It feels like everything is completely different now.
I'm at a loss as to what videos I can or even should make.
We need talk about Strange Parts.
But first I need some tea.
A lot of you have been reaching out to check
in to see if I'm OK. I'm fine.
I've been in self isolation for the past four weeks now
and I've been in the US since Christmas so I'm pretty
sure I'm not sick and I'm working really
hard to stay that way.
But a ton has changed in the past few months for me.
In fact purely just about everything in my life
has changed and I imagine things have a lot for you too.
I think it's…
I think everybody's dealing with a lot of change
and some of that stuff's been in the works for a while.
In December I went back to China to shoot
and you guys have been seeing a lot of the videos
that have come out. I shot a lot of factory videos.
And the other part of that trip was to really figure out do
I really want to set up a full office and workshop
in China again.
I tried to do that last year and it didn't work
out for several reasons.
And I decided I don't want to do that and it's a hard decision
and it's one I'm still wrestling with and I'm
still sad about. But,
as of March 1st I rented a house in Phoenix
and so I officially live in the US again.
I own furniture again for the first time in five
years which is super strange. And yeah,
the plan was to keep travelling and shooting
both in China and other places.
Be gone for four to six weeks at a time.
But I really wanted to home base and I realized
I wasn't totally happy with my life in China,
in many ways.
I wanted to eat more healthy food and I don't know
I… Shenzhen's a place that everybody comes to to seek
their fortune and… it just…
Nobody really wants to settle down there for the long run.
And so it's just kind of this revolving door
of people and you make friends and then they leave
in a year or two. Dating was equally hard.
And it just…
it was a lot of fun for the three or four years
I was there and I still want to go back and I still
wanna spend a lot of time there.
But I realized I was kind of looking ahead
and I was looking at you know do I really want
to settle down and make a life here
for the next five or 10 years.
There are parts of me that so badly want to do that.
I wanted to set up the coolest workshop factory
space in Shenzhen and there were just there are a million
more videos I want to make there. And yet,
I just was having a really hard time
with the personal side of it. Of, you know,
what happens when I'm not working and when I'm off camera.
I decided that I really would like to have a home
and a life here in the US still. And so yeah, right now,
Phoenix is home and we'll see what happens from there.
The plan was to keep traveling to China and to other places.
I had trips planned tentatively to Nigeria
and India and Bangladesh and Vietnam this year,
as well as obviously going back to China for at
least a few months,
and all of that is now off the table.
And I'm kind of at a loss for for what to do.
I wanted to do a whole bunch more factory tours.
I wanted to do a bunch more exploration and kind
of adventurous industrial travel in all of these new
places and I don't know if or when I'll be
able to do that again.
And it's been this gradual closing down.
In January obviously I knew something was up.
I was watching what was going on in China
and I decided okay I'm not going back to China
anytime soon.
And then I had a trip planned to Vietnam in February
and I cancelled that.
And I decided okay I'm not going to do any more
international travel for the time being.
And then by March, March 1st,
I arrived in Phoenix and I said you know
what I'm not a fly on planes anymore right now.
That doesn't feel safe.
And now I'm self isolated along with a lot of other Americans.
And I very much think that's the right thing.
I think it's a safe thing.
I'm relatively young and healthy still
and I personally don't want to get it.
I really think it's pretty bad.
And I've read a lot of the reports and I don't
think it would be at all a good time
and potentially would have long lasting health effects.
But also I'm in a situation where I'm close to some
people with compromised health and it would be quite a bit
more dangerous for them to get it —
potentially fatal.
And so it's really changing my risk tolerance around
getting sick and that's obviously changing
my desire to travel. And so yeah,
I'm really hunkered down.
And now we're in New Mexico on a very rural
Native American reservation.
We don't know if we can get packages delivered this all
I imagine seems pretty weird and maybe extreme
but given some of the unique peculiarities of our
situation and some health issues,
not mine but some other people that I'm living with,
this made the most sense. The net result,
is that I have no idea what I'm do it Strange Parts right now,
at all.
All of the content that I had planned
for the next few months, six months,
is stuff that I can't do right now.
A lot of it I can't do anyway. And so I'm a bit lost. And so…
I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing.
I feel like yeah,
I'm really aimless and definitely been
getting to my head.
