 Hello my beautiful internet friends! Welcome back. I am so happy to see you here especially for this video as I have a very, it's not an announcement so much as a community project that I am inviting people to be a part of. It has nothing to do with money, just right after that. I'm gonna let you know so don't worry about that. But something happened a couple weeks ago now that is mind-blowing to me and I still have trouble comprehending because it's incredible and crazy. You guys got me to 100,000 subscribers here on YouTube and I still kind of feel like silly putting so much weight in that number but it means a lot to me. That was a goal of mine that was like a crazy goal, something I never thought I would come close to or reach and then it happened and holy crap thank you thank you so much for making a huge dream in my life a reality. But I really wanted to do something to mark this occasion, to mark this event, to mark this milestone and over on Instagram my account is listed right here. I often ask you questions I have to do with my channel so if you want to be a part of that follow me there. But I asked people to send in suggestions of what they'd like to see for like my 100,000 subscriber video and I reposted some of those that people sent in so people could comment on them. Overwhelmingly one of those one I'm really excited about this but first I wanted to take a moment to talk about the impact that you have had on my life or the past almost 12 months now and this in particular isn't something that I've covered in other videos like I did a video recently about what it felt like to go through all of this in front of so many people but I wanted to talk for a moment specifically to you. 10 years ago if you met Joe of the past you wouldn't recognize me I don't think at least I don't recognize me I could not do vulnerability to save my life. I was an extremely walled off closed down shut off you're not going to get past this kind of person but I had like a lot of friends I was really good at listening so I was like always there for other people but I never actually opened up. I was terrified of vulnerability and that led to I think a lot of issues in my life and as years went on and I experienced different things I realized that that isn't something that I wanted to be I didn't want to be someone who went through life shoving everything down all the time. I think when we talk about vulnerability we usually talk about it in regards to other people like I'm being vulnerable with you that kind of a thing but I think the thing that I was always scared of was vulnerability with myself was really examining my emotions and what I was experiencing going through because that could be so painful and that can be so truly terrifying just petrifying like holy shit no you know as time went on it's something that became very important to me to try to do at least and how honest I am with myself and the people around me is like so closely linked to how my mental health is doing I shoved down so many things in my life for so many years that I'm still in the process of unwinding things from like two decades ago right and when I learned that I was gonna have this amputation mentally I was like I don't want to do that I don't want to realize in 10 years that I never dealt with emotions that I was feeling and I shoved it all down I want to go through this in the healthiest way possible so much easier said than done so as I went through this as I lost my leg and then went through all kinds of unexpected things after that things didn't go according to plan and holy crap this was so much harder than I anticipated all of my old habits wanted to come popping back up of like being insincere with myself and others and not being vulnerable with myself or others and shutting down emotions and shoving them in tight little compact tough work containers in my mind that I then like file away in a deep dark hole hopefully never to be seen again but I was making videos about this whole process and talking to you guys and so many of you shared your stories with me and honestly this channel for me in many ways is a practice in being vulnerable with myself and then thus because it's published online others it keeps me honest but when things got harder I really wasn't okay I didn't feel like I fit the mold of who I should be which is a feeling I've had my entire life I think many of us do have that feeling but when I published videos that terrified me like petrified me to hit that upload button on where I was visibly upset or talking about really dark things or obviously having a hard time I think a lot of the time I expect people to judge me as harshly as I judge myself but the response instead was an overwhelming echo of support and then you would turn around and tell me that it helped you feel less alone and you telling me that would help me feel massively less alone and not weird for feeling the things that I was feeling and I honestly don't know where I would be without this community and without this channel as I've gone through amputation I don't know how much I would have given into all those old habits of putting emotions in boxes and shoving them away but I haven't done that nearly as much as I've ever done at any time in my life I'm pretty proud of how I've been able to to face head on some of the things oh we got a kitty he was stepping on my keyboard you can't do that Lewis anyways like I was saying before Lewis made an appearance biggest message that I've received from this community in times when I have been in a rough place is it's okay to be in a rough place I have needed to hear that you've listened to me for like a year now that really really means so much to me that's not something you have to do you take time out of your day to hear what I'm saying and often leave incredibly lovely comments thank you thank you for being a part of the reason why I have been able to go through this at all thank you for encouraging me to continue being real with myself and the people around me that encouragement has made a tangible difference in my life it's not a small thing this isn't just like a hobby it's something I really care about and then you guys have shown me how much you care too I don't want this to get too long of me repeating the same thing I just want you to know that you have literally made an actual difference in my life you have allowed me to stay real with myself and to stay real with you and that is not an opportunity a lot of people get thank you with that being said community project time so this was actually the last suggestion that I posted on Instagram because I was like oh this is a beautiful idea but I felt like weird even putting it up on Instagram it felt a little bit egotistical or narcissistic or something like that but the response was overwhelmingly like I got message after message after message of like yes please do this I would love to participate that I feel like I have no other choice what we are going to be doing is a community video together if you want to send me a quick clip to the email address I've listed down below it is just for this project it's on screen right now it's also in the description of how this community or this channel has impacted your life I will be playing those clips reacting to them as many as I possibly can fit into a video without making it like an hour long and I'm so excited to be able to share your faces on my channel because you are what keeps this going and you mean so much to me so if you want to be a part of this all you have to do is record a video of yourself talking or we know record a video of your dog while you're talking whatever you want to do I don't care video quality or anything doesn't matter at all I would just really love to hear from you guys and I'm super excited to do this project with you to commemorate our 100,000 subscriber mark so I'll be collecting videos on that email address for about a week and then I will probably kind of shut it down and actually start making that video I promise I will try to get to as many clips as is humanly possible in this video hopefully every single one of them that you guys sent in we'll see we'll see how many it gets to yeah so I hope that you'll be a part of this project I am so excited to see your videos to see your faces I love you guys I'm thinking of you and I'll see you in the next video bye guys