I have, more times than I care to admit, started building things without any plans. In our first home I built a gigantic computer desk which was christened Mammoth Desk 2000. I started without any plans or even a finished product in mind. I started with an unused kitchen countertop from a thrift store as the desktop, cut some wood for legs, and then built shelf after shelf on top of it until I hit the ceiling. By the time I was done I had built a desk that was, for the most part, unusable. The shelves were so long that they bowed in the middle even without any weight on them, and the desk’s legs were too long making the entire thing too tall. It wasn’t until I had built it that I realized everything I had done wrong. Fortunately, lumber and screws are pretty cheap and over time I made changes until the desk ended up working for me.

That’s kind of how I approached BigRobsVan’s YouTube channel as well. I knew I wanted to make videos (after all, if you camp in a van and don’t talk about it on social media, did it even happen?), but I didn’t know what kind. If my earlier vanlife videos look similar to others, it’s because they are. As the owner of a Master’s Degree of Professional Writing, I can tell you this: there’s nothing worse than a writer with nothing to say. The same applies to any form of storytelling, including YouTube.

One of the reasons Mammoth Desk 2000 sucked so bad was because I didn’t have the tools or knowledge to build such a thing. I ended up buying a book on how to build furniture out of 2x4s, learned how to make solid joints and use a sander, and applied those skills to what eventually became Mammoth Desk 2000 2.0.

As much as I enjoyed making them, “I washed my van” is not a compelling story. Each video I make is a little better and a little closer to what I want to do on YouTube. The Ninja Stealth Camp was my first attempt at telling a story. I don’t think it was 100% successful because I didn’t have the right tools to build it properly, but it was a step in the right direction. Big Rob’s Van 012 (Camping at the Courthouse) was much closer. I can’t say those early videos didn’t match my vision, because I didn’t have a vision. That was the problem.

I’ve continued to hone in what I want to do on the last several videos. This one is probably the closest to that overall feeling. I’m not a filmmaker by trade. I’ve never taken any filmmaking or editing courses so I’m winging everything, but I do know how to tell a story. The problem is, I’m pretty good at writing stories and making podcasts, but coming up with a story and turning that into a 15-20 minute YouTube video is all new to me. None of the finished products I’ve uploaded are exactly the stories I set out to tell, but out of all the ones I’ve done this one is the closest.

There are a lot of neat things to see and do on Route 66. I’m still sticking close to home while getting my feet wet with all this vanlife stuff, but in the spring I plan to venture out a bit further. Hopefully by then I’ll have all the necessary tools in my belt to create videos that accurately tell the stories in my head.