It's been exactly six months since I last
published a video on YouTube. Why in this video,
I'm going to share with you the personal and professional reasons
why I left YouTube. So for those of you who don't know me, I'm Kristin,
also known as Traveling with Kristin. And for the last three and a half years,
I have been publishing one or two videos per week,
plus well over a hundred live streams about travel living
abroad and the digital nomad lifestyle.
But all of that came to a screeching halt in
October of 2021, and I have not been seen since.
So why did I stop publishing videos? I guess to give you some context,
before I started this YouTube channel,
my full-time job was as a relocation consultant.
So that's basically helping people move to different countries.
I started my business when I was living in Costa Rica and soon I realized
that I could do my job from anywhere.
So I became a digital nomad traveling around the world for many years
until it came to the point where I thought,
why don't I share this information so that other people can do it too?
Things were going great,
and I felt like I was helping a lot of people with their plans to travel or
live abroad, but as my channel grew really fast last year,
it basically quadrupled in a matter of months,
which is a good thing that started happening was that I had to
turn people away. I had a waiting list for, um,
people who wanted help with their relocations.
And so what I decided to do was to take everything that I had
learned and put it into a group coaching program.
So I put together a four month group coaching program that leads you step
by step into how to move to another country.
And it's full of eight different sections with 50
plus different lessons, with videos, with downloads, with templates,
with checklists, budgets and worksheets,
and live q and a calls from me weekly.
So it's a very involved program and I thought
that I would be able to keep publishing videos at the same time,
but I just think that I reached the boundaries of what I was able to do.
And it wasn't that I thought I would be off YouTube for six months,
but I noticed some warning signs.
I actually got sick three times between my last video in
October and the end of the year, like October, November and December,
I got the flu, I had a relapse of the flu and I got strep throat.
So I knew that I was really pushing the limits of what I could do and I just
didn't have the energy to start making videos again.
The good news is that my relocation program Ready to Relocate is open
and you can apply to join anytime. I'll drop the link below.
But another thing that happened was that I signed the contract to
write my first book. So my first book,
digital Nomads Four Dummies,
will be published on August 9th, 2022.
And for those of you who've been following me for a long time, you know,
I've wanted to write a book on how to become a digital nomad for like years.
But the reason I'm here talking to you today is because my first
draft of the manuscript is officially done.
There's still a long way to go with the editing and review process and the audio
book and all that great stuff, but at least, um,
the hardest work I hope is done. And so I have, um,
more time now to go back to YouTube.
So let's get to the personal reasons why I
left YouTube. The best way to say it is just to say it,
and that's that I have a very long history of struggling with
burnout.
I experienced burnout for the first time when I was 21 years old
And actually my experience with burnout was
the reason that I moved abroad to begin with.
And maybe that's a story for another video.
But because I burnt out at 21,
I saw the writing on the wall and I thought,
this is not a good sign for my mental health or my physical health to stay
in this corporate rat race. And so I left,
I left the us I moved to Costa Rica, I never came back.
So I was gone for a good 15 years and living in other countries and I didn't
burn out again until I came back to the us.
I don't think that's a coincidence.
But right around my birthday in July of 2020,
actually this has to do with my book too.
I was doing a lot and the pandemic was very stressful at that time.
Can we blame the pandemic for a lot of things?
I would like to blame the pandemic. And I made a public announcement,
a public commitment that I was going to finish my book on how to become a
digital nomad.
And I created this spreadsheet and I posted it in my Facebook group so that
everyone could see like accountability.
And two days after I started this,
I woke up on the bathroom floor and had to call
9 1 1. Didn't know what had happened to me.
And I, that was another burnout,
like that was a big scare for me.
And I quit some other side projects.
I was doing at that time. I quit writing on Medium.
I I quit writing my book.
So at the end of 2021 when I was doing my Ready to Relocate
coaching program, working with clients, doing the podcast,
writing my first book,
I knew that I had to be careful about how far I
was pushing my limits of burnout.
And that's why I never made any sort of official announcement of like, Hey,
I left YouTube, or Hey,
I'm gonna be back on this day because I didn't know when
that day would be. Like I legitimately had no idea.
And I think like if you've ever
heard that saying like you're a human being, not a human doing,
that really sums up kind of my history with
I guess myself, my sense of value in the world.
Like a lot of it has been,
a lot of it has been wrapped up in what I do and how much I do
and not who I am.
So even though I really missed YouTube and
I really missed the community that was here and that
formed around my channel,
and it was very difficult for me to answer your comments of like when I was
coming back,
I knew that I still needed some more time just to
slow down a little bit. , you know, I love hashtag slow travel,
so slow travel, slow down. But as we all know,
work-life balance can be really difficult or impossible to achieve.
And I don't think that balance is the specific point on a scale
that you precariously stay at in life.
I think it's more of a swing that you go back and forth or it's like
choosing, um,
different priorities at different times and you really can't do it all.
Like you can't do everything well all the time. Yeah.
So I just started taking better care of myself. Like I started eating healthier,
I started sleeping more and I'm feeling a lot better.
I feel like I'm ready to be back.
So I guess that brings me to what is the future of this channel.
I am going to start with videos once every two
weeks instead of once per week.
So if there's a certain type of video you want to see,
let me know in the comments and then we will see what happens from there.
And the good news is I will be back, videos will be back, and um,
I'm happy to be back with you. And until then,
why not check out my most popular video on YouTube? Enjoy.