Where Have Eye Been? // Why I stopped posting to this YouTube channel.

this is my fourth time recording this video a number of you have been reaching out to me asking um why i haven't been posting what happened where did i go what uh why am i not producing videos anymore my priorities had shifted for a number of reasons coming out of kovid i got really busy and then i had an eye trauma and now i'm able to get back to making uh this youtube channel putting it higher up on the priorities list i wanted to get it right i i don't want to miss anything even though i probably will and i wanted to make sure that my message was clear [Music] right up front here are my main points my primary business comes first photography is my full-time job this is my side hustle my health including my mental health come even before that i also end up with like seasonal affective disorder in the winters here in hamilton ontario where i live it gets really gray for about four to five months one of the reasons i stopped making videos last fall was because i was having issues with my eyes with my eyes and my vision which as a photographer you can imagine is very concerning and distressing trouble focusing which means trouble editing images and even trouble just reading what's on the screen in front of me at my computer to give you an example writing these scripts and then reading them back again on a teleprompter uh is difficult it isn't fun because everything kind of looks like this to me so while my vision is better than it was a few months ago it's still not good it just put a real mental strain on me and my concern about like how do i make a living as a photographer my optometrist says i have dry eyes when i wake up in the morning i i almost always have a lot of like gunk or or grit or sand in my eyes you know how you get that crust in the corners but for me it's it's almost seals my eyes shut for all of my life i've just rubbed the grit out of my eyes and have gone about my day one wednesday in january though some of that grit got into my eye and in trying to rub it out i scratched my cornea i ended up in the urgent care clinic here eventually i had to go to urgent care twice in one week i called my friend eric he picked me up and drove me to the clinic and waited in the parking lot for two hours because of coveted protocols he wasn't allowed inside i got a prescription for antibiotics a tiny bottle of like optical painkiller and went home the next day thursday i couldn't open my eyes all day i could my right eye was not injured but i couldn't i couldn't move it around because my left eye moves in sync with my right eye and every movement of that eye was just incredibly painful and later that night um eric again took me to the drugstore and dragged me around by my hand um because i couldn't see anything i picked up some ointment for my eyes and some moist lid wipes over the next couple of days i kept my eyes nice and moist because i thought it's clearly my dry eyes that are the problem so because i had kept my eye moist i ended up back in the urgent care clinic on saturday the pain is easily 10 times worse it's insane i would would never wish this pain on anyone to give you a basis of comparison one of my friends said that her ex was shot during combat and also had both his legs broken and their son when he was a baby scratched his eye and he said that was the worst pain that he had ever experienced the doctor comes around puts the orange drops in my eye looks at my eye not even using the machine mind you and she says oh god this is bad so she sent me upstairs to the eye clinic i go upstairs to the urgent eye clinic and ophthalmologist i believe takes a look at my eye and says it should heal up in a few days keep using the antibiotics but stop using everything else the pain ended up going away in a few days but it still took about three more weeks for my eyes to get back to its sort of like regular everyday state i have good days and i have bad days today i'm somewhere in between my stress levels went up and i started eating my emotions more and more i can get a medium reese blizzard with extra reese thank you so much i've put on a lot of weight and i hate the way i look on camera right now when the restrictions were lifted at the start of july business was slow to bounce back but business started to return in august and september of last year and i suddenly had to adjust from not working at all for six months to getting back to the grind of shooting and editing and marketing and admin and contracts and all the other stuff that i've wanted to talk about on this channel i found myself working and thinking ah this this would be a great video this should be a video but when you're actually working for clients and on deadlines it's tough to stop that process that you're used to and try to record what you're doing to turn it into content i had a client at the end of november come to me for head shots she's actually in a show on amazon called the wilds she ended up having to wait uh three months for me to get her finished images to her and she knew about the issues i was having with my eyes and my vision she was incredibly understanding and wonderful about the whole thing my clients come first so i didn't produce any new content i just worked i am a full-time photographer this is my work this content creation is my side hustle i don't make any money from it my amazon affiliates commission from last quarter was i think 86 cents i love doing this i do i love teaching but it doesn't pay the rent until it does it cannot be as high a priority on my to-do list as my actual business that pays my bills i do plan to grow this channel and make more videos it's actually doubled in subscribers while i wasn't posting any new videos so please don't unsubscribe or if you're not subscribed please do subscribe and turn on the notifications that'd be fantastic if you have any questions please ask them in the comments and i will answer them in a new q a video soon take care of yourself