 Fish and Freaks, welcome back. Welcome back to the channel. I'm here with you. Today is Friday in the world. I do an often upload on Fridays, usually because people are out doing their things, getting ready for their adventure trips for the weekend and whatnot. Today I wanted to give you guys an update on life and the current situation I said in the last video that I was gonna update you on because I am a man of my word. First of all, I'd like to point out a couple things. One of them being this awesome guitar over here. It is in the shape and form of a black crappie. An amazing piece, art piece, and it plays. It plays pretty well actually. That was done by Mr. Kalkins. And he makes guitars. He makes them for Bassmaster Classic Winners and all sorts of people. He's a fan of the channel. He's a good man. And he built one of these guitars. I just thought, man, it's pretty fitting for the Fish Cave. And as we go into the winter months when it gets really cold, y'all, I'll probably be doing more videos inside of here because it's nice and cozy. Ultimate goal is to just do more content in here. Do more videos, do more podcasts, do more live streams for y'all. I've actually got some new wood art pieces that are being assembled, drawn out, built. This is gonna be my project for the weekend. In fact, let's get a shot of this amazing piece of Brazilian tiger wood that I'm gonna be making a desk out of. This comes with those super tall straight trees you see in Brazil. It's sustainably sourced. Don't worry, I didn't chop it down myself. And it looks beautiful, kind of like cedar, but I just love that it is a little piece of Brazil. My trip to the Amazon last year, it was during a crazy time of my life. And I also just learned a lot about life when I was down there. And I thought it'd be cool to have where I edit my little edit station be built out of Brazilian tiger wood. And I'm gonna build it myself and kinda walk you guys through that. I'm not gonna do a series of videos on that. I'm just gonna do a whole build and make one video on it. And it's got a cool twist on the furniture piece. Side of things. Also just rigging this place out to be better. And today is also the anniversary or the day before or day after. I'm not really sure of when I had my brain surgery, guys. 365 day-ishes ago, I had a very intelligent, skilled man inside of my brain doing magical things and taking old Willis, the tumor out. And thanks to you guys. Thanks to all your support emotionally and financially. If you don't know the story about all that, you can go back and watch all the videos, which have just kind of gone viral. A lot of people come to the channel from those videos. They say it was inspirational. It was a crazy time in my life. It was. So I wanna try to do one of these shirts every year. Not just because of that, just because I also love fishing and I love this statement. And it has kind of set the tone for my channel and as I started out in my career as a fisherman and now doing creating content. The new Make Every Cast Count. Sweatshirts. Yes, this is the first sweatshirt I've ever done. And tees are now available for you guys. And this is another hand-drawn design. It looks amazing. Last year, it was the one-hand up with a jig in the mouth. Of course, that's my favorite. That's my favorite. Especially when you're talking about Make Every Cast Count, targeting, throwing that jig. But it's a metaphor for life. Make everything you do count. This one has got Old Big Mondo on there. Two-hander, just a different way to look at it and very well done. That's available for you guys. Make sure to visit it top of the description. It helps out the channel. It helps out me and Stephanie and Amy. I'm gonna give you guys the gist of the situation here. You guys know that Google owns YouTube and YouTube incentivizes its creators to make content where they place ads on your videos and the more you upload and all that kind of stuff, the more ads and potentially the money you make. And anyway, the last few months, actually the last three months, my AdSense dollars have been on hold. So basically, the way that Make a Living has halted. And it's because someone hacked my account job. So I wanted to get this story out there to notify any creators that are out there that might run into this issue because even though I am missing a part of my brain, I still feel like I'm pretty cognizant of most things. And this one slipped under the radar on me and it got me and it allowed someone else to take over my AdSense account. So basically anything that I've been making in recent history on YouTube has gone to someone else. Someone else's bank account, which is quite a bummer as a YouTube creator. Not gonna let this get me down, guys. As you know, I'm a tough cat, I'm a tough fighter, but it just puts a bummer on things. Someone hacked into my account and I'm not sure how that happened. Maybe the person's watching right now. How'd you do that? Let us know in the comments. Jokes and Google is working on this, working on trying to figure this problem out to try to restore that part of my channel and just put in some safety measures. So thank you, Google, for getting on that. But let me tell you guys, when you try to contact Google, if you can imagine even a channel of my size, it is still very difficult. I mean, trying to get to an actual person, it's a longer story than