February 2025 Monthly Update

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Hello, it is February 1st, 2025, and I am making a big change in my YouTube channel.

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Basically, I started working on this podcast and also my YouTube channel because I was

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looking into my career.

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It was the summer going into my senior year, and I was trying to figure out what my career

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would be.

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I didn't want to go into the traditional path, like going to college or any of that stuff.

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I wanted to do entrepreneurship because that's always what I've been drawn to ever since

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elementary school with the classic lemonade stand.

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Me and my sister would buy a bunch of makers, which are machines that would make things.

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We would start making donuts and stuff and go to my friend's block party and sell them,

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make a bunch of money.

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In middle school, I would also go around and sell bags of chips and gummies and applesauce

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packets and trade them for hot lunch because I didn't want to buy my own hot lunch.

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I've always wanted to do entrepreneurship, but I didn't know what I wanted.

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That got me to start reading books on entrepreneurship.

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I read books like The Millionaire Fastlane, Unscripted, The E-Myth Revisited.

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That brought me to a couple books by Russell Brunson, First One Dot Com Secrets.

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It made me think that it kind of alleviated something because I knew that I wanted to

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start a business, and so I thought that I would have to learn how to program my own website

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because I didn't want to hire anyone.

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I didn't want to take any financial risks because I wanted to build a stable career based

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off of my own skills.

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I was willing to learn how to code, but I wasn't really into it.

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I found Dot Com Secrets and I realized that you can literally just use a website that

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you can build a website through.

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That basically made learning how to code redundant so I could just focus on business.

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I remember that summer I was looking for all kinds of things to start.

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It got to the point where I was just so antsy to get going that I actually filed my LLC

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through this company, like Zen Business.

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I filed my LLC for a company about Acne because that was just the idea.

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I was looking at my environment.

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I was like, what can I do?

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I heard someone say, oh, you don't really get that much Acne, even though I did.

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I didn't get a lot of Acne, but I did get the occasional pimple.

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I didn't have perfect skin, and my back was definitely not perfect either.

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I had a lot of back, or I still have a lot of back Acne, but basically I was going to

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start a business on Acne.

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Thankfully, there was a multiple day period where you were able to change your mind and

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change the name.

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I quickly changed the name to Ascend Momentum.

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How did I come up with that name?

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Well, I came up with that name through a lot of brainstorming, but mostly just AI.

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This is an AI, chat GBT generated name, basically.

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I do not like it.

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I never really liked Ascend Momentum.

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I never really liked it.

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Yeah, I didn't really like that.

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I also, around that time, I was reading a book called Expert Secrets, and that gave

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me the idea to start the podcast.

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Also, I added YouTube as another way to post the podcast episode.

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I did start my YouTube channel at that time, and that's what I did.

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I never really wanted to do self-improvement stuff, but that was just what I was interested

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in.

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I started documenting my journey on learning all kinds of ways to improve my life.

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I never really wanted to associate with self-improvement because I never really watched, yeah, I did

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watch self-improvement videos, but those were not the videos that I would just spend all

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my time watching.

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My favorite videos were videos made by Will Tennyson, where he would do challenges burning

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10,000 calories in a day, walking 100,000 steps in a day.

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Over the year, I just kept on developing my craft.

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I started with just speaking, and then I started learning how to edit, and then making thumbnails.

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I just kept on developing my craft to the point where now I've gotten to the point where

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I can actually make an okay video.

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If you asked me one month ago, I would have been like, yeah, I'm making pretty good videos.

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Yeah, no, that's garbage.

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That's a bunch of nonsense.

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I was too cocky last month.

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I was like, yeah, I'm getting like 500 views every video.

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Yeah, no.

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500 views is trash, first of all, but also that's just too cocky.

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My videos are garbage time.

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Only 17% of people watch till the end of my videos, of a 10-minute video.

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So that's garbage.

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That's not the point.

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The point is, over the course of the past year and a half, ever since I started this,

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there has been this trend where I kind of never was really doing maybe at times, but

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oftentimes I was not really doing what everyone else in the self-improvement niche was doing.

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For example, I would make a video, I posted a video on me staring at a wall for 10 hours.

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No one does that.

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People in the entertainment niche do that.

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Not the self-improvement niche.

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Self-improvement is all about talking in front of a camera.

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And then in recent times, like five months ago, I did 1,000 push-ups in one video, which

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was called like Ancient Sorcerer's Guide to Infinite Discipline or something like that.

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And then recently, the past couple months, I completely removed all talking head.

