hey guys this is my last day in hawaii and this is not going to be a travel video or
like any of my other videos this is something that i just want to share with anyone that's
been following this channel for however long all right i'm going to sit down for
this one because this is going to be a long talk i've been making videos on youtube for
more than four years and one of my favorite things about youtube was that it allowed me
to share the full story of mostly my travels but also about other aspects of my life and not just
highlighted snippets of it to me that was the beauty of youtube is that there's a market for
seeing the things that go wrong on your travels the phones and the cameras and other [ __ ] you
lose the trouble you have at the airport that's all part of the story and i didn't have to
sugarcoat it unlike a lot of the photo focused apps where you can just do a sky replacement and
compress the image and make things look like the way they're not i know a lot of the things that
people do on instagram is not intentionally to put up a false image of oneself but it's more because
the instagram algorithm wants people to post daily and if you're like running a zumba class
daily yeah you can show a workout every day but for travel content creators it's impossible
to travel and film and put stuff out every single day it's almost impossible it's i don't forget
traveling every day i don't even edit every day so to satisfy the algorithm what people end up doing
is posting stuff from months ago on their stories and pretending like okay this is what's happening
and i mean i understand why they want to do that if someone's making a living off of the algorithm
you got to do what the algorithm needs but i was never a fan of that so i never really got an
Instagram that much even when i posted pictures on my public instagram i put the year on it because
i didn't want to really pretend to be something that I'm not and i think unfortunately I've been
doing just that with my YouTube so if you've been following this channel lately you've been seeing
a lot of the highlights from Hawaii over the last eight months here
and uh you might be thinking that I'm having the time of my life that's what my friends who
saw this channel have basically been thinking and it couldn't really be any further from the truth
and that's what i want to clarify in this video because i think i have some sort of moral
responsibility to do so and it's the right thing to do this year's been crazy for a lot of us like
a lot of us i've known people that i care about who have died like a lot of us i've had people
very close to me in my family who are who were very sick hospitalized in some cases uh i think
i read a study that 21 no 28 percent of adults in the u.s are showing symptoms of depression and i
was one of those 28 percent of adults suffering for depression for the first time in my life
here in hawaii and before i came to Hawaii and if you don't know what depression feels like it's um
it's basically the feeling you get if someone close to you dies or if even if you have a
breakup after you've been seeing someone or a divorce or whatever some sort of separation
it's that feeling that lasts for like a couple of weeks to a month or maybe a couple of months where
you just don't really feel good about life anymore you're you're capable of having
moments of pleasure and joy but in general you kind of stop seeing the point in life or that's
basically how i understand depression so that was me and that was basically from march or april i'm
not sure exactly when it started but all the way up until a month ago when it went away somehow
but in that time i was not having a great time and none of the videos that i made i was i wasn't
faking anything like when i saw that sunset in lahaina in maui or that sunrise two days later
those are genuine moments of joy when you saw me surfing on this channel and smiling ear to ear
that wasn't fake that was real that was very real but at the same time that stuff was only
like less than one percent of my life and uh all those videos that i made in Maui,
Kauai, Big Island hawaii even or Oahu even those are all filmed in a span of 12 days
and i ended up putting one out every three or four weeks because it takes three or four weeks
for me to edit every single one of those videos i've spent more than 100 hours on
the kawaii video and a lot of hours on the other videos too so unintentionally i was doing exactly
what i was trying to avoid with these other social media platforms and i was making people or my
friends think that i'm having the time of my life which just wasn't true and by the way if you're a
good friend of mine someone i know personally is watching this don't feel bad about not checking
up on me one of the things that i tried at the beginning was talking a lot to my friends and
family and really didn't make a difference and i don't i didn't really tell anyone or not anyone
i told maybe two or three people about this people who i was already touch.. in touch with
on a regular basis anyways but it didn't really really do much and i think it didn't make it any
better it probably made it even worse because you know now on top of me having depression it
stressed out my friends that i had depression and they felt like they wanted to check up on me and
and it really didn't help so it probably like stressed them out too so i didn't really tell
anyone because it's not fun to talk about the only reason i'm making this video right now is that
it's gone now and now i don't have to worry about people checking up on me and blah blah blah and
things aren't getting better and things getting shittier but anyways there are two main things
i want you to take away from this video the first one is a very cliche saying that you've
probably heard a lot of times but i think we all need a reminder from time to time is that
what you see on social media is not necessarily real life the places you see on social media
especially if it's a photo is probably not what the place even looks like in real life
the highlights you see in the videos is probably not what the rest of anyone's life looks like
unless you're filming them 24 7. and that's important to remember because i know
that my friends sometimes see stuff on social media and just feel bad like oh
that person's life is so awesome and blah blah blah i wish i could do that i wish i could have
this much fun all the time whoever you're looking at is probably not having that much fun all the
time they're not necessarily in depression but that's probably not what their life looks like
and the second point i want you to take away from this is that
coming to a beautiful wonderful place is not a magic pill that will solve
your problems regarding mental health or whatever you have all you hear about these stories like
"Eat pray love" where people quit their jobs and go off and find the purpose of life on their trip
and and that does happen that does happen to a lot of people who try it the change of scene
can work and bring you a lot of joy and change your life but it also doesn't always work out
and the reason you don't hear about the ones where it didn't work out because they probably
don't talk about it because this shit's not fun to talk about i uh well i wasn't expecting this
to like drastically change my life when i moved to hawaii but it was the main reason i moved here
because i thought a change of scenery might be for the best it didn't really do [ __ ] and this is
the most beautiful place i've ever been to and it really didn't do anything about my depression
nothing so yeah i think it's more important to hear about these stories too before
anyone watching social media decides to take a big risk and leave everything behind hoping a change
of scene will fix everything it might but it might not it's a gamble and you have to evaluate the
rest of that before you make a decision like that i'm well don't worry if you're watching this you
don't have to check up on me i'm sharing all of this because you know i thought this is the right
thing to do but i'm probably not going to want to discuss this anymore especially in a public forum
especially in the comments section honestly not over messages if you're texting because
it's still not fun to talk about and don't worry i'm fine now but yeah if you're a friend of mine
that i already know and we hang out we can talk about this [ __ ] i don't mind but i'm not gonna
respond to any comments that is it for this video and i have six hours till i get on my flight from
hawaii and head to Bangladesh i'll probably catch you guys from a vlog from bangladesh next time