 I think that it's time that we say goodbye to 2021, baby. AAAAAAAAGHH, CLICK PATE! Alright, I'm sorry. 2021. The year is coming to a close. And what a year! What can be- what can be said about this year? Huh? This year feels like it was such a weird blur. Such a fucking weird blur. I don't even remember how did 2021 even start? I don't remember New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. I remember that I was pretty much completely alone on Christmas Day last year, which was great. Excuse the dogs barking, sorry. And that's kind of all I remember is being alone for most of last year and a lot of this year. A lot has changed this year though. A lot, a lot has changed. There's been a lot of milestones that have happened in my life, both personal and professional, I guess. I started a tour. I did the first show of the tour. The tour is happening so soon, like three months from now. So if you want to come to the tour, please come to the tour. I am severely hoping that things clear up COVID-wise so the tour doesn't get canceled. I would be so upset. But we're taking all the precautions that we can, obviously. I think a few of the things vaccination-wise might be changing for some venues during the tour. Check the websites per venue. They all have their own thing. I don't control any of that. RGT doesn't control any of that. It's all a venue by venue basis as far as their protocols and everything. Just to let you know, I bought a house in 2021. That was kind of insane. That was like the first, damn, that was literally like the first week of 2021. I closed on this house, I think, in February. But I think the day after Christmas is when I saw this house for the first time, so that's weird. But yeah, I bought a house. I'm very, very happy in the house. Me and Mika got a new dog, Baby Bee. So there's been a lot of good things that have happened this year. It's been a lot of ups and downs emotionally, I think, for me. You know, one with the show happening that kind of took up all of my time, and it was a very emotional journey, I think, for me to make the show. And I kind of dove into that really, really, really hard, especially the last few months leading up to the first show. And I felt like I wasn't like a person for a bit. Like I felt like I was just completely consumed by the show in good ways and in bad ways. I'm very excited to show it to everybody who wasn't there at that show in Chicago and actually bring it on tour. I'm really excited. I think that I've learned a lot about what I want to be doing and how I sort of want to present myself going forward. I think a lot of that has to do with the show as far as me learning that, I mean, because the show wasn't all just me. It was very much a collaborative effort with me and the people at Real Good Touring. You know, I wrote the show and sort of like came up with the concept, I guess, but they helped a ton along the way. And I wrote sort of like the base of the show and they helped make it a bit more concise with me. And I was working with a couple of different writers and stuff, all a part of their team and they're all absolutely amazing. And so they helped me a lot just sort of make everything a bit more tight and concise. But with that, I had to learn how to delegate properly and I had to learn how to also say no to people, which I most of the stuff that I do on a daily basis is just me and Justin, the editor, the wonderful editor. But as far as my career goes, like it's always just kind of been me and maybe one pretty much just one other person over the last few years, obviously Justin editing the videos. And that was that was a big thing for me to releasing that part of the channel because I edited everything for such a long time. Catherine also edited a lot of the videos a while back and having Catherine edit some stuff was the first time of me sort of letting go because it was all just me for a majority of the time. And so especially with the show, I had to learn how to how to delegate more and how to like tell people to do certain things, which is not stuff that I'm used to. I'm used to just taking care of everything myself. And I also have I feel like I've been getting a lot better about saying no to people because I'm always just like a yes kind of guy. I want to just make sure everybody's everybody's happy and I don't I don't like conflict at all. But with the show and it being mine, I had to step up and when people came in with ideas or changes to things that I didn't like, I had to learn how to be like in my mind. I'm like, I don't want to have to say no to this person, but I had to because it's my show. So I had to be like, no, I don't like that idea or no, this is not the way that we're going to do that. And so that was that was really, really challenging for me because that's something that I don't like doing. I don't like saying no to people and I don't like putting down other people's ideas and I want to try and work with everybody. And it still was a very collaborative, like healthy working relationship. But part of the healthiness of it, I think was me learning how to say no to people. And that was very interesting. I don't really know what's going on right now. I didn't say like, Hey, here's what's happening. I just started talking. So enjoy me talking. But I mean, we always kind of do this at the end of the year. I think, you know, we always sort