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So that basically talking head is someone on screen talking to you.

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So if their face is showing that they're talking, that's a talking head.

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And it's not just like voiceover.

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Like right now you're listening to basically a voiceover.

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It's just audio.

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You're not seeing my face.

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But if you saw me talking, if I had the camera on right now, it would be a talking head video.

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And I completely stopped that because I didn't really like the vibe around giving advice.

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And so there's been this gradual shift away from advice giving in my YouTube channel.

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And yes, even in my most recent video, I still was giving advice.

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But I've really been focusing on like the transformative aspect.

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And that really started to shine through in last month's episode on this podcast, where

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I started saying I have one goal, make better and more transformational videos.

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And that is still my goal.

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But I realized something.

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I was watching this video, How to Master the Art of Filmmaking.

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And this guy, Dan Mace, he's very good at filmmaking.

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And he was sharing a story about this book he read, Stories That Stick.

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How there was a study done where they related people who watched a video on just sharing

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a bunch of facts about cancer.

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And then a second group watched a video about a story.

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It was like a, it was a transformative story on cancer.

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And guess how many, guess what the difference was in how much money they donated to that

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cause.

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It was, I don't know the percentage, but it was a significant amount, like maybe 40%

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increase in changing behavior in the group that watched the story.

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And that's kind of how I see like the advice, the guru, the self-help, self-improvement stuff.

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You make all these videos, me, I'm making all these videos, just talking from a camera.

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No, yeah, there are stories, but they're just personal stories.

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They're not like, they're not like transformative stories in the sense that they're expanding

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your worldview.

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Yeah, they're expanding their worldview.

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And actually, while I'm saying this, before I started making this video, I was actually

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playing on just completely bashing the self-improvement stuff.

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But while I'm saying it, I realize that there is story in self-improvement videos, but it's

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not for me.

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Basically, I'm not really into it anymore.

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I've completely just, over time, it was a gradual change.

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Like if you look at my channel, it's obvious that I gradually started to shift.

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And I'm so glad, like this has all been part of my path, especially because I'm glad that

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I learned how to make music.

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And I'm glad of all the stuff I learned, but it's time to make a change.

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And I'm not going to reveal the change because that's not how I operate.

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I like taking action and then talking.

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So I'm not going to reveal the change, but it'll be evident next month.

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I'll reveal it next month.

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And that is it.

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There's not very much more to talk about.

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I just want to make better and more transformational videos.

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And I have heard, you know, there's this old belief or mindset that I had of, like, Mr.

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Beast's videos are evil.

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They're destroying our attention span.

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All these videos are evil.

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And yeah, I think that a lot of videos on YouTube are just garbage in the sense that

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they're just so artificial, so money hungry, not even money hungry, just so artificial that

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it's just not beneficial at all to the human.

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But I think that a lot of those videos belong to a self improvement niche.

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I'm not even going to lie.

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But all other niches have that.

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It's all across YouTube.

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But I would say that Mr. Beast's videos and people who actually put a lot of effort into

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their videos do not belong in that category.

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These are Mr. Beast's, people say, oh, Mr. Beast's videos are not authentic.

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You got to be genuine like Sam Sulek or other of these guys.

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And they're completely different people or completely different content styles.

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I'm not saying either is better.

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What I'm saying is that Mr. Beast, that's his craft.

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That's his art.

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He is becoming an expert or he is an expert.

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He is a master at YouTube.

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When you wouldn't go to Picasso or Da Vinci and say, oh, you've got to be more genuine

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in your paintings.

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Start making real stuff.

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No, it's art.

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It's a creation.

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And that's why I, that's something that I've realized a lot of people and myself included

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in the past.

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I used to have this mindset where, oh, retention editing.

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All these cuts, all these, you're like, there's no point in a single Mr. Beast video where

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it's just still for like more than four seconds.

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And that, and people hate on that, but that's just the craft.

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That's how it works.

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People don't hate on like painters, famous painters or famous sculptures for being really

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good at their craft.

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So why do we hate on YouTubers or filmmakers for being very good at their craft?

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I don't know.

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Just some thoughts.

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This is a very short video because I'm still figuring out.

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Like I'm figuring out like my journey.

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I realized that it's an ongoing process.

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You are never going to have it all figured out.

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But also like I'm in a very fragile transition phase where I'm just done with all the advice

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stuff.

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I would much rather make stories.

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That's what I'm going to end it at.

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Good evening, Aufs distortes.

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Thank you.