Failing Into Success

Do you ever feel like a failure?

I do more often than I'd like to admit. On the surface, I portray confidence. From an outsider's perspective, I am successful. But internally, I struggle with my self confidence. I am constantly trying to improve myself and my situation. Sometimes to a fault, but sometimes it works out. And that's where Common Ground comes in.

Let's take a step back for a moment. I started making Minecraft YouTube videos in 2013. Yes, one three. I was a teenager who was overflowing with confidence in myself. My videos were bad, but I believed in them, and in turn, believed in myself. I was a part of an SMP early on in my YouTube career, Concept SMP. I'm not sure if any videos still exist from this server, but it was my first real taste of playing Minecraft with friends and I was hooked. Like many SMPs, Concept failed fairly quickly. But I craved that connection again so later on, around 2015 I created Vision SMP. I had no process, and no idea what I was doing, but I got a handful of creators together (and some friends to fill in holes) and started Vision. Vision failed even quicker than Concept. Low server turnout, people hacking, just an overall bad experience and ultimately it led to me ending my YouTube career.

Fast forward to 2025, I started to watch all of my old videos. 10 years later. They were cringey, poorly edited, and had no story, but I was getting the itch once more. One thing to know about me, if I get something in my head, it's all I think about until I do it. And that was starting YouTube again. So I did it. Much older and wiser than before, but lacking that self confidence I once had. At the time of starting I did it because I needed to. I was so stuck. My job consumed all of my life, it was soul sucking. Outside of my wife and my son (who are both incredible and allow me to put as much time into this as I do) I had no positive human interaction during a normal day. So, I started posting.

I made the promise to myself I'd post once a week for a whole year, 8 months later we haven't missed our mark. So, I started in a single player world. Slowly, a small community started to form around me. But I was still missing that live interaction. So I started to stream, first to no one, then to a couple people (shoutout Kierstin and Trina), then to more. This started to fill that hole inside of me and it made my heart so happy, but I knew I wanted to play with others.

Then, an opportunity came around. It was an SMP that sounded right up my alley. Mostly vanilla, story driven, and felt like it was community focused. So, I applied. Was it the greatest application ever? No. But, I got a callback. I talked with the server owners in a Discord call for two hours, I felt great about it, we hit it off, had things in common, and seemed to get along well. Then, I heard nothing. That server started and I didn't get in. At first, I was devastated. I really wanted it, I felt like I failed. I turned back to my single player world but I ended up feeling even more alone than before. So, I took a step back and reevaluated what I was doing. I wondered if I could do it myself, and if I could find like-minded creators to join me on the journey. So, I started to think.

What did I want it to be? And how would it be different? Every SMP I saw was so focus on gimmicky mods, P, and what I would call the Mr. Beastification of YouTube. Everyone trying to capitalize on the next big trend. That's not what I wanted, I wanted friends playing Minecraft together. YouTube's most boring Minecraft SMP. So that's the angle I took. Next, I needed a name.

Personally, I think one of my greatest strengths is my ability to bring people together and to relate to them. In other words, finding common ground. Common Ground felt cozy, it felt real, and it portrayed exactly what I wanted, in a world so polarizing, a place to find common ground. Surely this would resonate with people, right? At first, surely not.

I put a lot of work into the announcement video. I posted it on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Discord, and Reddit. I paid for it to run as an ad in many of those places. At the same time I put A LOT of time and money into building a website from scratch to house the SMP. The application was planned to be open for 3 weeks. And after about a week and a half, I had maybe 2 viable candidates. "Welp, good try," I thought. I had already announced this project on all of my socials, I was embarrassed that it wasn't going to work out. I wrote a whole script talking about failure to release. But, I didn't give up. I started reaching out to creators I thought would be a good fit, many ghosted me, but a couple responded. Then I kept posting and slowly but surely great people started to come through. Then those great people recommended more great people and suddenly, my self doubt started to disappear.

Was it exactly what I envisioned? No. We had less people than I wanted, but we had people. Good people. And that was all that mattered. In total, about 85 people applied. Many were people just starting out with no backlog, or those that didn't quite fit the age requirement. But I managed to get a group of 11 out of them. Finally, we were able to launch. Decisions started to be made as a group, the server was ready to go. So, we started. The first day was chaos. The server wasn't keeping up, people were getting disconnected, a disaster of a launch. I literally upgraded the server mid launch to handle all of us, and eventually, it got working and thus, Common Ground was born.

And now we're here. We have this beautiful, strong community building around us everyday. I log on to the server knowing a positive interaction is bound to happen. I've already forged strong friendships with my fellow members. We talk about content creation, but we also talk about life, our struggles, and we all uplift one another. I see the same within our community. It's been described as "wholesome" by many people, and it's obvious why. If you haven't joined our Discord yet, find out for yourself: Join Here

I truly can't express how proud I am of what this has become. It has brought tears to my eyes more times than I can count. My self confidence is on the mend, and I'm having more positive interactions than ever before, and it's thanks to all of you. Everyone who watches and all of my fellow members. This is a journey I could have only dreamed of being on, and I'm happy to be on it with you. I hope you've found a place in our community. And I, along with all of the Commoners, hope you find it a place worth coming back to. <3