At some point in your minimalism journey, you will have reached the end.
That's a cool thing about minimalism, is that it's really just a one-time thing,
and then hopefully you'll have established habits and skills
that will help you maintain that level, if not make everything better,
and that's where I am right now. That's where I've been for a while.
When you've reached the end, it kind of feels like it's empty.
Its' emptiness - it's a cup that I've dumped all the water out of and now there's nothing in it.
And that's cool, because there's nothing bad in it, but now
you have to fill the cup back up again with good things.
The word minimalism is kind of funny,
because it seems like you're just constantly "reduce, reduce, reduce,"
but once you reduce to the point where you're satisfied with the things you have,
you don't need / want / desire other objects, you've gotten rid of toxic relationships,
you've cleared up to your time schedule, etc, etc,
it becomes all about maximizing instead of minimizing.
You've minimized, and now you maximize.
And part of the reason I've been absent is because
I feel like I've been dwelling on the minimalism part of things
rather than the maximize, optimize, introduce new things that I'm interested in.
You know, try - try to make my life as full as possible.
And I know a lot of you are here because you are just starting out on your minimalism journey,
and kudos to you - that's cool, and I really want to help you out,
but the reason I started these videos -
actually, I don't think I've never told you guys this -
but I started these videos in January of 2019 because it was my new year's resolution.
I actually don't do YouTube as a full-time job. I work as a designer,
and I wanted an outlet for creative expression that didn't have anything to do with my job.
And I didn't want to do something that had me buying a lot of materials
and making a lot of physical objects that I would then have to sell or keep
or hang on my wall or something, so I decided to do filmmaking.
I've never really done it on a subject that wasn't given to me,
so I decided that the subject would be "minimalism,"
because that's something I knew a lot about.
I had a lot of experience with.
And I thought that people might be able to find some value from what I'd have to say.
I didn't know SO MANY people would be watching.
I remember when my first video hit 200 views, and I was like, "Who are these people?!"
"Why - why do they care? Why are they watching this?"
"This is crazy! 200 people?! That's insane!"
And then it just kept growing from there, and it started to become a bit overwhelming
and a bit frightening, and who are all of these people?!
And now there are a whole bunch of people who are asking things of me.
When I first started, I was answering every comment,
because I was thrilled that people are watching and making comments,
and I wanted to keep up that practice.
I thought that it was cool that it became a conversation rather than me
just kind of preaching and not having any responses in return.
But as this audience grew, it became a lot harder for me to do that -
for me to answer every single person.
And not all of the comments were nice! I didn't really want to read all of them.
And it it kind of messed me up. That's part of the reason that I took a long break last year, too.
I decided to just focus on traveling around every weekend and not focus on making videos,
and I didn't really - I wasn't able to pinpoint
what was making me uncomfortable or what I wanted to change about this.
I feel like I finally figured it out - it's only taken like five months - two months of not even making videos.
I apologize. I apologize.
Here's what is going to happen:
I still want to help you out if you are just starting out minimalism,
so I will do some sit-down talk videos like this.
Probably not all here - just around -
and asking you to provide questions for me. Some kind of - like - AMA.
And I don't know how frequently I'll do this -
it'll probably be just as much as needed.
If you guys have a lot of questions, maybe I'll do more.
If only two people have questions, I'm only gonna do one of those.
But then the other videos that I will do will be whatever I feel like doing.
I feel like I kind of painted myself into a corner with this whole "minimalism" thing,
and because I am at the point where I am trying to maximize,
continuing to talk and think and focus on minimalism is not really helping me
with where I really want to spend my time and energy focusing and thinking and talking about.
I want to take you guys on my post-minimalism (still being a minimalist) journey
and see what I can accomplish.
I think that it will be helpful, because it will show what you
can do with minimalism once the the first part of it is over, you know?
Long story short - I made notes. I made notes because I didn't want to write a script,
but I wanted to make sure I said these things.
Alright, so mix of cinematic and just talking - I've already said that whole thing.
"Cinematic" like my scripted videos, usually.
Social media can be an amazing force of good. I truly believe that.
I think there is so much negativity.
I think there's so much of a focus on the
negativity of social media and not on the positivity.
The fact that people are on here being truly themselves, sharing what they know,
it's free education. Free information. Free entertainment.
And it's - it's something that you can't get really
anywhere else on TV or reality TV, you know?
This is - this is me talking on my bed. It's pretty real.
I have on here also that I want to "provide an alternative to self-destruction."
I think that was always part of the reason I was doing this,
is because I want people to see that it's cool to do experiments, and to try new things,
and push yourself to the limits, and to be a role model,
and it's cool to love yourself, and to want more for yourself at the same time.
Those are not exclusive -
you don't have to to make yourself Superman and THEN you can love yourself.
You can continue to love yourself, and because of loving yourself, you can want to improve.
You can say, "I love myself so much that I know I deserve health, happiness, relationships, etc."
So, yeah... That's what I'm gonna focus on now.
I don't know what all the subjects will be in future videos, and like I said before,
there will be still some minimalism that I can talk about.
I think next week's video actually is
pretty minimalist. It's more of like a time-efficiency video.
But let me know if you have any questions that you would like answered in a future
AMA minimalist-themed video, and we're gonna go from there.
And that will do it!
'til next time!
[click!]
I did it! I did it!
Yes, got it done!
Wow, that took a lot... Back to it!