Things are changing

And I’m very happy about it :)

When Bernardo and I first met, our attitudes towards social media were worlds apart.

He was a YouTuber.

I was basically anti-YouTube.

I purposely didn’t use social media. I didn’t want to get lost in it, and just didn’t see what it would add to my life.

So I certainly never would have imagined that, a few years later, I would be part of a YouTube channel myself.

For those who missed it: Bernardo and I started a shared YouTube channel called Bernardo and Jule, focusing on renovating our house and building a life here in Norway. And we’ve already had our first little success: we’ll be on Norwegian television!

We were approached by Norge Rundt, a Norwegian TV programme that travels around the country, telling heartwarming stories about people and their lives.

They came to our house and filmed a short feature about our life here, which will be broadcast on NRK, Norway’s national broadcaster, in about a month.

And somehow, this whole thing has made me think about how much my view of YouTube has changed.

When we started dating, I was still in my anti-social media era, but had accepted that YouTube was going to play a pretty big role in my life. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that yet, but as we travelled together and documented our adventures for Bernardo’s YouTube channel, I started to understand what it actually gave us.

YouTube gave us a mission. A drive. It motivated us, and gave us exactly the kind of freedom I had always dreamed of.

Small disclaimer: when I say “we”, I don’t mean that I was doing half the YouTube work. Bernardo was the one behind the camera, editing and doing all the technical stuff. It was his thing.

But it still felt like a shared mission, because it allowed us to keep travelling together.

Wherever we were, we always had something to work towards. A reason to be creative, and constantly ask ourselves: How can we make a beautiful story out of this?

Through collaborations and the videos, we were able to make travelling financially sustainable. But more importantly, it gave us the feeling that our energy was turning into something. That we were creating something we could build on.

And I think that’s exactly what I’ve been missing lately.

Work that, for me personally, actually means something. Something that doesn’t just leave me tired, but also makes me feel: I’m doing this for myself. This is going somewhere.

So it’s time to find that feeling again.

I’m going to cut back on my cleaning work, which means I’ll have more time and headspace to take on a bigger role in the YouTube channel.

I’m grateful for the work I’ve been doing here. It gave me a reason to get out and meet a lot of people, so I won’t give it up completely.

But it is time to put more of my energy into something that feels more like my own. That I can learn from, be creative with, and hopefully keep building over time.

We’ll see where it takes us. At least we’ve made it to the TV already :)

Thank you for reading and enjoy the new video!

Jule Noah