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It's official. I'm a published author in the United States. My book, my adventure memoir, The Wilder Way, is now officially out in the US, and you can get it as an ebook, a hardcover, and an audiobook. You can also order it in Canada, in the UK. It's out in all these wonderful places. There's also a Dutch translation that's already available, and there's a German translation and a Polish translation. Both of those are coming in September. I cannot begin to describe how writing this book has changed my life. And I just want to take a moment to share some of those thoughts with you. For the last 9 years, I've been very present on social media, sharing my
life, my travels, my adventures, you know, the stories of other people and places across my channels, on YouTube, on Instagram, on Facebook. It's been a life-changing journey, a true dream come true. It's given me opportunities that I never really dared to dream of. But, I feel like there is a new chapter that's coming up for me, and I can't quite put my finger on it, but publishing the book and knowing that so many of you have actually held this physical manifestation of my story in your hands and spent hours immersing yourselves in my words, knowing that you guys were there, reading that book, not just watching a video passively, but actually
reading a book, I think rewired my brain in all the right ways, and it's given me a really difficult thought that I've had to confront and that I'm really thinking about very hard right now. Yeah, we live in a world where short-form content is king, and then, you know, we're swiping and scrolling is something that we all do without really thinking about it much. And over the last few months, I have become very jaded with the idea of creating content for social media. I still do it. It's still part of my job. But I'm feeling a sense of distance growing between me and the platforms. And having published the book, I know how reading important is to our brains.
I know the wonders that it does to our imagination, our powers of reasoning, our focus, our attention. And having put the book out there into the world, into a world that is so distracted, so noisy, so confusing. To put a book out into that world feels like a small miracle to me. And when I think about the life force that I want to be sharing with the world and giving into the world, it's not the swipey scrolly content. I want to help make the world a slightly better place. And I feel like there is something to be said for making the world a better place by creating a work of substance. I've definitely had this idea across my mind of potentially quitting all social media and just focusing on writing.
I've always seen myself as a writer. I remember when I was a little kid and I was sitting down in my kindergarten looking through this picture book and I was thinking to myself, one day I would love to be a writer and I'd love to write a book like this. This was when I was like, I don't know. That was just a tiny little kid. I went on to university to study literature and languages. I always wanted to create stories, to write stories, to put them down on paper and share them with readers. I ended up making films along the way, which has been an amazing adventure and I think that's going to go away anytime soon from my life.
But, the writing is where my heart really feels at peace. And that's why The Wilder Way is so important to me. This book is more important to me than any film that I've ever made, any video that I've ever posted, anything that I've ever said on social media. If you're an author and you start writing a book, you have to ask yourself a very difficult question that nobody really warns you about. And that question is, how honest do I want to be? How much of myself do I really want to share with the world? You answer that question, and that guides what your book ends up becoming.
I shared a lot in my book. Stories that I never told on social media. You know, this book begins in a chapter of my life that oftentimes I felt like I wanted to erase. Dark times. The dark night of the soul, truly. A time when I remember feeling like I did not want to be here anymore. And then the book traces the start of my travels, the challenges and difficulties and ups and downs of becoming a traveling filmmaker and YouTuber. In the book, I also talk about some of the most difficult moments along my travels, including a situation where I was assaulted, a situation that I never talked about on social media and barely told anyone about ever. I dive into the
really intimate details of how my travels shaped my relationships and how my relationships shaped my life. It is a book filled with adventures and travels, but it is also a book that I hope encourages readers to really seek out the things that make them feel alive and free and wild. But at the end of the reading, my intention is for you to feel like you're reinvigorated and re-energized and like the only thing that you want to do now is get up and get going. Not to ditch your job and life and go travel around the world, but to get going within your life and within yourself. If you haven't got your copy yet, I highly recommend it. It's had pretty great reviews so far and I'm just
so pleased with how it's come out. I think it's a profound meditation, an ode to freedom, and a springboard to action. [snorts] Go all the way. If you've read it, please let me know in the comments what you thought about it. Leave a review on Goodreads or on Amazon. Those really mean a lot. And as for the question of whether I'm going to ditch YouTube in favor of writing, let me just say this. I want to write a second book as soon as possible. It's already inside me. It's already in there and it's burning like a fire and I know that it needs to come out very, very soon. I don't think I'm going to leave YouTube behind completely,
but one thing to understand is that when you're creating a book, it's very difficult to focus on anything else. So, I may begin a more sporadic relationship with YouTube. Because you know, I just want to make sure that anything I do share on here makes sense. It's meaningful. It has substance. And I want us to be able to connect across different media, in different ways, on different wavelengths, and across different depths. And if that means becoming a little bit less of a YouTuber and a bit more of a writer, perhaps that's the right choice for me. I just want to leave you with one thought that I wrote about extensively in the book. This idea of himer, which in Mongolian folklore is believed to be the wind horse, a
representation of the human soul, our life force, our spirit, our chi, whatever you want to call it. It is that inner spirit that drives us forward. And I feel like my humor is seeking depth. I really hope you enjoy The Wilder Way. You can now get it anywhere that you get your books or audiobooks. [screaming] Guys, thank you for being here.
