in the age of the internet it is so
incredibly easy to create and share
fully curated versions of our lives
where we only show the things that we
like only the things that feel good and
i think we all know this at this point
and yet
i feel like
i and everyone else that i know
everybody in my life
is figuring out how to navigate that
world how to trust what you see on the
internet how to know what is real and
what isn't the truth is
i believe that the hard times were
necessary for me to get to where i am
now in my life and that is why i wanted
to share
about
the hardest year of my life um a period
of time that really shaped who i am that
was just laced with things not going as
i wanted
with self-doubt this was a period of my
life where i have never felt more lost
[Music]
so this story begins in september of
2016 almost exactly five years ago and
this was going to be my quote-unquote
gap year so i was going into it with all
kinds of expectations i was really
excited this was supposed to be one of
the best years of my life so much time
to
work and travel and have new experiences
i had graduated from high school five or
six months before that previous spring
and i'd been saving up money for the
last
year and a half at that point to be able
to do the things that i wanted to do
like traveling in that september
after actually failing a program to go
to morocco i ultimately decided to do a
homestay experience in argentina this
was of particular importance to me
because
my family is from argentina and i had
grown up exposed to a lot of the culture
but
i had lost the ability to speak fluently
and i just really wanted to reconnect
with my roots and i think i had created
an idea of what this place
should look like in my head uh which
further added to the expectation and the
pressure i really wanted to fit in and
belong and just like
find a new home an important note on
homestay experiences
you never know what you're getting
yourself into that's true of
going abroad in general of going
traveling to a new place of living in a
new place but especially so when you're
living in a new
household with another family there are
plenty of horror stories out there of
people that have had really rough
experiences not seeing eye to eye with
their host families at that stage i was
18 years old you know looking back i was
pretty naive but i was going into it
feeling very confident and this was
something of an au pair sort of
situation
where i was working and helping the host
family and
in exchange i was getting a place to
live and like food to eat and that was
helping keep costs low as many of you
may already know if you've been
following this channel for a while i
made this video on how that experience
went i'm not going to go into as much
detail this time around you can check it
out i'll leave a link in the description
below basically what you need to know is
that it was a horrible experience there
were so many problems i mean problems in
terms of communication
we did not have the same expectations of
the experience there was a manipulative
dynamic with my host father and i didn't
have the emotional tools to
deal with this situation it was an
incredibly emotionally draining
experience and
bizarrely enough the more emotionally
drained i was the more i started acting
in weird ways i was doing things that i
had never done before like for example
resorting to alcohol to numb how i was
feeling
that is not something i've i had ever
done up to that point or have done since
but
i i was looking for ways to escape and
it's incredibly difficult to describe
just how hard it is to live with
somebody that doesn't like you and that
doesn't make you feel safe okay this is
kind of weird to share but
i don't
really cry that often
when it comes to sadness like that's not
something that i'm super prone to do i
actually think i'm much more likely to
cry when i see something very beautiful
or when i see some sort of
act of kindness
like in a movie or in real life a
classic example of this is in the movie
cars there's that scene near the end of
the movie where lightning mcqueen
stopped short of winning the race
to help his friend who had broken down
during the race what are you doing here
i think the king should finish his last
race across the finish line i don't know
there was something about that that was
just incredibly beautiful to me
it destroyed me i cried i cried a lot
from that scene so anyway that's a
little bit of a random tangent but i
share that because during this period of
time
i found myself breaking down and like
crying uncontrollably um and i didn't
even understand where it was coming from
and there was other things too like i
was napping i'm not somebody who naps
and i was finding myself just tired
all day long almost like my body was
shutting down and i don't use the word
depression to describe this i don't use
that word lightly at all
i don't know if it's necessary to put a
label on what i was experiencing at that
time but
i think if you saw me at that period of
time in my life you would have clearly
been able to see that something wasn't
right especially if you had known me
from before i think i just felt
incredibly alone and i was feeling this
intense
heaviness and sadness about life that i
could not
get rid of and the worst part about this
and it's a very important detail to
include here is that i didn't even
realize what was going on and there's
another layer to all this which is that
i was really starting to worry about
getting a career going
i had been posting every single week at
least once oftentimes twice on youtube
at that point for a year and a half so
i've been consistently doing that and
was burning myself out trying so hard to
make it work and it wasn't going
anywhere
and that was another layer on top of all
this that made me feel like
what the hell is going on with my life
right now
[Music]
so all of what i just described was in
september october and november of 2016.
