updates for this channel & long overdue heart to heart ( ᴗ͈ˬᴗ͈)ෆ

Hello, sweetest potatoes. It has been a long, long time. I'm low-key very nervous right now. Um, a lot of life has been happening offline. A lot of life lessons, learnings, reflections, growth have also been happening offline and I'm so excited and ready to bring it back, to bring it all back online again. This video is going to be very different from all the videos I've ever posted before because this is the first time. I'm like, is it really the first time? It might really be the first time where I just sat down in front of the camera, hit record without a script and I'm just talking. I'm just yapping. I feel like I used to yap a little more on this channel but over the years it just did not become or I just didn't feel like it was a space that was conducive of yapping. I just felt like things had to be more structured and put together but not today. Today we're gonna yap, we're gonna catch up. I just felt like it was only proper for us to have a nice very, very long overdue heart-to-heart before I start posting content again. Yeah, I just want to trust myself for once on this channel that whatever I say is what I intend to say and it's the best way that I could possibly say it without a script. So yeah, it's gonna come from my heart. A few things I want to talk about. The first one is where I've been mostly mentally and how, you know, I'm feeling about all the things that has to do with my channel and making videos and sharing my life online and how my channel will be changing in the foreseeable future and also what types of content you can expect in the coming weeks because I'm so excited, so excited. I just can't hide it. Okay, once I share what these videos are, it'll make sense that we just we have to chat before those videos drop. So, where have I been mentally? I came to this realization a few weeks ago, so this is very recent and this is very fresh and this is probably why it took so long for me to sit down and make this video. I realized that when I first started my channel, like it came from a very genuine and pure place. That era of Rowena was Rowena creating from lived experience. I went through very, very dark times, found a way to come out of that very, very dark, cold, lonely place and so I felt called to share my journey in hopes of helping others who may have gone through or are going through similar things. That kind of was the foundation and the north star and the why of why this channel exists. Over the years, I really felt that I was lucky in that I was at the right place at the right time talking about the topics I was talking about because 2016 mental health wasn't a huge thing yet but as the years kind of went by by 2018, I felt like self-care and also mental health became more of a trending topic. More people were talking about it, a lot more celebrities are talking about it, mainstream media was reporting about it more. I just kind of rode that wave and grew and became more so of the Rowena that a lot of you probably discovered throughout 2020s, the early 2020s especially throughout the pandemic and I think somewhere in between there, I transitioned from creating from lived experience to living to create. Like somewhere, something along the way changed. One thing was I realized I was a public person at one point and that it was important to keep some things private so I stopped showing as much friends, I stopped going outside or like filming outside as much and obviously we also couldn't go outside but I just like my relationship with this online version of me kind of changed and I believed I it wasn't that I was trying to create an online persona but for me to just focus on self-care and productivity as topics to talk about rather than sharing more about my life, I felt that it was the safer thing to do because I'm just sharing like one aspect of my life that I still really cared about but it became this thing that I felt like shielded me from what other people could think of me. There was a lot more fear involved in the most recent year compared to when I first started. Fear in change, fear in the algorithm, fear in views dropping, fear in people not liking my content, fear in becoming quote-unquote irrelevant, fear in just so many things. It's like what happens when before you are successful, you're a lot more creative, you're a lot more free to try things because you're not as afraid of failure but once you start experiencing success and tasting success and you know what that benchmark is and you keep trying to recreate it, it actually makes you do things a lot safer and it makes you far less creative. I felt like I started creating from a place of fear very deep down. It wasn't conscious that I was like creating out of fear right obviously but now that I look back, the past few years I really was creating to try to keep up with algorithm, to try to keep up with views, to try to create videos. Getting a little gassy. To try to create videos that I know would hopefully get views and that was not why I started this channel. That is not the way I want to live. I think I realized this as I was doing it but I just I've been on this train for so long that I was so scared of pushing the brakes or I was so scared of stopping because there's also this understanding on YouTube or in social media, landscape, whatever that once you stop, everything ends and it'll be impossible, nearly impossible to pick back up. I just didn't want to be a part of that anymore. I didn't want to create content for the sake of creating content and if I wasn't excited about what I was creating, if I wasn't inspired myself by what I was creating then