that. But always make sure to do your two-step verification on YouTube and check to see if you're a creator, if you've got other managers on your channel. To your knowledge, if you're the only person that has access to your account, there shouldn't be anybody else on there, unless you're with a network. And if you trust that network, everything's good. But I'm just telling you what happened to me, someone snuck through the back door, made themselves an administrator, changed my absence to theirs, and then I was making money. For then. Also, Google advised me not to upload videos until the situation had been resolved. So I've had some breaks here lately, and I have content ready to upload, and I just haven't uploaded it because of that. And I'm not sure I will because it's kind of irrelevant at this point. But I still gotta upload because if I don't, you guys are gonna think I'm dead. I'm hoping that the person can be identified, but I don't know. It's a crazy dark world on the internet. And my point is be careful if you're a YouTuber and monitor the things that are going on with your channel. Now to delve a little bit deeper into the monetization conundrum. Delve, I think that's a word. Yeah, to delve a little bit deeper, I've tried to rely less and less on Google AdSense monetization over the past years, because channels similar to mine that do outdoor activities and things of that nature may be considered offensive to some people out there, fishing and hunting. My fear is that eventually fishing will be considered offensive because of, I guess, hooking fish in the mouth or maybe taking them home and eating them, I don't know. And that's just a way of life for me, but you think four or five years from now things can be different. I don't wanna rely on that to feed my family. I just wanna be myself and bring you guys my experiences from my eyeballs and try to tell the story the way it was, not fake it, to please monetization advertising. Anyway, that's probably a little deep for most everybody, but I just wanted to give you guys the gist of what has been going on here at the channel. The only unfortunate thing right now is what I just told you about and the massive flooding that we've had that has flooded the lakes. So I will not be able to fish around here for a while. And in fact, next week I will be traveling to the great state of Louisiana to go fishing. I'm gonna be going after red fish with Mr. Scott Martin who has a TV program that he invited me to be on and he also has a YouTube channel. Probably one of the best fishing scenarios out there, Louisiana I think is highly underrated. Not enough people go to Louisiana and catch all the fish that they have to catch over there. It's insane. So I can't wait to take you guys along for that and get away from this flooding for a while till it subsides and then I can just get right back to being around North Texas and going fishing and hunting around here. Now I'm gonna leave you guys on a positive note before I go in honor of one year of surviving brain surgery and I'm feeling good, man. I am feeling very good and very blessed. Still have all my functionality and I still kind of look handsome. Not everything is peaches and cream. Those battles and struggles are going to make you a stronger person. Now some things come at you, you know right away. You're like, yep, I got that. I can handle that, no problem. Some things are overwhelming and you don't know if you can handle or not. And that's okay. What you gotta do is you gotta have faith and you gotta persevere. Don't let anything get you down. When you get down, you get depressed, it starts to turn into a cycle and that's where things get really bad. That's where you need help from your friends. That's where faith comes in, you need a compass. Everyone goes through these type things. The two things that have helped me during rough times don't get comfortable. There's a lot of people that get comfortable and then when harder, tougher challenges come out of them, they forget, they lose their grit. So it's always good to diversify yourself, put yourself in more awkward situations, I guess you could say, to learn more and learn more from other people. And then that'll prepare you in the future and always have a good attitude, positive attitude. It's amazing when you think positively, you talk positively, you hang out with positive people, it just starts coming, it's just positive. It's positive all the time and then that'll help you get through those situations. So that's just my little advice for the day to end on a good note and I'm gonna get through this little problem that I'm having today. It ain't no big thing. So I just wanna thank you guys again for all the support on the channel. Don't forget to get the Make Every Cast Count new V2, the version two shirt and I hope to have one of these every year. Next year is gonna be even better and we'll just make it a little tradition. And of course, I hope wherever you are, you're having a very blessed day, y'all. Thank you for being here. More hunting action coming at you with Mullet Man and Outlaw. And it's always a good time in here, camp with your buddies. So keep it locked right here, y'all. Hit all the ding dongs for the notifications. Thinking that they still go out, I'm not sure. Just click it to be safe. And I love you guys. Thanks for being here. I'll see you tomorrow.