Month: April 2026

Shall I or shan’t I?

Well, think I shall.

My biggest problem is procrastination, and I’ve thought about this whole YouTube malarkey a LOT. The biggest struggle point for me has been, frankly, what to YouTube about. I love personal productivity stuff, books, guitar and generally yacking about rock/prog music, gar-dunning, and a few tech/coding things.

There are loads of YouTube videos out there saying that you must have a niche and a single topic to focus on. I see the logic in that if you aim to focus solely on views or monetisation.

I’m also not under any illusions. I’m not trying to out-beast MrBeast or chuck in my job before I retire. It’s about a bit of fun, learning, experimentation, and on the subject of retirement. it could be something to keep me busy in my dotage.

I’m almost certain the main focus will be on gardening.🌻

Slight problem. I’m no gardener. I’m also pretty lousy at DIY. I have a record of killing more plants than growing them. BUT…. this will be a learning project, it’s something I can grow into (every pun intended) and hopefully may encourage participation and knowledge-sharing with other gar-dunn-friendly folk out there.

So gardening (or gar-dunn-ing) is where my YouTube focus will be. However, I reserve the right to clack about other things also! Whether it’s waxing lyrical about the latest Deep Purple or Also Eden album…. a review of a Stephen King book…. a verdict on West Ham’s season (SPOILER: it’s been lousy) …. a chat about the latest GitHub/Azure tidbits I’ve found, or about orange gentlemen starting new world wars.

Let’s see how it goes. It’ll no doubt be ropey… but hey, we all gotta start somewhere…. Watch this space! Oh, and this one.

Well, I finished The Hobbit finally!

Verdict…enjoyable 🙂 but (so sorry, Tolkien officiandos) I actually preferred the films – there seemed to be much more going on than in the book itself.

Anyhoo. Back to April. I’m now reading Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks on Kindle. Haven’t read proper spacey science fiction for a long time. The last time was probably about 20 years ago (2001, 2010, and 2061 from the late great Arthur C. Clarke). As a kid, I loved reading Asimov (Foundation series in particular), and the original Star Wars books (when Star Wars was only just out at the cinema nearly 50 years ago!).

Otherwise for April, it’s Under The Dome (Stephen King) on Audible, and I’m dabbling with my latest gar-dunning book – The Cottage Garden Month-by-Month (Jackie Bennett – this is an older book, cost me all of £5 on Amazon).

I’m laying off the productivity books this month – mainly because I’m busy studying for a GitHub exam, and doing Horticulture assignments through my distance learning course (was delighted with the 85% result for my first assignment last month).