Up until about eight years ago, I had dual 30″ monitors. This was back before I was seriously making YouTube videos, but I watched a lot of them. Ironically, I’ve always been out of sync with my own life. In 2010, I bought a new computer. The salesman who was helping me build the right one asked me if I would be doing any video editing, and I said, “Hell no.” I had no interest in making videos at that time. He said, “Good, because you won’t be able to edit video with this computer.”

I bought the computer, and almost instantly wanted to start editing video. He wasn’t kidding, though. I absolutely could not edit video with it. A few years later, I replaced that laptop with a more powerful desktop that was slightly more capable of editing video, but still not great at it, and so, I didn’t do much video editing with it, though I tried.

At the end of 2016, I finally broke down and bought my first MacBook. I had wanted a Mac for years. I used to go to the Apple store and pine, but I could never bring myself to spend the money. I wish I had just sacked up and done it, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. I didn’t really use my new MacBook for about three months because I couldn’t get used to the operating system.

In January 2017, however, my desktop computer died, my MacBook became my daily driver, and I never looked back. I’ve edited over 100 videos on MacBooks, believing that I liked the freedom to be able to work anywhere, and in the beginning, I did. I would take my computer out back – in fact, I wrote a whole saga about it –

I would work in the garage,

in the living room,

at my desk,

in the kitchen, in the back of my van between jobs,

hell, I even worked in the car on a road trip once.

Mostly, though, I only work at my desk. These days, my videos are so big that I’m usually tethered to an external hard drive, so working away from my desk is inconvenient. I’ve still never given up the idea that I want to be free to edit anywhere I please, so I’ve resisted the idea of buying a desktop.

I’ve also resisted using external monitors for the same reason: FREEDOM! My dad recently gave me a 24″ curved monitor, though, and I started using it last week. Then, I dug one of my kids’ old 24″ monitors out of the attic, and put both monitors on a dual monitor standing desk thing that I picked up on Craigslist for free.

Today was my first full day of editing with three monitors, and OH MY GOD, I’m never going back. I think I need at least two more. I separated the windows in Premiere and put all of my libraries, files, and things in one, my timeline in another, and my program in the third. I can actually see what I’m doing now. I can have my Finder open in a full screen, see and find the files I’m looking for, and effortlessly drag them wherever I need them. Why wasn’t I doing this all along!