of do like a wrap up. But that was that was really interesting and and going forward once the tour actually starts, I think that'll have a lot a lot more of that. You know, there was some stuff during the show. This is not me like this is not me trash talking anybody or anything like that because the show in Chicago, I think went really, really well, but a lot of the a lot of the complaints were actually because of the audio because the people that were working at the venue, I think are way used to way more used to doing like music shows. So there was certain parts of the show that sort of got drowned out and you weren't able to hear me and stuff like that. And so, you know, I checked with the audio people a lot and being like, ah, can we tweak it a little bit and being like, well, you're the professional. So what do you think? And they were like, okay, I think what we have is good. And so I'm going to have to learn how to be like, no, we need to run it again and like tweak this, this and this or, you know, even in the first rehearsals, I had to learn how to how to tell people to do stuff, which was really interesting, like all of the lighting and stuff in the show. I had to go through with the lighting director. This dude Drew, he was super, super amazing. He was the lighting director and the lighting designer for the first show. He won't be coming on tour, unfortunately, but he was an awesome dude and one of the things that was weird for me was I don't really know about lighting in a stage sense at all. And so going to him and being like, these are the ideas that I have for the show and then him coming back and then in my mind, I'm like, well, I should do whatever he says because this is his job. Like this is his profession. I don't know what I'm doing, but having to find a happy medium and being like, oh, I don't like the way that that light comes in or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and be like, no, like this is a collaborative thing. I don't have to just go with what everybody else says is good. Like this is a collaborative thing and especially with this show, like it's my show. So ultimately I kind of get the final call anyway. I feel like I'm being a little bit repetitive, but that was really interesting for me. And that was something that I'm looking forward to doing more of because it definitely pushes me out of my comfort zone and it's kind of, I don't know. It's been nice for me to figure that side of things out and be like, no, you can speak up and you can say no to people and you can change things. You don't just have to go with what everybody says. So anyway, that was interesting, but I'm really, really looking forward to the tour. I cannot wait. I am so excited and with the tour, I just tweeted about this a couple hours ago actually. I've realized that I really want to change up the way that I do things. You know, I've been doing YouTube. This coming August will be a decade, 10 years of me doing YouTube, which is insane, but this whole time I've never really treated YouTube as my job. I've always sort of treated it as just like my lifestyle, which has been not good. It's been really unhealthy and I've sort of realized that over this last year that it is a really unhealthy mindset to have because being your own boss is a blessing and a curse. You know, you get to make your own schedule and do everything on your own time, but it also sucks because you make your own schedule and you do everything on your own time. And so you're either sort of like constantly working or you're just like, well, I don't need to do anything. And then you get into a habit of not doing stuff. And I think that this past year I've been kind of lazy in certain aspects. With my YouTube channel, I worked my fucking ass off for the show and I'm really proud of myself for how much I put into that. But on the YouTube channel side and videos and stuff like that, I really slacked off a lot. Not necessarily slacked off, but it was just not a priority. And I think a lot of that was due to my relationship with YouTube and the way that I see it. YouTube is my job. As much as I don't want to think of it as a job because I have so much fun making videos and stuff like that, it is my job. It's the way that I make a living. And I think that going forward, I need to treat it a bit more as a job because it'll just consume my entire life. And so going forward, I'm actually looking to try and get an assistant soon to help me out with just day-to-day stuff and being sort of like a middleman for me and working with my manager and working alongside me a lot more and helping me out. I spend a lot of times, especially with different kinds of videos, a lot of time doing other stuff that isn't making videos. So like, me and Mika made a video where we went and we made Christmas cookies. And that video took like all day. But it was just like, we recorded for two hours. But it was all day of going out and getting stuff and setting up equipment. And so I'm looking to have somebody help me do that, you know, be like, hey, I need you to go out and get this, this, and this, or I need you to set up this stuff. So I can just sort of focus more on making the actual videos and coming up with different ideas and stuff like that. So I'm really excited about that. And I'm excited to hopefully have them come on tour with me and help me out on tour. But yeah, I