But I also realized that I owe it to you and myself
to reconnect with you and to continue
to put stuff out there.
To continue to make things and put them out the world. And…
and so I'm just going to experiment.
I don't quite know what I'm going to be able to make.
I have pretty limited resources and access to tools
and interesting things right now.
But I'm gonna see what I can do and I'm just
gonna experiment and throw stuff at the wall
and see what sticks. And so I think as part of that,
now is a good time to end season two of Strange Parts
and start season three,
whatever that ends up being here.
And so one of the things I'd like to do
is solicit ideas from you.
Given that I have limited access to receive packages,
I have limited tools and supplies,
and I am pretty much stuck either indoors or out
in the woods —
what videos would you like to see me make?
If you have ideas, I'd love to hear them.
Leave them down the comments below.
I have a few ideas.
I have some very old footage pre-Strange Parts that I have
been dusting off and so I have at least one video to show you.
It was part of the zygote of the idea
of Strange Parts and I shot it before I even
really knew that I was starting a new YouTube channel.
I was just playing around.
It's a tour of a factory in China.
And I think you guys might enjoy that.
We're going to re-edit it,
since I didn't know much about editing video back then,
and I don't have a copy of that edit —
I just have some of the raw footage.
We're trying to dig up the audio portion of that.
I have the audio out of the camera,
but had some lav mics. I also have a handful of things,
some things that I was given it at CES.
Some things that I ordered in the mail,
some things that you sent me that I'd like to show
you and maybe even take apart or try and do a project with.
I have some tools and supplies here,
but not at all what I normally have,
particularly what's in China.
And then I have at least one video that I recorded
in China in December, on my last trip there,
that we haven't released yet, and we're editing that now.
So I'll share that with you. And then lastly,
I guess I just want to acknowledge how lucky I feel.
This… I keep saying crazy, but, this…
I've never been in any situation like this,
as I imagine most of you haven't either.
And it kind of feels unprecedented, bizarre,
scary. And I feel particularly lucky.
I am…
I have a job that I can do more or less from everywhere.
It's obviously really different right now.
But I have a lot of experience working from all
sorts of different places, working from home.
I don't have an office I have to go to.
I don't have work I have to go to right now.
And I have the luxury of ramping back my work
a little bit or even taking a break entirely.
And most of all,
I'm grateful to have been invited to a place
that's relatively removed from populated areas,
that's quite a bit safer than being, say,
in New York City or San Francisco.
And that feels like a big gift right now. And, you know,
it's I'm very grateful to have that opportunity
and very grateful to the tribe for allowing me to stay here.
And I wanted to acknowledge that you might
not have those same luxuries.
You might still be having to go to an office or go to work.
You might be laid off or out of work.
You might be stuck in your apartment all by yourself
and getting lonely and bored and maybe a little bit crazy.
You might be having to cook for yourself
more than you ever have.
I know I'm doing a lot more cooking than I ever have.
I am proud to say that I successfully baked
bread for the first time this week which came out well.
You might be stuck in a house or an apartment
with a bunch of people that are driving you crazy.
And I just want you to know that my heart goes out to you,
wherever you are, whatever your situation is.
This is not easy. It hasn't been easy for me.
Those of us, the people I'm living with,
we've been joking that everybody gets their
turn to have a meltdown.
And I certainly had one last night. Yeah.
I'm just struggling with a lot of crisis
of meaning and purpose and what should I be
doing with my life.
And I imagine that you might be having some of those similar
concerns and worries and fears.
And I just want to let you know that my heart goes out to you.
This is a crazy bizarre time to be alive in the world.
And it's one that's filled with fear and uncertainty
and this deep sense of powerlessness and we're
all in it together. I will see you again soon.
I do have a list of videos planned and I hope
that you'll have a lot more suggestions for me.
If you have suggestions, things you'd like me to make,
leave them in the comments below.
I'll see you again soon.
I'm going to try and put out a video next week,
is my plan. We'll see how that goes.
I'm trying not to be too hard on myself to put out
content super frequently, but yeah,
I want to be with you during this time and I want to share
what's going on my world.
And hopefully give you a little bit
of entertainment and distraction from the worries in your life.
I'm Scotty from Strange Parts. Stay tuned.
I'll see you again soon.