and my plan after that was to do
like backpacking to travel around with
you know the money that i had saved up
staying in hostels being cheap if you
will just to stretch things as long as i
could i met up with my family in london
for the holidays instead of giving gifts
to each other for a little while we had
this tradition of doing an end-of-year
trip um and that year we met up in
london it was weird to see my family
i remember my mom telling me she had
never seen me so low confidence in my
entire life that's a scary thing to hear
from a loved one i think i had
completely lost my sense of why in my
life you know why i was doing things the
memories are not as clear or as sharp
because i think i was just going through
the motions part of it was also affected
by
the things that happened to me during
this period of time we got robbed when
we were in london when i was with my
family and almost everything we had was
taken from us and that getting robbed
happened days before christmas it really
shook me up seeing my mom cry was awful
a lot of really tough things were
happening and i did not feel like i had
the tools to to handle it in fact after
that i found myself full of anxiety when
i was with my stuff in public i was
spending a lot of time like i said in
hostels and i didn't trust anybody i
remember being in spain a little bit
later on in that three-month period of
backpacking and traveling
where
i had placed my remaining possessions in
the overhead compartment area a little
bit down
the carriage a few people came in onto
the train and blocked my access to my
things and all of a sudden i could not
access them and i kept thinking to
myself if somebody wanted to rob me
right now they could take all of my
remaining possessions
and i could feel myself experiencing
what felt like
like what could become a panic attack
where
i suddenly could not remember how to
breathe
i was lightheaded
and i had to talk myself out of
absolutely freaking out like just
calming myself down anyway i shared
these little anecdotes because it just
felt like an ugly period of my life
where i was
running for myself the bizarre thing is
that from the outside it probably looked
like this fun
travel that i was doing from country to
country i spent time in france spent
time in spain spent time in the uk i
just looked back on blurry unhappy
memories for the most part where i was
just not in the right headspace
i was trying to do fun things to to to
feel good inside but i couldn't make
myself feel good inside the whole trip
ended with me being extremely sick for
like a week or two
and
traveling when you're sick is
horrible this is of course
years before the pandemic
so in february of 2017 i arrive back
home in portland where my parents live
and i'm 19 years old and i'm burned out
for making youtube videos which i've
been going nowhere on top of it i'm not
proud of what i've been creating because
i've never even learned the manual
settings of my camera and felt like i
wasn't telling interesting stories i
wasn't
honoring
the the desires that i had internally to
to create amazing things and
you know i'm not going to college right
i never went to college but at this
stage of my life i'm in kind of my gap
year
and
i'm not going to college like all the
other
people that i went to in high school who
did go to college and university and
have joined fraternities or sororities
and
i feel once again very very lonely and
i'm questioning my decisions did i make
the dumbest decision ever by doing this
like what am i doing doing all these
things now i have no money left and it
doesn't feel like i've made any progress
in terms of career and for the next six
months i was like on the hunt to
get any work i possibly could in the
film industry to work on set in any
capacity i mean at first i was just
trying to be a production assistant just
to get my foot into the door to do
anything but i was also open to being or
helping out in any capacity possible and
for six
months
i couldn't convince anybody to get me on
set even unpaid nobody wanted anything
to do with me because i had no contacts
i was trying to squeeze my way into that
world and so i did an unpaid uh
internship for a while at the ompa the
oregon media production association i
think it's what it's called i attended
networking events i invited people to
coffee i was calling people
and it just felt like i was going
absolutely nowhere and this on top of it
was not how i was planning on spending
my gap year i wanted to do
more
fun things to be traveling to be seeing
the world to be
you know that's the association i think
we all have when we think of a gap year
right well this is not what it ended up
looking like the amount of self-doubt
that i felt during that period was
borderline paralyzing i wanted to work
my way towards telling my stories to the
world and it just felt like
it felt impossible i was seriously
considering getting a job as a barista
but finally in august september of 2017
i started to land jobs on set and that
led you know one thing led to another
and that built my momentum and since
then my life has completely changed but
up until that point
i
had spent what felt like a super brutal
year a period abroad
was marred with what felt like failure
coming back home and not feeling useful
or valuable where people didn't want to
hire me and
i felt very alone
the first thing i have to say about this
is when i went back to portland and in
that six month period of trying to get
my career going in some way or another i
did not sit and just dwell on the past
i gave myself creative projects to