why put that out into the world? So a week turned into two weeks, turned into a month, turned into two months, turned into maybe three months now and within this time off I was thinking more about what other things was I kind of low-key, like just what deeper rooted things have changed or have sprouted or have rooted in me that I just haven't had time to address. One other pillar was I started caring a lot more about what other people thought of me and I wanted to create content that would appeal to everyone. I wanted to make sure whenever I click publish, publish, every piece of comment or like every comment that came in would be positive and you know like I in retrospect it's like it's just the world just like it's okay. I just want to give my younger self or like my even a few months ago self a hug. This is something that my dad told me growing up he's just like Rowena you can never possibly please every single person in the world and in a book that I was also listening to Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Godara, it's a phenomenal book it's a phenomenal book. I forgot why he was talking about this but he basically was saying if you're trying to please everyone you're pleasing no one. This is in the context of the hospitality and like the restaurant business but I feel like this is applicable to any line of business or any thing that we do. If we try to appeal to everyone we won't have a specific POV and I think our specific point of view of the world of how we make sense of things of how we is what makes us special and yeah I just realized I stopped sharing more of what I really think because I didn't want people to take it the wrong way because I'm such a huge advocate for authenticity being true to yourself. I realized I wasn't being authentic and truthful and showing up in the way that I would in my friends lives in real life and I feel that disconnect was what has made me less excited to share about things online in the past couple of years because I just felt like my online persona and my real person just kind of started drifting apart a little and that's what I like to work on moving forward just to you know be unapologetically me online to show up as I would in person with my loved ones in all the in all the the colors. All of that was just painting a picture of when I first started I created content based off of what I was going through in my life I made videos on bullet journaling I made videos on matcha lattes I made videos on overcoming loss I made videos on finding my life purpose and mindset habits and to this day I still love a good mindset habits video so of all the changes that will be happening I would like myself to still make mindset habits videos here and there. Over time I started creating content about productivity and self-care which also came from lived experience because I was in my burnout era and I didn't want to talk about burnout anymore and I was like okay what is the solution let's try to take better care of yourself and let's try to figure out ways to make your life and your workflow more efficient and share that online. All of that was going beautifully and at one point I think you can probably tell my last year in New York I was already like like questioning content especially after the everything I knew about productivity was wrong video was out and when I moved back home it became even more apparent that okay well I've grown to become this productivity self-care gal online and I was probably one of the top productivity creators at that time which is something that I should be proud of I never really thought about it in that context until one of my friends told me recently she's like yeah you know I felt like you're one of the top productivity creators and I was like oh oh yeah I mean I guess you could say it that way but it never like the reason why I'm even reacting the way that I'm reacting now is because I just I didn't I don't know I don't think that was who I wanted to be long term like I love productivity I would probably keep talking about it in some shape some way shape or form but I didn't want that to be my identity especially because I was shifting a bit further away in my real life like as a person from everything I felt about needing to be on all the time working 10 plus hour days and all of that the disconnect became larger and larger and then I you know moved in with my significant other I remember reading one comment on one of our videos together where someone was like boyfriend content is not where it's at and I'm sure she did not mean it that way but that's just the way that I read it and I was like yeah you're right I don't want to be that girl who turns their channel into boyfriend content that was just like lingering in the back of my mind and just ruminating for the past few years I was just in a really weird place I didn't know where I want to go I didn't know what I wanted to create because I just didn't feel like I could share what I was going through here online because it wasn't about like productivity and self-care about the things that I used to talk about but then I realized and this is also a more recent realization why am I trying to force myself to create content on things that I don't care about just create what you want to create and create from lived experience and if your lived experience is living with your partner then just create content about that and it's okay and this brings us to the next section next huge section of where am I currently at in my life the current life phase that I'm at really is wifey era slowing down era chill throw era and I've talked about this in the most recent Q&A video since the move and