It’s Taken My Whole Life to Get To This Point

This last week a lot of different things have happened that seem to signal that maybe… just maybe… I’ve built a bit of a career for myself. Perhaps even a bit of a life.

I’m going to make a vlog about this as soon as I can, so I want to treat this as the outline for that video. Consider this your sneak peek if you’re a subscriber over on YouTube (and if you’re not, you missed your chance to be a part of the biggest thing that has happened to me so far this year).

Growing up, I always wanted to move to France for some reason. There was no French input here as far as I’m aware; maybe more accurately, there was an input somewhere but I do not know what it was. Somewhere before the age of 10 I decided that I was going to learn French, which led me to staunchly refuse Spanish in middle school. For some reason, whatever it was, I was going to get to France. Whatever France was.

Similarly, I always loved making videos. My first movies were shot and edited on the fly with a VHS camcorder, the “editing” consisting of stopping the recording where I wanted to cut before racing home to make sure what we had was good enough to take the next shot. There was a lot of cardio involved in this workflow. Over the years, I would take every opportunity to turn any and every school project I could into a video. I didn’t have my own camera or editing equipment, but I was fortunate to live in a school district that did.

I spent my time dreaming up stories I would one day turn into movies. Eventually those stories would turn into books. And eventually the skills I honed between the two would turn into a job.

What I didn’t realize until much later in life was that the urge to move to France was an urge to escape. Neglect. Abuse. There’s a lot you don’t know you’re experiencing when you’re a kid, but your body knows, and it wants to get out. Even as it needs to stay. Sometimes it puts that energy into a distant, mystical country.

Storytelling was another escape. Casting myself in the boots of a powerful hero made me feel empowered. Leaning into the beat of a song and letting it carry my imagination into scenes that turned into stories that spanned trilogies was an early form of self-discovery. I recently told someone that I wrote to better understand the world, and to better understand myself. I didn’t feel as pretentious saying that as I used to. It’s amazing how many clues to who I always was were laid out on the page long before I had the ability to read between my own lines.

It should come as no surprise that one of the side effects of this childhood was the combined inability to recognize my own inner reality as real nor to value myself, let alone anything I produced or accomplished. I had astronomical ambitions and not an iota of self-respect. This has changed over the last six years. Painfully. Slowly. But I’m coming into a space where I see, embrace, and love myself.

That’s a story for another time, although spoilers: therapy has been a massive help.

But the timing is great. Perhaps the timing is the cause, because some really cool things have happened recently. For one, as you may know, I got my French citizenship last year. It’s a goal set after being forced to leave Paris the first time in 2013. It paved the way to a sense of security, a sense of home in the city I love that is unparalleled in my lived experience.

More recently, smaller signs are stacking up that maybe I’m on the right track. The first was when this incredible high-end dining experience, a restaurant called Atica, asked if I would like to come back to film a meal. They asked if it would be better on camera if I was the only one in the restaurant. They invited me to a private lunch. They don’t do lunch. They only do dinner.

Then I went for a tour of the Maison Elysée. They had asked me to visit a few times before but I’d never made it. The guy who gave the tour seemed nervous. He let me know at the end that he was a fan. It turned out the team giving us the tour works for the President. Of France. They asked if I’d like a tour of the Elysée across the street.

For context, the Elysée (the Presidential Palace) isn’t a building that you get into. Unlike the White House, there aren’t regular tours. There’s one weekend a year that all government buildings open to the public, les journées patrimoines, and there are educational tours for students if and when the President isn’t home. Those group tours have a three year waiting list. Here’s me there yesterday.

I haven’t met the President. Yet.

But that’s the thing. I don’t doubt that I will. While these external events are validating and, quite honestly, an honor to me, they feel right. Even a year or two ago I would have felt out of place, heavy impostor syndrome, even embarrassment. Overwhelmed. Today, I feel like I’m on the right path.

And then the impossible happened.

I have been struggling to grow my YouTube channel since the day it was born. And thay was a long time ago - I opened my main channel in 2006. It’s old enough to vote. In YouTube terms you don’t really exist until you cross 100k subscribers. Your channel can’t get verified, you don’t have direct access to YouTube staff, your access to the old YouTube spaces was heavily limited, and you don’t get that coveted silver plaque that marks the occasion.

There were periods where my channel grew more quickly, back at the peak of my daily vlogging days in particular, but overall it has kept a pace destined never to cross that 100k mark. We’ve joked that I’m cursed.

But it looks like that’s about to change. As I write this, at 11:28CET on May 27, 2025 - I am at 99,968 subscribers. I’ve grown a lot in the last few days thanks to some particularly successful vlogs. Odds are really good that this evening I’ll cross a line I’ve wanted to cross for years. I always joked I’d be a real YouTuber when I hit 100k and then I could stop worrying about subscriber growth altogether.

But what’s most important to me this week is to stop and really feel it. To look back at how my two escape portals that got me through my childhood, that helped me to become an adult in another country, have interwoven into this moment. Right now.

Yesterday I was wandering through the Presidential palace of my chosen country. Today I cross a major landmark in my career as a YouTuber.

France ↪️ Storytelling

Paris ↪️ Video

If you read the literature, if you talk to a psychologist (and I’ve talked to my fair share), I am lucky I made it out without a major addiction or felony record. I’m lucky I’m alive.

I don’t know that I can take much credit.

On the one hand I’d like to believe that I bootstrapped myself and buy into the myth that I’m one of the few who actually did make it on their own. But even if that were true (which it’s not, I’ve been lucky to have some substantial help along the way - principle among them my landlady and my glorious Patrons), I am also enjoying the benefit of simply being who I am. I did not choose my character or personality. I did not choose to be tenacious, to be ambitious. To be so many things that I am so thankful I am.

I am the very fortunate recipient of a gift. A gift that in many ways I worked hard to give myself but, in many more ways, I have come to realize was out of my control from the beginning. At my core, I am grateful. And perhaps that’s all I really can be.

Jay