I just posted a Christmas video. Am I doing better with my eye contact? https://youtu.be/CuNkOU4Sl3g?si=kYjCNjMdAlfHoIES Please comment on my channel.

Uploaded my first video. I think? Thanks for all the help.

Now my first 2 shorts. Very interesting. Please take a look at this comparison image. Akansha has doubled the number of views compared to me. A young girl attracts more people, than an old man.

Hi everyone and thanks for letting me hang out where the cool kids are. I am a 67 year old, 100% disabled Army veteran. I have been married to my wife Tina for 45 years. I served in the Army as a 31S20 COMSEC repairman. I was trained on 34 different communications scramblers (think Enigma machine). I held a TOP SECRET/CRYPTO/COSMIC clearance. I was offered my choice of White House Communication Staff or Delta Force if I would reup. I decided to get out as so many people who stay in wind up divorced. Since we have made it 45 years so far, I'd say I made a good choice. My YouTube channel is https://www.youtube.com/@rails_and_trails. I have done many different things in my life. As I said, I started out in the Army and got to the rank of Sgt. E5. When I got out, I went to work for NCR repairing equipment in banks called proof machines that handled checks. I went from there to McDonnall Douglas and worked as a distributed numerical control electrician. I got caught up in a huge layoff and went to Nordyne as a testing engineer. I got my degree in computer science and went to work at Lockheed as a software engineer. Then back to McDonnall Douglas as a software engineer. Mac got bought out by Boeing, so then I was a Boeing software engineer. I left there to work at Paylinx as an ecommerce processing software engineer (I worked on bank payment processing stuff). Paylinx got bought out by Cybersource and I got my teaching certificate and my Master Electrician license and taught Electrical Trades at a technical school. Meanwhile I started an auction company. I ran the auction company with my wife and family for 25 years and retired. I started my YouTube channel 19 years ago to promote my auctions, and to get a link from YouTube to my website. I retired from my auction company after the VA put me at 100% disabled. I changed my YouTube channel to be about train travel and bike trails back in Dec. 2024. I started making videos about my hobbies and tried to get a little better with each video. Back in 2023 we were biking at Jeckel Island and I tried tying a handheld Sony minicam to my bicycle handlebars, needless to say, that didn't work worth a darn.

I wasn't sure where to place this because I'm not sure if I'm looking for advice, feedback or an Okay to go ahead and let go of my channel. I have been struggling with grow, views, everything quite frankly with my channel since about May. I felt like I was finally on the turn around after many videos did well, at least well enough for me. I have been stuck in the under 100 views for months now. In October, I had a major surgery, took a break and worked on revamping my channel - creating a more stacked niche and was excited to get back to it. However, I am feeling frustrated and I don't know what to do at this point. This is 5 years on YouTube, and I didn't start to really pay attention, learning more about making videos until about 2 years ago. I finally reached 1K subscribers earlier in the summer, had a sponsored post in May and now I'm not sure what to do at this point. I also want to say I know that many have seen a huge decrease in views, etc. However, what really bothers me is I was only 5 hours away from being monetized, until it dropped off the hours and now back at almost 1K hours needed. I have enough videos filmed to finish out the year but I'm hoping anyone can offer some help, suggestions or advice. Thank you so much for taking the time to read.