Over the past year, I've been bombarding my Facebook friends with posts about new rant, skit and musical content I've released on my YouTube channel. All I talk about is making YouTube content, most of what I watch is YouTube content and the majority of my time is spent either planning, recording, editing or posting YouTube content.

So why do I do it?

Many people assume I make YouTube videos for attention. Maybe I don't get enough in my everyday life, so I seek validation online. Or possibly they believe I have no better use of my time. They may think I'm wasting away trying to make it big on YouTube, which they think will probably never happen.

None of this is why I'm on YouTube.

I make YouTube content in order to grow a community. My YouTube channel is called "Diary of a Socially Awkward." The reason I named it that is because I am socially awkward. In addition, I have social anxiety. That combination makes it so that I hardly seek the comfort of friends, and when I do, I make them feel so uncomfortable that they neglect to ask me to hang out again. I may be awkward, but I am a human being. And no matter how much or how little time you need to spend with other people in order to feel good, human beings are social creatures, and we literally go insane if we haven't interacted with other human beings in an extended period of time. My social awkwardness and social anxiety makes it so that I don't interact with people as much as I feel I need. For me, YouTube is a way to interact with other human beings, enough so that I retain my sanity in my everyday life.

That may sound extreme, but that's my reason for starting my journey on YouTube. After a full year of making videos, however, my goals on the platform have expanded far beyond just making friends.

On my YouTube channel, I upload videos that are intended to help people with social anxiety gain confidence in their social and conversational skills. As someone with social anxiety, I know it can be difficult and debilitating to interact with other people, especially if those people are just telling you to "get over" your anxiety. On my channel, I offer advice to people with this problem, but I don't force them to take it. Even if these people know how to start a conversation or make appropriate eye contact, it can still be a tremendous help hearing these tips from someone who has experienced the same anxiety.

While it would make my wildest dreams to have 10s of millions of people watching my content, that is not my ultimate goal on YouTube. My goal is to reach enough people so that I feel I am making a legitimate impact on peoples lives and helping them in a way they wouldn't have help otherwise. I also would like to gain enough views per video so that I can make a full-time career on YouTube and continue to help other people with social anxiety without worrying about going to work and paying bills, because I will already be doing my job.

Another reason I am on YouTube is that it is a creative platform for me. I upload videos twice a week; my advice videos come out on Mondays, and on Fridays I release videos in which I satiate my own random creativity. In my real life, I am often looked on as the "bookworm," the "school nerd" or the "brainiac" that spends all of her time reading, writing and doing homework. If people took the time to talk to me, they'd realize that: 1. I actually don't spend that much time reading, and 2. I have a large amount of creative ideas. I'm mostly a writer. I've already published a full-length novel about a fictitious group of people that lived during the Salem Witch Trials and used their witch-like abilities to fight against the discrimination put upon them by people we would think of as "normal." It doesn't seem to me that an absolute school nerd with no creativity would be able to write and publish an interesting, fictional novel. Especially not at the age of 19, when someone who is focused entirely on school is most likely in college, or at the very least taking some classes. While I am mostly a writer, I also love creating video content on YouTube. It allows me to get ideas into the world that I can't quite express solely through the written word.

I think Jenna Marbles, a prominent YouTube star and the most subscribed female YouTuber, explained media stars the best. In one of her podcasts—for the life of me I can't find the specific one, but check out her podcast with Julien Solomita here — Jenna explains that social media and online creators are so popular because unlike in the previous generations, there are so many people making a career out of just being themselves. She says this is why the Kardashians, for example, are so popular yet so hated. They have a career out of just being themselves even if their persona is fabricated for reality television purposes, and they are so hated, specifically by older individuals, because people of earlier generations were taught to enter into the workforce, and that this would be their greatest contribution to society. (This next part is my reasoning, not Jenna's.) Our parents — or grandparents — were raised by people that most likely either fought in World War II, or performed tasks in an assembly line that created goods and tools the soldiers needed while at war. During this time, the greatest way you could contribute to society was by taking a factory job. Now, the younger generation, millennials, are far removed from World War II, and we exist in a time when our individuality and our entertainment is praised and prioritized over the community-based society created by the assembly lines. What all of this means is that we currently live in a time where many people have the ability to successfully make a career out of being a unique individual, and the older generations are not used to this mindset; leading to many people from older generations may despise the Kardashians, reality TV stars and online content creators. But what Jenna talks about in her podcast is that she believes making a career from just being yourself is one of the best things about the current young generation.

I have to say, I agree wholeheartedly with Jenna. Over my past year and a half in college, I have switched my major twice and am in the process of transferring schools. All of this is because I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew up. For those of us in college right now, we're told that while we don't need to know what we want to do, we have to get a degree in higher education. But the one question I've had since I began university is why? Why do I have to get a degree when, at present, having a Bachelor's degree in most fields no longer guarantees you a job right out of, or even five years after, college.

I haven't wanted to admit that I want to make a career out of YouTube because I was afraid people would laugh at me. I thought everyone would judge me because I've always said that I wanted to go to college. But now that I'm in college, the only career that truly entices me is a career in which I get paid to be myself. I've told people that I wanted to be a journalist, a therapist, a photographer, a preschool teacher, a film director, a screenwriter, etc. While all of these topics interest me, I don't want to make a full-time career out of them because none of these areas is me being 100 percent myself. On YouTube, I don't have to be any one thing. I can be all of these things. I can be a journalist for websites like Odyssey; I can help people with their emotional problems through my content; I can photograph and share my life through vlogs; I can teach people through How To videos; I can create short films that can go on my channel, whether I direct them, write them, or both. The beauty of YouTube is that I can do ALL of these things, and that's what draws me to the platform.

For my entire life, everyone has tried to put me into a box. To most, I'm the nerdy schoolgirl. To some, I am a writer. To a few, I am a filmmaker. But to me, I am all of these things and so much more. So if I can make a career out of being everything that I am and 100 percent authentically me, I'm going to work my ass off until I achieve that goal. I don't want to be anything when I grow up except for myself.

Currently, I have 19 subscribers, so my dreams of becoming a full-time YouTuber are a long way off. Because of this, I'm not dropping out of school or quitting my job to chase a dream that isn't close to being a reality yet. But I am going to spend much of my free time making content that 1. helps other people with their social anxiety, and that 2. keeps my creativity flowing and keeps me interacting with other people. I'm going to spend my spare money on equipment that will improve the quality of my videos, I'm going to put myself in uncomfortable situations — like wearing a crop top or not performing pranks (I hate prank channels) — in order to improve my confidence and my viewership, and I'm going to spend my spare time creating content that I believe will have a strong impact on people's lives.

In the meantime, for my Facebook and real-life friends, I will do my best to stop talking so much about my YouTube channel.

If you're curious about my YouTube channel, you can follow this link: Diary of a Socially Awkward. Watch my videos, and, if you're interested, like, comment and subscribe. I love getting video ideas from my viewers, so if you have any ideas, let me know! Don't worry, I alwaysgive credit where credit is due.