Just a short but heartfelt explanation for my recent Montenegro and Croatia videos.

YouTubers are just common people making videos. We try, we sometimes fail. But it’s in what you do with those mistakes that ultimately matter. I let a few bad apples and a tired soul ruin a few days of my life and it affected my videos. No one is perfect, especially me.

But I’m trying to learn when I mess up.

I also acknowledge that the original title and thumbnail of one of those videos was pretty harsh. Basically clickbait. Which sadly is the norm for getting YouTube to recommend videos and thus grow a channel. My girlfriend actually called me out on this one, and she was absolutely right. Getting views at the expense of that level of sensationalism is not what I stand for.

Be it my inability to wrap my tongue around certain words and place names, or my use of phrases that mean something to me but not to the world at large … I am always trying to do better. That’s actually “The YouTube Way”. Constant improvement in videos makes a channel grow … and I’m also trying to up my constant improvement in my own life as well.

Many folks have complained that I was an Ugly American in those videos. And perhaps I was. But I’m actually living abroad these days BECAUSE I want to distance myself from the stereotypical image of an American. Especially an American in an election year.

But sadly, decades of one-sided experiences are a large hurdle to overcome sometimes. But I am trying and I am learning.

Thank you all for your comments and for holding me accountable. Even us amateur creators need our checks and balances. And as I find myself in yet another new country … Albania this time … I am applying the lessons of the past couple of weeks here.