I don't know how many users on Cohost are in that middle/high school age range, and even if you're not in that range still take this to heart. Please don't ever delete anything you've created. As someone who did ms paint doodles and made shitty youtube videos back when I was younger, I wish I still had them. I was a fool and did what I assume a lot of people end up doing and deleting everything because you feel like it's too "cringe" or whatever.
Now that I'm reaching my 30s, I regret it. I regret it everyday of my life. You have no idea how much I wish I still had my shitty youtube videos or silly ms paint doodles. I swear I must've had like, 30-40 videos on youtube that were just dumbshit like a bunch of pictures set to music or just like 10 minutes of random gameplay from some game I played on an emulator. Pretty much all them edited in Windows Movie Maker. I had a deviantart gallery full of just the most random and silly ms paint doodles. Just the most shit child train of thought drawings I did because I was bored and had way more dedication than I do now.
With getting older and not being able to remember stuff you did as a kid, I wish I could look back on any of these. It's all lost to time now. I have a select handful of ms paint drawings by happenstance because I was a freak and uploaded them to some of the weirdest places... but everything else is either dead links or just gone. So just a message from someone who made that mistake. I urge you to not delete your creative works, no matter how "cringe" they may seem now.
I lost a lot of the first 4-6 years of my work to hard drive failures and wish I had that stuff. I remember doing a drum n' bass remix of T.I.'s "Bring Em Out" that I swore was the song of the summer and I just wanna know what that sounds like now
I mostly lost my stuff due to theft (whole PC stolen etc.) or data loss (made a mistake of putting stuff online and not making backup).
Everything else? I gather this crap on each new PC i migrate to. History of past machines and stuff saved or created on them, usually organised by drive letters, cryptic directory names and dozens of "My Documents" copied 1:1
Also, physical notebooks with unfunny comic strips, drawings of dicks, and whatever else i wasted pens and pencils on back then.
It's a way to connect to my past self. That past self full of courage to write down a shitty story, or make an ugly and dumb excuse for a webcomic made in mspaint - and then be proud of this stuff.
That's a mindset i need to go back to whenever i try something new. You know, just pick up a tool and do something with it, and worry later. Usually i'm the only audience this stuff gets. And it's fine.
Of course most of that is cringeworthy. Only like 5% of it stands the test of time. And it's fine.
Because some day in the future i'm probably going to try and support some kiddo in their hobby - either my own son/daughter/other or niece/nephew/hedgehog. Kids do and say a lot of cringeworthy things. And they have all the courage in the world to just do it. You may say they just don't know better - well, let them. There will be a time for them to start filtering themselves, but before that they gotta learn how to create, express themselves and have fun doing it. Just like i need to be able to get back to it - see my past attempts as success.
I gotta keep reminding myself what it was like to create stuff without worrying about audience or own self-doubt. For my own sake, and for the sake of supporting others embarking on the same journey of self-discovery.
