I've been thinking a lot about the concept of starting over in recent times in fact I've started my life over a lot of times if I count it in my opinion I've started over a lot of things in my life I I'm kind of the king of starting over if you ask me and this is also why I'm starting a new Minecraft world to sort of symbolize this reset the first time I reset my life was when I left my home country at the age of 15 I went from a school of about 150 kids
a town of 3,000 people in the middle of nowhere Greece to the United States in a town of 40,000 people and a school of 2500 kids the school population itself was almost bigger than my hometown okay I knew nobody I didn't know anything anyone luckily I spoke the language but and you know could read and write which was my superpower I guess being bilingual got to thank my mother for that one but other than that I was nobody I was just a nobody in a new place and personally I loved it I wasn't happy with
the reputation I had in my home country I wasn't happy with I guess how I was socially back then so it pretty much propelled me into a new version of myself because I could create whatever I wanted to be I could create myself into whoever I wanted to be I had no social standing I was at the absolute zero on the karma scale okay if you think of like the if you think of a game that has a Karma system right you lean towards the Bad and the good or you just have certain things that
people know about you and people already have an image of you but I had no image it was amazing and I went through high school you know I did my thing developed some sort of a reputation again became a different person not I wasn't a different person really I was just able to form the vision people had of me in a different way I don't know if I'm explaining this correctly it just feels I was just different in people's eyes or at least that's what I thought you can never really know what people think about
you you can never really know what the overall conversation is about you when the door is closed and you can assume what that is I mean obviously you can assume Josh over there doesn't like you because he doesn't want to talk to you every time you pass by him in the hallway or you can assume that Cindy over there likes you because she smiles at you every time she sees you but you can't really know people like to lie about that stuff people like to not show what they're feeling a lot and and some people
do it subconsciously some don't but I digress the point is that was the reset and that reset was really healthy for me because it allowed me to release myself from the chains of whatever I thought the notion of me was but the thing is by the end of high school I found myself in a similar position there were certain things that I didn't like about what people thought of me or or just I don't know there was just there I I went through a similar experience again and luckily for me it was time for another
reset College okay when I went to college a similar thing happened I kind of re-experienced what I experienced when I was 15 16 years old and got another reset I got another chance at building who I am to people and myself more so because how you view yourself is way more important than how most people view you when you have a bit of an identity crisis I guess that's what I would classify that as back then the thing is I had the upper hand in college because had already gone through this for most people this
was the first time they got to reshape their identity and be in a new place unless I guess you're one of those kids that moved around in different high schools and stuff a lot but for the most part part I had that upper hand at least in my own opinion and I liked it again because I was able to shape certain things about myself and able to establish new habits and have other people see those habits and I could I don't know I thought what did I think I could impress everybody I I you know
everyone cares about what others think to an extent I mean I think I'm at the point where I like to believe that I don't care or at least to an extent I don't care but back then it mattered a lot more than it does now in fact one of the main things I changed when I got to college was that I used to go by Nick I didn't used to go by Nico because I thought Nick was more American that was basically it I wanted to be more part of the pack when I got to
high school I wanted to fit in which is normal right in high school you want to fit in because not fitting in causes you to lose social status you don't you're not actly the popular kid not that I was ever Popular by any means in any I wasn't popular in either country that was two for two but I used to go by Nick because I thought it was more American and I could fit in more and then I got to college and on my dorm floor you know for those of you who don't know what
a dorm is it's basically like where all the kids live in college or all the students live in college and it's just basically like a hotel room/ it's like a basically like a hotel hallway with a bunch of doors and on the doors for that freshman dorm were the names of who lived in each dorm and when I tell you there was about 10 Nicks on my floor 11 including myself and I was like this I don't want to be like everybody else I want to be different I want to be Nico because that's realistically
what my name was okay it was Nico it was never Nick in fact my mother urged me from the beginning of getting to the states that I should call myself Nico but I didn't want to and then I hit the big Switcheroo and said all right I guess I'm going by Nico now um my roommate who had also known me from high school was like hell no this is but he eventually came around like 2 years later but he was like the one person in college calling me Nick when everyone else would call me Nico
and that was like a big shift again for me I have an issue with my name and how I like to call myself in fact for the longest time YouTube channel wise the First Youtube channel I ever had I think went through let's see 1 two three four five I'm on like name change five or six on that channel right now because I never really picked a name that I said okay this is the one until I reached one and I was like I'm sticking with this and that's it and then I made the niiko
yaps channel or the Nico Channel rather which was another name change technically but this one wasn't this one never changed this one has been what it is from the start but that was again me starting over the Nico channel is me starting over my YouTube career I guess or my YouTube I don't know hobby at the time it it just was one of those things that i' had been doing the other channel for so long had done so many experiments and so much that I was like fed up I just I don't know it felt
like I was hitting dead end after dead end with every video I posted and the thing is I was so scared I was so scared to start over because I had built something right i' had built a portfolio of videos that I liked you know I liked and I enjoyed and some of my friends liked right I had about 4,000 subscribers and I didn't want to lose that because it took me so long to build those 4,000 subscribers it took me years like it took me like five 5 years to build that that that following
which felt like nothing right it felt like nothing because it wasn't like I had you know interactions with my viewers or anything it's not anything like what is going on now which I'm so grateful for I'm so grateful for this community that we've built okay 140,000 people right but that was only possible this community here was only possible because I said it's time to start over again it's time to hit the reset button and say I want to do something new I have an idea I have something that I want to accomplish here and you
know what if it does well fine if it doesn't it's a little hobby for me and look where we are now guys there's 145,000 of you exchanging ideas and commenting and helping each other out and besides what I'm saying in these videos right I'm not even talking about me here I'm saying that a reset here was able to create something so beautiful and amazing okay so when you're thinking about your life and starting over and doing something over do it sooner rather than later because there's this thing that people say that it's never too late
