#30) Mel's Request


Hello and welcome to "Always Be Better" with Mel Windham.

Today, this is the last video of the year, so I'm going to try to do this without any script. Well, I have this wish list that I want to read to you at the end, but other than, no script. We'll see what happens.

And, for those of you who haven't seen any of my videos yet: what I've done this year is I've produced this series of videos that starts to lay down a foundation where we can all become better people. It's a totally new thing I'm trying, and so far it's been a blast. And now I'm going to finish out the year with a total of 30 videos. (That's kind of a lot.) So, I just want to talk with you guys. 

I think something that captures what I want to say was something that happened to me earlier today. I was here working. I work from home, and it was a pretty stressful day. I was trying to get this code to work, but it just kept breaking. And it was also kind of warm outside, and I said I was going to go out there and take a walk, and enjoy the warmth before it got super cold. And then before I know, it was 5:30 and I had finished my code. It finally was working, I submitted my work, and I looked outside, and the sun was already setting. I looked out this window back here. I saw our tree out front, and I could see that the colors had gotten a lot brighter, but since the sun had set so much, it wasn't so bight out there, so I couldn't really see the colors in their true form, and I got hit by this feeling that I missed it. I said I was going to do it and I missed it. There was nothing I could do about it. The moment was gone, and I wish I had just taken 15 minutes to just go take a walk and take a break. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is we need to keep in mind what's important in life. During our busy lives it's easy to forget, and we lose track of who we are. We lose track of our friends, and all the people that we're connected with, and our connection with nature.

We let devices like this [smartphone] control us. Instead of just enjoying the world, enjoying people, enjoying pets (I think I hear my cat -- here he is!), I can see that these forces that are trying to distract us--they're pulling us all down this path. You just turn on the news, and it's all about things falling apart. You got riots, you have this disease going around killing people. You have some people caring too much about things and then you have other people who care absolutely nothing at all. They just want to be left alone. 

And it's like: I wonder what happened to those days when people cared for each other? What happened and how did we come to this? Why do people hate each other? Why can't people have a discussion with each other without wanting to tear each other's heads off? 

I think I mentioned this in one of my videos earlier, but this is why I started this series. I just wanted to do something about it.

I know that I am not the best speaker. I feel like Moses -- you know, he's this great leader in the Bible. But what people tend to forget was: he was a terrible speaker. I mean that's what I feel like. I've had this really important thing I want to tell people, but I'm really bad at delivering the message. Now Moses--he was so bad that he had to rely on his brother Aaron. So, Aaron would be the one doing all the talking.

So--yeah. This is very difficult to do these videos and to come up with things to say. I do have something to say, it's all planned out, and this year I've only touched the surface of all the topics that I want to cover. And next year we're going to build on that and proceed further. And I am moving towards where we can talk about the more difficult topics where we can have good discussions with each other and help ourselves to become better people. 
  
I guess that's where I'm reaching out to you guys. So far, this year, it's been about creating the videos. I haven't done any kind of outreach yet. So, if you're watching this now, you're one of the few. You should be proud. You're one of the original people who have seen this from the beginning. I do not have very many subscribers yet. I think one of my videos broke a hundred views, so overall I'm having very low view counts. But this is exactly what I expected this year.

So now I'm going to read you my wish list, here. These are things I'd like for you to consider, and this is to help out -- I think that together, we can we can change the world. We can help make this a better world for everybody. 

#1) You can watch my videos. 

Right here, I'll show you the Everything Track. If you watch that from the beginning, it takes about 3 hours and 40 minutes. That's kind of like two movies, but I think it may be worth it. It's a lot of introductory setup, but I tried to make it fun along the way. There's a little bit of Einstein -- I do pictures to explain some of his things -- I don't know why I talked about Einstein, but it all fits together. I relate it to how we can become better people. 

I talk about logic. That's one of the courses I strongly advise you to check out, because, that by itself is probably the most important thing that I covered so far, and we're going to keep building on that. 

And I know. Some people would rather use that time to watch movies. But, how many times have you watched a movie only to forget the plot years from now? There are movies I don't even remember that I even watched. So, maybe if you watch some of my videos instead, you may learn something that will stick with you for the rest of your life. Maybe that would be better time spent. 

Alternatively, if you don't want to spend all that time, you can check out my sister blog [this blog]. It contains transcripts of all these videos that I've done. And some people can just read fast. So if you prefer that, you can knock out all 30 videos just like that. 

#2) You can tell other people about this channel.

I've had perfect strangers reach out to me--people I didn't know before this past year, and we've had discussions, and we've talked about different things. It was kind of fun, and if we get enough people to get interested in this kind of thing we could have this little community where we're actually helping each other, and figuring out ways to help other people out there.

#3) You don't have to watch my videos. You can watch other educational videos.

I actually spend a lot of time watching Veritasium, VSauce, Numberphile, 3Blue1Brown, Mathologer, ScienceClic, Kurtsegast, and other science and math videos, some chess videos, some classical music videos.

I still watch those cute cat videos, and I'm a sucker for "How It Should Have Ended" cartoons. Those can be quite funny sometimes.

#4) This one might be the toughest. I'd like for you to consider starting your own video series.

I don't know if you've realized yet, but there is a movement that's started. It's an answer to all this anger and all this hate that's going on in the world. It's a countermovement to try to reach out to people, and to help them to become better people. 

I started doing it this year, and I've seen other people start it. Perhaps it would be good for you to do it. As for me I've had a blast. I've learned some new things about making videos. It certainly takes a lot of time to make one video, but think about it. It could be fun.

So, that's all I have for you this year. Thank you for an awesome year, and thank you for watching, and I'll see you in January.

Remember, we can "Always Be Better."

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