After several months of studying and practicing video editing about once a week, shooting videos both in my kitchen and on the road, today, I’m finally launching my YouTube channel Yvonne meets Food, which as of today, has 10 videos fully edited and uploaded. Most of them are cooking videos which are focused on basic recipes that have just a handful of ingredients; others are more complex, like the red mole recipe. And then I have one travel video posted where I filmed in Chengdu while eating mapo doufu (tofu). Not all of this was very well planned, and there aren’t always smooth transitions or the best use of color overlays since I’m still in the process of figuring things out, but it’s coming along, and I’m enjoying the process a lot more now that I have a semi-hang of things.

In the beginning, video editing was extremely painful, but now, it’s almost like a fun, interesting creative release, a far departure from the everyday expected ups and downs of office and customer life. I can experiment with color, angles, and music. Even though I’m not much of a music person, testing out different types of music to set moods for different shots has probably been the most interesting for me. The music site I’ve been using for music has really great tutorials on how to edit videos to the beat, which I plan on using more when I shoot travel and field pieces.

In some ways, it feels like a second job, and in other ways, it feels like a creative outlet that just requires a bit more time and intense focus. But I hope something interesting will come of this. Life is short.