One year, 2 months, and 4 days.
That’s the time between my most recent video and the one before that.
430 days.
It didn’t help that before I left, I had already taken a small break.
Then I optimistically came back with this supposedly awesome new series, called “This
Week in Fitness,”… only to disappear again.
This time… for one year, 2 months, and 4 days.
So… what exactly happened?
Well I do want to be as transparent as I can be about this.
First, I wanna clear the air about things that didn’t happen: I didn’t get sick,
I didn’t catch any type of virus, nor did I run away with all the YouTube moneys and
retire.
I was here all along but unfortunately, not with PictureFit.
As some of you might know, I’m slightly older than my usual audience of young adults.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m still young, at least I tell myself that.
But being in my 30s for a few years now, it’s very important to me to start thinking about
the next big steps in life.
And that’s like owning a home, saving up for the future, and hopefully one day starting
a family.
As great as YouTube and PictureFit has been, especially allowing me to talk about my one
and true passion, fitness, through poorly drawn pictures and animations, it just wasn’t
where I needed it to be to move forward with my life aspirations.
This is where it gets real.
For any of you thinking how great of an idea it is to throw away whatever career you might
have in order to start the life of YouTuber or influencer, it’s not always sunshine
and roses.
Also, one of the most important facets of PictureFit is to provide fitness information
with the utmost objectivity and fairness one possibly can provide.
Sure, like all humans, I still have my intrinsic biases but I’ve always did everything I
possibly can to stay objective.
Unfortunately, that means turning down any type of fitness sponsorships, brand deals,
supplement lines, and anything else you see other fitness YouTubers promote.
Taking these deals lead to conflicts of interest, which in my opinion, risks objectivity.
But that also leaves a lot of money on the table.
Pair that with the my style of videos, which involves a lot of time producing pictures,
animations, editing, and of course research, it takes a long time to make just one video.
Now don’t get me wrong, I do love making fitness videos for all of you guys to enjoy,
regardless of the money involved.
But life is life and I had to take care of myself.
So now, being in my 30s, I felt that I needed to pursue other financial headways.
Fortunately, this little brain I have always had a knack of finding solutions.
The solutions aren’t always great but it’s good to have ideas nonetheless.
Thus, in early 2020, I started to pursue a new business project totally unrelated to
PictureFit and fitness overall.
I can’t divulge on exactly what this business venture is for the sake of privacy but I can
say it is quite time consuming.
And this new business began growing much faster than I anticipated.
I mean, naturally I saw this as a good thing, great thing in fact, especially with the world
seemingly shutting down at the time.
But this is where I made the biggest mistake.
Even though it was growing, I kept lying to myself by telling myself that I would still
be able to make videos at the same time.
As more and more time passed since my last upload, the more and more I drifted away from
PictureFit.
And I just began zoning in on this new business.
It did get my partner and me to where we wanted to be financially though, but at the cost
of potentially losing the channel I’ve worked on the past six years.
I know this might not be a good enough excuse for some of you, and I don’t blame you.
But, this is the honest truth.
It was hard and every day I still checked on the channel, wondering if I would ever
have time to go back.
For 430 days, I missed you.
But even as I started drifting away, one thing still kept my spirits high.
Even as I was gone, you guys showed me that… you were still here.
It was you guys, so many of you worrying and wondering when I was going to come back if
at all.
Thanks to you guys, this year it hit me.
PictureFit is what I need to do.
It was time for me to go back to what I love.
And truth be told, I was scared.
But then I uploaded a new video, accidentally on a SUNDAY NIGHT AT 12AM.
Thanks YouTube.
And when I woke up that Monday morning, surprised by the early upload, I couldn’t believe
the comments.
You all welcomed me back.
I can’t express how much it means to me that so many of you are still here, good vibes
and all.
You guys are amazing!
And when I saw so many amazing comments, I realized that…
I took you for granted.
For that, I want to say I’m sorry and thank you.
So… what now?
Again, to be completely transparent, we have a pretty big project with the new business
we’re working on now that will take up my time for a few months.
But I told myself that 100% I’ll have at least another video out after this one.
Then, my business partner and I are going to grind out this final project and after
that, we’re gonna shift the other business into a new, less time consuming direction,
and I will finally get back to PictureFit full-time!
Crossing fingers.
Now before wrapping things up, I have to mention the amazing people in the PictureFit discord
community.
Even though I might have been inactive on YouTube and Instagram, I still once in a while
poked my head into discord.
And from there, I was still able to keep some semblance of a connection to being PictureFit
by hanging out with all of you.
I want to especially thank the amazing mod and admin team for holding down the fort while
I was gone.
There was never an empty supply of “Where’s PictureFit” messages that you all kindly
responded to letting people know that I was… busy.
If it wasn’t for you guys and the community as a whole, I don’t think PictureFit would
have stayed afloat as long as it did.
Thank you so much.
If you haven’t checked out the discord yet, please, come check it out.
In my opinion, it’s the best and awesomest fitness discord community you can possibly
find.
And I truly mean that.
We actually have a lot rules to make sure we keep it that way.
But please, feel free to check it out in the link below.
Now, there’s only one thing left to say: If you enjoyed this video, please make sure
to like it and subscribe and share it with your PictureFit loving friends.
More importantly, and as always, I love you guys and get your protein.
See you soon.