My 13-Year-Old YouTube Vlogger Time Capsule

The greatest creative ideas come out of something we don't have enough of these days: boredom. Believe me, I'm not complaining about the constant content we get in 2021 thanks to the internet, social media, news, books, movies, and other things. There's always an activity to occupy yourself with, and that's a great thing. But there's something so magical about feeling stuck in a mental rut and finding a way to climb out of it thanks to human instincts, discoveries, and willpower. Sometimes, your future will thank you for it.

When I was 13, 14, and 15 years old, boredom led me to the thing that would change my life forever. That thing is filmmaking, but not the kind of filmmaking with fancy lights, expensive camera equipment, or a director who yells "action!" We'll get to that stuff later. For now, I'm talking about DIY, amateurish, completely-made-in-my-childhood-bedroom filmmaking.

I'm talking about vlogging. More specifically, YouTube vlogging.

Without further ado, meet 2012 Kathryn Milewski: age 13.

Yes - she may talk a little too loud and is a terrible dancer, but she sure is spirited. And she wasn't putting on an act with her personality.

Vlogging was my saving grace as a young teenager. Not only did I get to participate in the legendary "old school YouTube" and become acquainted with people around the globe who grew up to lead interesting lives, but vlogging was an outlet for me to discover and express my true self. An authentic self who, in a few short years, would forever be altered by the peer pressures of high school and early adulthood.

How (and Why) I Got Started

You can't vlog without a camera, and back in the late 2000's and very early 2010's, not all of us had the luxury of filming on smartphones. Fortunately, I got lucky with a household discovery.

Two or three years before I started vlogging on YouTube, I found my trusty Sony Handycam while my brother, his friend Ryan, and I played with Legos. We built mini sets and an action hero character named "Jason Flair," and needed a camera to record the fun with.

"You could take that one over there," my mom said when we approached her in our home office. She pointed up. On a bookshelf was the beautiful Sony camcorder, still sealed in its box. We opened it, wrote some scenes for Jason Flair, and recorded a whole pilot episode for our tiny Lego hero.

A couple months later, Mom gave me more computer privileges. Along with watching funny YouTube classics like "Charlie the Unicorn," "Keyboard Cat," and every skit Smosh made, I discovered the incredible world of YouTube vlogging. There was something so interesting about creating public video diary entries, and ever so desperately, I wanted to join the growing community of friendly neighborhood video bloggers.

The two YouTube vloggers who influenced me the most were Meekakitty (now known as the musician Tessa Violet), and her best friend circa 2011, Nanalew (A.K.A. Shawna Howson). I loved how both their channels included slice-of-life updates, but were unafraid to throw in a goofy absurdist skit every now and then. It was totally my style.

On top of that, I had more space in my house than usual and needed something to fill my time. In the self-portrait video above, I mentioned my parents owned a pretzel-making business. Basically, my dad attempted to pursue his dream of owning his own restaurant by purchasing a Philly Pretzel Factory in our town. It's a chain store like Auntie Anne's or Wetzel's that sells baked pretzels.

Both my dad and mom were busy running the shop in town. After school every day, my brother and I would sit alone in our house, waiting for our parents to return once the sun set. Long gone were the days when we'd all play board games together during the evenings, or go to the movies as a family. They were too tired, and far too busy.

So because my parents were normally gone and my little brother was more interested in playing video games than hanging out with me, I decided to become a household YouTube vlogger. With the help of my Sony Handycam and Windows Movie Maker, I uploaded my first YouTube vlog on October 8, 2011. Or at least I think I did - I remember privating a bunch of videos before departing YouTube. Because I don't remember the password to my pre-Google YouTube account, I can't check to see if anything was uploaded before this video.

Anyways, I uploaded the vlog "Right when I needed the pool the most...." to my brand new YouTube channel, MegaKooala. I don't think 13-year-old Katy realized how lucky she was to have a pool in her backyard. (Or a trampoline, for that matter.)

Why the weird username MegaKooala? A few reasons for the choice...

• I wanted a username that was goofy, sounded kinda cool, and didn't feature my real name.
• The 'M' and 'K' in MegaKooala are the first letters of my first and last names, just backwards.
• I used to say "kooala" instead of the word "cool" when commenting on situations. The username "kooala" was taken on YouTube, so I just added a "Mega" in front of it.
• I think subconsciously, I wanted something that sounded like Meekakitty. MegaKooala was close enough.

In the beginning, I didn't know if I should continue making videos or not, since I wasn't getting too many views, subscribers, or comments. But with the encouragement of my cousin and Mom (who both watched my videos whenever they could), I kept going.

MegaKooala's Legacy

Over the course of my short YouTube vlogging career, I uploaded 47 videos. Most of them were random 4 minute vlogs about my life in middle school and early high school. I often wore nerd glasses or crazy hats as costumes, displayed titles to convey hidden thoughts and emotions, used various "characters" to tell stories (all played by me), and signed off each video with the word, "peace!"

The video that got my channel the most views was one I posted early on in my vlogging career. It was called "How To Deal With Being Forever Alone On Valentine's Day" and was a young teen girl's step-by-step guide on surviving the romantic holiday if you're a single Pringle. Like she was.