want to treat YouTube a bit more like a job and less like a lifestyle because I think that the relationship I've had is kind of unhealthy, you know, because I'm either always thinking about work or I get into this lazy state and I sort of overcorrect and I'm like, I need to spend more time for myself but then I'm not spending enough time working. And so I want to sort of plan my days out more. I actually just yesterday scheduled out as far as what videos I'm going to do for the next two months. And so then every day I can just be like, okay, what do I need to record today? This, this, and this. And I'm going to try and make myself work hours. So then I just have a healthier relationship with what I do. So then I can have sort of like the clock-in-clock-out mentality of once I'm done recording for the day or doing what I need to do, then that's it. And everything else is just me, you know, doing stuff in my personal life because I think it gets really hard sometimes when like YouTube and videos and stuff is constantly on my mind. And so I need to have a different relationship and a healthier relationship so I can sort of separate my work life from my home life, which I think a lot of people have experienced this, especially in the last couple of years. My office is in my home. And so a lot of times, and because a lot of people started working from home, I've always kind of worked from home as far as YouTube goes. A lot of people have experienced, like, that that's really hard to separate sometimes. When you work from home, it kind of feels like you're always working sometimes and it's really hard to separate the home life from the work life sometimes. And so I'm going to try and do that. I'm going to try and have a healthier relationship with YouTube and streaming and stuff, try and get on a better schedule, get more consistent. I'm not going to do daily stuff, I don't think, but right now what I have planned out is videos every other day, which I think will be nice for me and there will be some days where I... or some weeks where I post every day. There might even be times where I post twice in a day for some reason. But I'm going to try and get on a more consistent schedule but also not nail myself down to I need to post at noon every single day because I've done that before and like back when I was posting two videos every day, it was like 12 and 3 every day and it just was too much. So I want to try and find a happy medium between having a good work schedule and being consistent and giving you guys content and also giving myself enough time in my personal life. To hang out with Spencer, right, Spencer? Spencer's down there. I don't want to pick him up though because he's in his bed and then he'll go... he gets grumbly. But yeah, that's something that I'm really excited for. I'm excited to work smarter, not harder necessarily. And I still want to do a bunch more stuff. I'm very excited. You guys probably saw. Recently, we did the fundraiser for Coloc. I'm not only going to be on the new season of Coloc but I'm now an executive producer of Coloc. I am extremely, extremely excited. I will put in the description more about Coloc but it's a show made by HyperRPG and it's filled to the brim with lore and psychological horror and it's really, really, really cool. So that's going to be starting up soon. I don't know the exact date but that's going to be starting up soon. It is technically the third season but it's sort of... The last two seasons have sort of been prequels in a way. So if you've been a fan of the show and you've been watching you'll still get a lot of stuff satisfied for you as far as a longtime viewer. But if you're starting brand new and you've never heard of it before this is a great launching off point. So if you'd like to watch me on season three of Coloc I'm extremely, extremely excited. It's going to be really, really cool and I'm extremely pumped to see what we make. It's going to be awesome. But there's a lot of stuff coming up other than just Tor which is going to be a really big part of this year that I'm really excited for and I'm excited to just get back in the groove of things and yeah, I don't know. So thank you guys for being here genuinely. I feel like I haven't thanked you in a while. Like thank you for being here and for supporting me and thank you for everything that you've done. I wouldn't be anywhere without you guys. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to show you the show that I made. So excited to go on tour and I'm very excited to get back into the swing of things and be better at this because I'm really good at what I do but I haven't been very good at it recently and I want to prove to you guys that I'm better than what I've been doing and I think that my show definitely proves that. At least I hope so. But on the YouTube side I just want to get a bit better and narcissistically I want to be people's favorite YouTuber again because I feel like I've kind of dropped off a bit because of my shitty schedule and stuff like that and so I just want to be better. I don't know and I think that that's okay. I don't think that that's unhealthy to just want to be better. I want to find a way that I can do that without stressing myself out and having an unhealthy lifestyle with YouTube but I want to be better. So that's what I'm going to try and do this year. So I'll see you next year.