uh push myself to learn and grow as a
filmmaker to shoot things and to edit
things and to i watched like a billion
tutorials on youtube and skillshare at
that time to learn about transitions and
you know how to tell a story visually
and those things i you know i worked on
a series called what i learned from the
french there were three parts there were
like three short films that i created
that took me forever to create but those
turned into portfolio pieces that i was
able to show people and use that to
convince people to have me on set that
more than anything felt proactive and i
think forcing myself to be proactive in
some form or another considering my head
space considering how everything felt at
that time was really really important an
interesting way it also helped me start
the process of finding my voice as an
artist but another big thing to mention
here and this is not the solution
anybody wants because it's not immediate
is time it takes time to process the
things that happen to you and it's
extremely important to honor that
because i think if you sprint through
one thing to the next throughout your
entire life and don't take those periods
of reflection i feel like so many
potential learnings can be lost and it's
not a race the finish line you know i
mean i feel like i was if i didn't take
that time i would have been much more
prone to make the exact same mistakes
that i had before and honestly there is
no
phase or period of your life that is
permanent so the way that i was feeling
couldn't last forever even if i wanted
it to and even though it sucked so badly
something about all of it felt really
important it felt like it was shaping me
and and that it was making me grow in a
sense
i was being tested i feel like that
period of time really toughened me up
you know i never gave up even though i
wanted to
i didn't i was not going to give up on
the things that i was dreaming about you
know telling my stories to the world and
for a while it did look like taking a
break from youtube and reflecting and
doing other things and trying to find
work in the film industry but it was
always with that intention of i'm going
to learn this craft and i'm going to get
better
even if it's sort of a whiny path to get
there i really had absolutely no idea in
let's say july of 2017 that i would be
where i am right now and honestly
speaking it seems
impossible even now looking back i'm
sort of amazed that things panned out
the way that they did and
you know i was not as optimistic as i am
now
back then about how things would pan out
you know it just seemed like i was on a
particular trajectory but just because
things are going a certain way does not
predict the future it does not mean
you're going to continue on that
trajectory forever and there's another
part of this too which you know i don't
want to romanticize it but there is a
part of growing up that is feeling lost
you know it's sort of inevitable it
feels like it's part of the hero's
journey that you have to struggle to
feel pain to
lose your way a little bit to figure out
the things that matter to you and to
figure out like what you want to stand
up for and what you care about this
really rough period of time
has made me appreciate the good things
in life you know when when times are
good and i'm glad i think i need i
needed that contrast and i think maybe
the biggest thing that i took away from
this period of my life that year
was the way i kind of look at other
people and my relationship to other
people you know i think this whole
experience made me more compassionate
because when other people talk about
rough periods of their lives i feel like
i have a better understanding of what
they're talking about i have a greater
frame of reference of my own to tap into
you know
and i can feel other people's pain i
know what it's like to want something
really badly to have a dream
and
struggle to get there you know to feel
like it's impossible or that there's a
million and one obstacles in your way
and beyond that i think it was just
important for me to
learn about the value of reflection and
to learn about the value of environment
and how important that is
about
realizing it really matters the people
that you spend your time with and being
in a place that feels safe and the value
of changing environment so that i could
get the perspective to see what the hell
was going on when i was in argentina
because i i'm very headstrong you know i
wanted to see things through i was
refusing to give up even though i
probably should have right and that
would have avoided so much pain and
unnecessary struggle ultimately though i
think it's perfectly okay to not be okay
sometimes and i wasn't okay at that time
but that's all right you know i think
pain is one of the greatest teachers in
life
and i'm glad that i can look back on
this period and not feel like it was a
waste of time because it does feel like
it contributed to something it does feel
like it led to where i am now if you've
made it this far into the video i just
want to say i appreciate you
taking the time to watch
uh and i hope you enjoyed this little
story time if you will it was kind of
cool to talk about this it made me
reflect on things that i haven't thought
about in a while if you like these
videos i can do more just sort of
relaxed sit down and kind of story tell
style videos sometimes my videos feel
like they're these gigantic productions
and it's not necessarily a bad thing to
make things simpler so let me know if
you like it
give this video a like and consider
subscribing to this channel and i'll see
you soon