moving in together I guess you could say I started thinking about my family and my future a lot more and even before moving I was already thinking a lot more about privacy and what that means and how it not only affects me but also the people around me and I was already trying to figure out what parts of my life I want to keep private and what parts of my life I want to share online I really believe that in this world where everyone is oversharing everything for better or for worse there's beauty in keeping things private this is the reason why I'm just very like a little sus when it comes to talking about James I just think it's important for me to build a solid foundation with my significant other than to like talk about the relationship online or show the relationship online if that makes sense like I would rather work on it IRL and make sure it is in a good place especially if we just moved in together this journey of being an online creator is truly a marathon and not a sprint I would keep doing this until it no longer makes sense and for it to continue smoothly I do believe that breaks are necessary and that breaks are totally okay and that we can like it's never too late right it's never too late to start and it's never too late to stop and then start again and it's also never too late to reinvent yourself and it's never too late to shed a previous identity and pick up a new one that kind of sounded weird but it's you know you know what I mean like it's it's not too late to transform yourself and to keep growing and to keep changing for the better all of this brings us to if I'm going to be creating from lived experience once again and creating from my heart what type of content can you guys be expecting from this channel so I am going to release a cluster of videos at a time the three four five videos that I currently have in mind I'm very excited about first and foremost the engagement vlog two years later but it is almost done and I'm so excited to post that and the video after that will be a little tribute to my time in New York City this is a big thing that I forgot to mention earlier I have this weird thing where I need to create videos in chronological order I just have to or else it really throws me off and everything started going even more downhill super fast when I just didn't post the engagement vlog when it happened but everything happens for a reason there were reasons why I was hesitate hesitant to post it and just it just it's nothing big it's just around like the privacy I want to keep private things private and blah blah blah and all of that I just need to catch y'all up on the engagement my time in New York City and my move back like I didn't even post a moving vlog or a thank you New York video so that is also coming and then we're gonna do a relationships Q&A with Jams. Jams will be off camera but he will be there with the mic as well so if you have any questions for me for us juicy questions leave it down below and the goal is to do it in Chinese we're just having fun okay the the this era of Ro is just having fun having a good time creating from the heart creating things that are meaningful and uplifting and positive and fun triple underline fun okay so those are the upcoming content hopefully get back to a more consistent posting schedule but I'm not as young as I used to be I do not have as much energy as I used to be and I think it is a very fine and dandy thing and this is just a beautiful thing about growing up and getting older and wiser and also coming to terms with the fact that I will work hard but I will not just work myself to the ground as I used to because boundaries yeah there's just there's more important things in life and life is meant to be lived and I want all of us to be able to live a good life in that way and not just work all the time so yes there will be changes happening on this channel there will be things will look different things will look very very different yeah I'm just I'm just I'm just excited to show up as my authentic self online once again and to not be afraid of being myself okay but all that is just to say I'm so grateful for all of you have been on this journey with me thus far I thank you and I'm so grateful for you and this wonderful journey that we've been able to go on and once again I know the change in my content may not be everyone's cup of tea that's okay the time we've had together was beautiful and I hope to create more memories with you all together I don't know why I'm saying it this way no but truly I think it's because a part of me was very afraid of losing viewers if I were to transition my content and talk about other things but I think I'm at a place now where you know like I've made peace with it it's fine it's a beautiful thing and this is this is just a part of life it's just transitions and transitions are good changes are good of course it's uncomfortable but it is through these uncomfortable feels and uh life these uncomfortable life moments that we're able to grow and become the people that we've always were meant to be yes very excited for upcoming video very excited for so many things like there's so many things that I need to catch you guys all all up on and just real quick my nails so cute they've grown out a little already but look at the little ombre color it sparks so much joy it makes me so happy whenever I look at it and with that I love you truly truly it's it's it's been a wild ride I don't know how I feel about this video I don't know if I got my point across but this is how I feel after I film every single video since I started in 2016 so yeah and uh James is back with my dad so yes hug bye yeah I just finished