Another video that got MegaKooala a lot of views was a version of "Santa Claus Is Coming to Town" but interlaced with the Pitch Perfect phenomenon known as "The Cup Song." Basically, it was just a video of me doing the iconic cup rhythm while singing the song and adding harmonies on the side. My choir skills came in handy for that one.

While those two videos are definitely close to my heart, I can't say they're my favorite. As I got older and my personality mellowed a bit, my bank account grew and I was able to improve the production value of MegaKooala's videos. I purchased myself a fancy new Canon Rebel T3I (which I still use today), and swapped Windows Movie Maker with Sony Vegas editing software.

Personally, I feel the quality of my later videos was far better than my earlier ones. A video that makes me tear up every time I watch it is called "Ghetto Forest Adventure." YES - I am 23 and now know the proper definition of the word "ghetto" and how it can be used in an offensive manner. For some reason, when I was 14 years young, I thought it was an adjective that was used to describe something cool. Maybe it was a slang trend back in 2012? Unfortunately, I can't go back and change the title.

Anyways, my forest adventure vlog was very geeky and weird, but it did include a book review of The Fault In Our Stars and lots of sun triangles. I still walk on the Barnegat Branch Trail today.

Another later video which got me some critical acclaim IRL was a sketch called "Shailene Woodley." It was my response to Shailene Woodley's sudden casting in The Fault In Our Stars as well as Divergent: two YA novels I was obsessed with at the time. After this video was published, friends and family would constantly joke about Shailene Woodley in front of me. While I disliked her at the time, she's one of my favorite actresses working today.

With my editing software upgraded, I could add in aesthetically-pleasing effects and more interesting text into my videos. My editing skills vastly improved, and I was able to create videos with very artistic dance breaks, such as the one below.

With better videos came more exposure: not just from local friends (who always hired me to help them with DIY music videos and school video projects), but also from friends outside of New Jersey. Around the time I hit 100 subscribers, I had a set of very awesome internet acquaintances from around the globe.

Strangely, most of the internet friends I made lived on the other side of the pond. There was Charlotte from the U.K., who was obsessed with musical theatre and grew up to be a West End critic. Nanna was a friend from Denmark who always commented on my videos and regularly chatted with me. And finally, my Swedish friend Johanna regularly came up with innovative ideas for her own videos. She inspired me to create a "pensieve" memory jar for the year 2013. I still have the glass jar - it's basically a time capsule of that whole year for me.

Two people within our small 2012 teen YouTube vlogger community grew up to be internet - and literary - giants. The first was Lucy Moon, who inspired my self portrait video. We had exchanges every now and then due to sharing the same friends, and today she's a fashion and lifestyle influencer in London.

The second woman was Savannah Brown. She went by the username "savannamazing" when I knew her. I had less exchanges with her than with Lucy, but we were in the same circles. Back then, she made sweet little vlogs and ukulele covers from her bedroom in Ohio. She is now a novelist and poet living in London. You may know her poetry collections Grafitti or Sweetdark, and she's friends with Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams.

Leaving YouTube

I didn't think I'd ever stop making videos. Technically, I haven't stopped. But after April 24, 2013, I made the hard decision to end MegaKooala.

There were a couple of factors that went into quitting the channel. The biggest one? Burnout. After I hit 100 subscribers, the view counts on my new vidoes experienced an unexpected drop. I'm not sure why, but I tried to combat the problem by uploading more videos for V.E.D.A. (Vlog Every Day in April.) Doing so just made my anxiety worse, and attempting to shoot, edit, and upload videos every day while throwing myself into high school clubs and homework proved too much to handle.

In the penultimate video I uploaded before quitting YouTube, you can tell just how stressed and exhausted I was making myself.

Another reason for quitting was social acceptance from high school peers. One random day, a jock who I never talked to approached me in the cafeteria and admitted he watched my videos. Although he said he liked them, the thought of him witnessing my cringy middle school self flop around my bedroom made my face burn scarlet in embarrassment.

I figured I had to quit, or else more strangers would find my vlogs and bully me for them. They were embarrassing, after all. I already had a couple of trolls who left hate comments on my videos. I didn't need more.

Additionally, my parents sold the Philly Pretzel Factory (it had been a terrible financial move for our family), so they were in the house more often. I didn't feel comfortable being loud and goofy for vlogs when I knew they could hear me in the rooms next door.

I was mad at myself for quitting MegaKooala. I felt like a giant failure. There were other vloggers who only spent months on YouTube and could amass over 1,000 subscribers in the blink of an eye. What was I doing wrong? Why was I stuck at 100 almost 2 years later? I was my authentic self in each video. Why couldn't anyone appreciate that?

The next few years of high school were rough. My time was strictly devoted to choir and theatre, even though deep down I desperately wished to edit videos at my school's TV studio. You may notice in the videos above my lower jaw is very pronounced and asymmetrical. This is because I had an underbite: a jaw disfigurement where my lower teeth extended beyond my upper teeth. It got worse after quitting MegaKooala, and I couldn't stand to look at my face in the mirror, let alone watch myself in videos. I was even bullied at school because of my jaw.

