The Girl in the Pool

Late last year, I had a YouTube video suddenly blow up. I’ve had occasional successes on YouTube before but none like this. I made a 90 minute video essay about Friends and released it during the summer. The show meant a lot to me when I was growing up and I’d binged it at least twice over lockdown, and I wanted to share my views on the depth you’ll get out of the characters and story arcs if you really stop and analyse the show’s dramatic structure.

I had a feeling before I hit publish that it would do well, but it bottomed out at about 10'000 views in September before trailing off entirely. I’m fairly sure it got noticed by the algorithm that year around autumn because that was when Matthew Perry released his autobiography and was showing up in clips from late night shows getting uploaded to YouTube. My video just happened to be in the right place at the right time and it went from having 10'000 views in October to 150'000 by mid December.

Anyway, I was obsessed with watching the view counter. I’d never seen anything like this kind of success before. That wasn’t why I made it of course, but still, it was kind of hypnotising, for good and bad reasons. Even the minor success I was enjoying by YouTube standards suddenly piled a lot of pressure on me to come up with something that might see similar levels of success. I had a lot to think about, and I was thinking about it a bit too much. To the point where I was even transfixed by my analytics on my phone in the one place I go to relax: the swimming pool at my local gym.

The pool isn’t like a normal pool. Its a little open patch of water with a variety of jacuzzi-like bits at the edges. Throughout that Winter, I kept going in, using those lite-jacuzzi functions and trying to disconnect from the constantly raging train of thought running through stuff I could do next to keep this momentum going. I’d get out and go sit on one of the sun loungers at the edge, pick up my phone again and just sit and watch the view counter for a while before heading home.

One day I went to the pool on a Saturday afternoon, and there was a lady there with a girl, probably in her late teens, who had a learning disability. Most people when they’d see a girl like this would assume she had Down’s Syndrome, but I don’t want to say that because its not the only learning disability. It was clear she had something, but I don’t know what it was. She had her feet on the bottom of the pool and she was walking around and happily splashing the water while either her mother or carer, I didn’t know which, waded around at the edge of the pool, watching her.

Anyway, I was in a section of the pool where you have your legs out and the bubbles come out on your back, and I had my eyes closed, when suddenly the girl with the learning disability grabbed my foot. I opened my eyes and saw her smiling at me. She waved, and then splashed some water. I chuckled and smiled back and waved. She then left me alone and returned to exploring the pool.

I eventually got out and sat on one of the sun loungers with my phone, but my eyes did go back and forth between the hypnotic view counter and the girl in the pool. She had this constant smile on her face as she splashed the water and she was laughing so loudly as she splashed it around. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone as happy as that. Even little kids playing in playgrounds didn’t look as happy as this girl with learning disabilities looked as she did something so simple as just walk around in water and splash it around.

I smiled as I watched her. The noise of thoughts I’d been possessed with since my video started blowing up about where to take my output next seemed insubstantial. No matter if my channel actually blew up properly and every video was a success, I would never achieve the kind of happiness that that girl got from something as simple as splashing around in a pool. My train of thought had been getting so insufferably complicated in recent weeks, but I found myself longing to be able to get that kind of happiness that girl was getting from something so simple.

I tried to disconnect from this frantic train of thought that Christmas. On December the 23rd, my partner and I went driving around looking at Christmas lights in the area. We usually do this every Christmas just before the day itself.

She told me about this one road she’d heard about on Facebook containing a house that was apparently the best Christmas light display that this other person had ever seen. We went driving around roads I’d never been down before, got lost and we didn’t actually find the house, but I didn’t care because we were having fun together as we tried to figure out the way round this new area. We laughed, joked, put music on, and enjoyed whatever humbler displays we could find. It was nice to let myself take pleasure in something simple.

I ended up writing a short story called ‘Bright Lights’ on this theme about a couple looking at Christmas lights. I’m probably going to post it on my channel this Christmas. It won’t do nearly as well as the Friends video and might actively put off the new people who’ve subscribed to see me do things like the Friends video, but its the theme of finding joy in something simple that means a lot to me. There’s a horror twist to the story of course (it is me here) but the theme of simple pleasure is what’s important, and that story is important to me.

That moment I was sitting in the pool, seeing that girl have the time of her life with some water was important to me. Complex things like success can create an obsession in you, but it will never bring you as much joy as that girl splashing some water or spending an evening looking at Christmas lights with someone you love.