 🎵 Jumpin' off the porch like mom's not home 🎵 🎵 It takes so long 🎵 What's up guys, it's Josh from We're Back here with another video. This video's gonna be a little bit different. So I've always found it very helpful in my life to reflect back on specific moments or events and try to extract a lesson or something that I can carry with me in the future. And this was definitely the case when it came to the whole situation in Paris. I had all of my gears stolen. Everything that I've used to make YouTube videos over the past year just gone in an instant, including hours of unbacked up photos that I will never be able to get back again. This was no small problem. In fact, it was a pretty big deal, something that I still haven't recovered from yet. I knew my study abroad experience in Paris would be something that I would remember for the rest of my life, but I didn't want this to be the reason that was true. Seriously though, when I'm like 40, reflecting on all the crazy moments from college, this is definitely gonna be one of those highlights, but not in a good way. So I had all of my gear stolen. I was left pretty helpless. I'm not gonna lie. I really had no motivation to pick up a camera again. And honestly, I felt like I was back to square one. I wasn't just going to sit there and not do anything about it though. If I've learned anything in the past couple months, it's that crap like this is gonna happen and you just have to take it and move on. I remember distinctly sitting in my room in Paris after it happened and having no idea what to do. I felt like the whole world was just crumbling in on me and there was nothing that I could do about it. You guys don't really know this, but over the past year, YouTube has kind of become a fixture of my life. I've put out somewhere around 140, 150 videos over the past year, and that's wild. That's pretty much like a video every three days for an entire year. It takes a lot of work and it's not easy, but I loved it. And in this moment, I felt like that entire part of my life was just ripped away. So obviously things got better. With the success of the GoFundMe, I was able to repurchase some of my gear and at least get the ball rolling again on the whole YouTube thing. But the important thing is to kind of draw some lessons from this little hiccup. So I won't make similar mistakes in the future. The first of which is if you ever find yourself in Paris, don't choose to film a YouTube video right in front of the Eiffel Tower, one of the most touristy parts of Paris. No, but like seriously, Paris is known for its pickpockets. And I knew that going in and I tried to prevent that. But the thing is, if you're not vigilant every single minute of the day, something is going to happen. Like I tried to take every single precaution I could, but that wasn't enough. They're smart and they're going to do anything they can to get your stuff. My backpack was out of view right next to me in my peripherals. It should have honestly, it should have been, I should have taken the strap. I should have wrapped it around my leg and it should have been sitting in front of me the entire time. In Paris, having something within arms reach is just not enough. It's not enough. It should have been in contact with me at all times. Also, I was thinking about it. I probably shouldn't have had all my expensive gear in a single bag, but as I mentioned in another video, all that stuff was in the bag for a specific reason. Although it was unfortunate, I don't think I could have changed that specific outcome. The main lesson I've learned was something that was entirely under my own control, and now that I can kind of call myself a legit YouTuber, something that I should have already been doing anyways. Backing up my footage. Now I knew that I should have been backing up my footage and I was doing it, but it was, it was something that was very long-term. Everything that I had filmed since like March was not backed up at all. Every time I would bump up against the storage constraint of the SSD on my computer, I would load all of my old videos and clips onto my Yale Google Drive, which has like unlimited storage on the cloud. But at the time that I left for Paris, I was doing good on storage, so I, it was all on my laptop. I had been thinking about investing in an external hard drive before I left for Paris, but I was like, I didn't want to buy one right before I left and have to haul it all the way to Paris and then just carry it around with me. That's not something that I wanted to do. So I made the decision to just wait till after Paris, which was not the right decision at all. Fortunately, I should have pulled the trigger on the drive a little earlier because yeah, all the, all the footage has gone down. But here's my plan going forward. I just bought and it was just delivered this four terabyte rugged hard drive that is going to be with me at all times. Here's my plan from now on. I'm going to load my footage onto the SSD on my computer. I'm going to edit that footage. I'm going to export that footage. As soon as I have my file with all my video clips and everything done, it's going to be copied to my hard drive, my external hard drive, and it's going to be copied to the cloud. That way I'll have something local. I'll have something in backup and I'll have something on the cloud. So, so there's no reason I should ever lose footage like that again. And that's going to happen immediately after I finish. Every video is going to be backed up. This way I will never have to worry about running out of memory on my computer. I will never have to worry about losing files. And all all of my videos and any clips and stuff associated with my videos will be backed up on a external drive and on the cloud. With all these precautions, I'm going to hope that I never run into a problem like this again. Another thing that I've had people tell me is I have, I work on a PC. I do not work on a Mac. Currently I'm using a Dell XPS 15. It's a phenomenal laptop. I highly recommend it to any of you guys. I love it. It's an absolute beast when it comes to editing videos. And it runs, I can run Premiere, Photoshop, and be watching YouTube videos at the same time. It is just, it handles all of it perfectly. I'm getting off track. It's a great laptop, but definitely look into it. But this also means I don't have the like built-in tracker that Mac has, right? So, something that I didn't account for was I, since I don't have the Mac tracker, I'm going to have to invest in some sort of tracker on my own. Probably I will put like a tile or something to my backpack. I've used those before. I just didn't happen to have one in my backpack at the time. Very unfortunate. It's something that I use during the school year, but it's going to be with me at all times now. I'm going to take a tile, keep it in my backpack at all times. So that way it will always be able to be tracked if this ever happens again. Hopefully it won't. Like this is, this is one of those once in a lifetime experiences that hits you really hard. You learn a lot of lessons from it as I've said, and hopefully it never happens again. So yeah, at the end of the day, don't be stupid in Paris. Back up your footage. Don't keep everything in one bag and make sure that your bag or all your expensive equipment or hardware is trackable somehow. That's what I've drawn away from the situation. Also, I want to make sure that as I grow into adulthood to always ensure my stuff, because I am going to get some assistance, I think, for my laptop through my parents' insurance. So at least that will help out with some of the costs along with the go funding. It's not going to cover everything, but it's going to at least get me close. So yeah, as I grow up into adulthood, ensuring my equipment, ensuring everything, because sometimes you can't avoid crap like this and insurance will always be there to help you out. So I definitely, definitely will continue to invest in insurance as I grow into adulthood. And yeah, this was a rough situation. We're still recovering from it, but I've taken away a lot of important life lessons from this and hopefully something like this will never happen again. So thank you guys for all your support. Thank you for the go fund me. And with that, if you enjoyed this video, drop a like down below. It helps me in supporting the channel a lot more than you think. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, leave them in the comment section below. Or if you have any future video ideas, I have some time right now to pump out some more content. So if you guys have any ideas, especially as the school year begins to start, definitely leave them below. If you're new and this is the first video you've seen, feel free to subscribe. You will not regret it. With that, I'll see you guys next video.