The end of MegaKooala marked the end of an innocent, peaceful, and youthful part of my life. The girl in those videos was unfiltered, unbothered, free. High school growing pains came, and she would never be that happy again.

But although I couldn't see it in my late teens, the simple act of creating MegaKooala would lead to several benefits down the road. Those benefits revealed themselves once I left New Jersey, moved to NYC, and began studying media arts in college.

The Future

The editing, writing, and acting skills I learned from producing MegaKooala vidoes have aided me as a freelance filmmaker, actor, and artist in the present day.

While classmates had a difficult time picking up video editing in college, it came easy to me thanks to the countless hours I spent piecing video clips together as a 13-year-old. Past sketch writing helped me ace screenwriting classes. I had a general understanding of camera equipment and gear thanks to setting up cameras around my bedroom.

Junior year of college, I joined the filmmaking club on campus to produce a short called Subtext. It won me several awards at the film festival on our campus, I received a Best College Director trophy from a local film festival in Jersey, and at the time of this publication (December 2021), the short is currently playing online as part of the Flickfair On-Demand Festival. I wouldn't have been able to make Subtext had it not been for MegaKooala.

3 years after completing Subtext, I am now in pre-production on my second short film, called Strange Bedfellows. My cinephile boyfriend and I are planning to shoot it February 2022 in - you guessed it - my childhood bedroom. Below is a little BTS photo of our progress. (Yes, that's me under the bed.)

Additionally, learning how to entertain others through YouTube led me to a film acting career. I've been playing roles in movies since late 2017. And of course, I've made the occasional vlog every now and then. Back when I was recovering from jaw surgery in early 2017, I made a video series detailing my healing progress. All three videos received a combined total of over 6,800 views, and several people have reached out to me expressing their gratitude for sharing advice. They've told me it's made their jaw surgery recoveries a lot smoother.

So many great things, all because a 13-year-old girl decided to record herself being a candid random dork. Maybe she was cringy and a bit too hyper, but she was real.

I've never showed MegaKooala to my newer college friends. It's been a secret kept close to my chest...until now, I guess. The other day, I took a risk and decided to show the channel to my boyfriend. He watched my Hunger Games: Catching Fire trailer review from 2013, and clapped once it was over.

"The passion!" he exclaimed, nodding his head in appreciation. "This review is ahead of its time, Katy."

His reaction made me feel seen. I think about what I said back in the self-portrait video, about how I want to make relationships with people who appreciate the real me...I'm happy I found that person in my boyfriend, Dan.

I often feel like parts of my identity - me when I was 5 years old, me when I was 13, and me when I was 18 - are still inside of me despite being 23 years of age. Of all those ages, I feel most connected with my 13 and 14 year old self thanks to MegaKooala. The whole channel is like a time capsule of my young teen self - who I really am deep down inside. Though I don't make YouTube videos regularly anymore and don't typically rewatch the videos I uploaded as a young teen, that channel's existence reminds me to stay true to myself in adulthood. I know the girl in those videos thought she was socially awkward and ugly, but I think she's very cool. She inspires me, and I love her so much.

Although I don't have time to make a YouTube video since the deadline for this Vocal challenge entry is tomorrow (sorry Charles & Covard), I figured I'd end this story on a literary self-portrait. A snapshot of my current self, if you will.

10 years later, this is how I've changed...and stayed the same.

Hi-low. I'm Kathryn Anne Milewski, or Katy for short. I'm currently 23 and 10 months old and still live in New Jersey, although I spend quite a bit of time in New York City these days.

If you met me in real life, you'd notice I'm awfully shy at first, but warm up the more we keep talking. It's only because I'm more guarded than I used to be. I still daydream way too much, and oftentimes find myself staying in the past or future more than I do the present. Movies are my safe haven, and I've been exposed to all different kinds of genres over the years. I've even had the privilege of making movies. I still try to read and play video games, but it's not as high of a priority.

Music has also been a safe haven. I studied singing and music theory for 10+ years, and now, I have a steady job as a music blogger. Every day I'll have a different tune stuck in my head. For some reason, my taste in music always changes with the seasons. And I'm still a pretty god-awful dancer. But I don't care. It's my therapy.

Talking about careers, I still pinch myself everyday that I'm able to make money doing a variety of creative endeavors. From blogging, to acting in indie movies, to working on film crews, my dream life isn't as glamorous as I pictured it would be, but it's still real and I'm living it. And I've worked in two offices so far. Not terrifying at all. In fact, they were both fun jobs.

While I'm not as religious as I used to be, I'm still a spiritual person. I try to find the holiness in Mother Earth, and am grateful I get to live within her during this advanced period of time - even though it's been a dark period of time with a pandemic and all. I've learned to accept my emotional and dark sides, and although they aren't pretty, I welcome them as parts of my identity.

My life has been full of risks, although I've learned the importance of being comfortable in my older years. An even mix of courage and stability brings me the most joy. I've gotten over the people who used to ignore me, and now find peace within my tribe of like-minded creative friends. All of them - including the man I call the love of my life - love me because I can be myself around them. And it's all thanks to learning to stay true to the remarkably real me.

Peace.