to start over or it's never too late to chase your dreams or whatever and I think that's a load of and I'm going to tell you why I waited so long to hit the reset button I was contemplating for I think actual years like a couple years before I started this channel I was contemplating whether or not I should restart a channel I was contemplating doing something new from scratch not just starting a new video or a different type of video on the same channel a whole new thing and I waited and waited and waited
and I even gave myself a deadline that if it didn't work by you know 2022 if that channel didn't take off I would stop doing YouTube but I couldn't bring myself to stop doing YouTube because I didn't want to right what I settled for instead was starting a new channel had I not done that back then had I not started this channel who knows I might have quit YouTube by now I might have let the dream die because I was fed up I was fed up with what was happening I was fed up with lack
of results like everyone always gets fed up that's like the one question that people give me right that's the one question that people ask me like all the time how do you do it how do you get here how do you deal with the the lack of results and what I'll answer every time is there is no way to explain it you just have to want it enough you just have to want to be somewhere enough to the point where you force yourself to get there but I digress this is not what this video is
about had I not started this channel back then I would have not been where I am today I would have met so many people talked to so many people experienced so many cool things I wouldn't have done any of it because I would have been so scared so don't be scared to start over starting over is one of the most beautiful things on the planet because it's fun and exciting and new and yes it sucks that you had to quit whatever you were doing before to do it but it's it's actually amazing and people don't
realize that until they get there until they make that push until they take the risk to stop themselves from being in that Purgatory that they've been for however long how many people are in deaded jobs right now that are so scared to do whatever it is to start over maybe start a different career because they hate it because they hate their careers okay I stopped video editing full-time because I didn't like it I just did not like it I did not like editing for other people from my room and just not interacting with anybody I
did not like that one bit and I did it for a year okay I did it for a year because a year was the threshold of me saying you know what if I hate it after this point there's no way I'm going to do it for the rest of my life and I quit that's one of the real reasons I quit Okay that was one of the real main reasons I quit because I didn't want to do any more remote work for other people I wanted to be in person and talk to people and interact
with people now you might say to me okay you're doing a YouTube channel about gaming you're pretty much doing the same thing but it's different because this isn't me working for somebody else this is me working for myself at any point I could pick up a camera and go outside and start vlogging on a different channel of course again but it's still under that umbrella of it's for me it's not for somebody else it's not if I decide tomorrow I want to stop I'm the only one who I have to report to I have a
friend that I went to college with let's call him let's call him Joe okay Joe he was a history major that didn't like it and decided that he was going to switch and be a film major okay history to film is not exactly the hardest transition but you still have to reset you still have to do other classes you have to take things that you were supposed to take in freshman year in your junior year right you have to restart you have to start over and you have to catch up if you want to be
done within 4 years I guess you could take an extra year to finish but you understand what I mean and he started over and he did his thing and he met some of his favorite people right he made such good friends in fact he met his wife okay he met his wife because of the fact that he changed majors and went into film okay his wife by the way is one of my closest friends I went to their wedding I think in August yeah their wedding was in like August you know how wild that is
if he had never started over if he had never went to a different major tried something different he would not have met his wife think of how much of a mind that must be for him and to be completely honest with you guys I hadn't actually thought about that up until just now this just occurred to me okay that my some of my favorite people on this planet got married to each other because of one major decision there one decision to start over and part two of this even before they got married even before when
when when he graduated when he graduated with his film degree he did some stuff in Film Production being on set and all that stuff but he didn't love it as much as he thought he would he likes it kind of part-time to be able to work on things but he didn't want it as much he didn't like the fact that there was no job security in that field so what did he do he re started again or not exactly restarted but he went into teaching instead of being a filmmaker he taught film or he teaches
film and from what I hear he likes it he likes it way better than the uncertainty of the film industry he enjoys teaching something that I could never do personally bless his heart but again it took the reset it took the starting over so guys start over whatever it is if you think that you hate your college major or you think that you've been playing violin for so long that you're bored and you want to take a piano or you want to start a different sport maybe you've been obsessed with basketball but soccer SL foot
is more your cup of tea just start but do it now don't do it 10 years from now if Joe had waited even an extra year to leave the history degree he might have never gotten close with his wife you might have never taken that path and his life might be very different and possibly worse if I hadn't started the Nico Channel a year ago you guys wouldn't be hearing me you guys wouldn't be hearing my voice talk you probably wouldn't even see me on YouTube anymore because truthfully as much as I want to believe
I would have kept going I don't know if I would have don't wait until you're 75 and retired to start over and do stuff because at that point it will be too late when you're body starts to crumble when your mind starts to crumble when everything starts to crumble doing things over is not really I'm not going to say it's impossible but it's not ideal because you spent too much time doing things that you don't want that you're tired and you don't want to even potentially leave the comfort zone of the thing you don't like
to find something that you might potentially like even less and I'm sure that most of you watching this right now are probably in Middle school high school maybe early 20s so this is more for you take the risk reset start over run it down just run it down allow yourself to see New Beginnings anyway I hope you enjoyed this official first episode of I guess season two of The Yap I might also be playing some different games from time to time that might be more fitting for a specific topic or something of the sort so
stay tuned for that as well also let me know how you feel about adding music to this because I'm not I'm kind of on the fence I kind of like it I kind of don't so let me know and for those of you that are more of a listening type I'm going to turn this into a YouTube podcast the the entire Yap playlist from start to finish and maybe I'll start putting these videos on Spotify yeah turn it into a Spotify podcast but for now thank you all again so much for watching and as always
good night and good luck everybody
