up in the comments. Plus, it’s given me a legit excuse to carve out time every week to play games—actual downtime that isn’t just me staring at a screen feeling guilty for not working. Granted, the gaming videos don't do well but they're all ingredients in the same soup.
For once, the thing I’m putting time into actually feels like it’s feeding me back instead of draining me dry. Small numbers or not, that shift alone has been worth it.
Here… just look at my analytics since I made the switch from aimless rambling to straight-up KPop reactions and gaming stuff. The difference is night and day. Views, watch time, subs, comments—everything starts climbing the second I stopped forcing content and started talking about things that actually light me up.
When you’re genuinely passionate about something—when you’re having fun and it shows—it bleeds into every frame, every edit, every word. You can’t fake that energy, and honestly, these numbers feel like quiet proof that it matters. The channel’s not blowing up overnight or anything, but it’s moving, and it’s moving because I’m not phoning it in anymore.
I've Already Started on The Idol I Loved First
And man, having finally kicked it off, I’m already completely in love with where it’s heading.
I’d told myself after wrapping When Man Becomes God that I was taking a real break from writing until March—using that window to grind on Deadrun instead. Well… I was about two-thirds right. I did stay away from novels until March, and yeah, I poked at Deadrun a bit. (We’ve already talked about how that particular fire flickered out fast.)
I even set March 1st as my hard “back to writing” date. But then I realized: you don’t actually get to pick when the muse shows up. Especially if you want the work to feel alive and worth a damn. Forcing it is the fastest way to kill whatever magic might’ve been there.
That’s exactly why I haven’t touched book 3 of the Wicker Anthology yet—it’s just not time. It’s why I shelved Deadrun properly—it wasn’t time. And it’s why I didn’t crack open a new novel until mid-March. The spark wasn’t ready, so I waited.
Now? The Idol I Loved First is that spark turned into a full-on flame. It’s heartfelt, it’s passionate, it’s emotional in all the ways that actually matter to me as a writer. This one deserves every ounce of my attention and energy, and now that I’ve started, it’s getting it.
In a lot of ways, it feels like the first novel I’ve ever written that’s legitimately primed for real marketing and eyes on it. I can talk about it naturally on my YouTube channel without it feeling like a weird pivot—KPop content + KPop-inspired romance? Seamless. Plus, it’s way less extreme in content than my usual stuff, and it’s built around one of the biggest pop-culture engines going right now. That matters.
And on top of everything else, I’m planning to make The Idol I Loved First the first of my books to get a full visual/audio treatment on YouTube. Once it’s done, I’ll release a frame-by-frame retelling—visuals synced to narration—as a weekly episodic series until the whole story’s out there.
Is it going to be a massive, probably insane undertaking? Obviously. I’ve never picked a project that wasn’t bigger than my bandwidth at the start, and this one’s no exception. But holy hell, it’s going to be fun.
KPop stan or not, I genuinely think this story’s going to hit for anyone who loves romance with real history between characters—people carrying baggage, chasing dreams that don’t always line up with the lives they end up living, fighting to make it work anyway. We’ve all felt some version of that at one point or another.
A thousand ideas screaming for attention, but only enough bandwidth—and sanity—for maybe one or two to get real oxygen at a time. Throw in an obsessive streak or some classic attention-deficit chaos, and that inner demon doesn’t just whisper; it yells. Constantly. Switching lanes feels less like a choice and more like survival.
So the next time I drop a “what I’m working on” update and whatever I was hyped about last time has quietly slid to the side—or straight into the “later” pile—just know you’re watching a serial creative in the wild. Juggling his own brain, falling hard for new sparks, pushing some projects across the finish line while others sit there gathering dust, all happening live and unfiltered.
And yeah, I hate how scattered it can feel sometimes. I really do. But I refuse to stare at these mountains of ideas—the endless folders stuffed with notes, concepts, sketches, character sheets, half-outlined worlds, stories that won’t shut up in my head—and pretend they’re a curse.
Because the honest truth? I’ve already told every single one of them.
I just haven’t written them down yet.
Yet.
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