I'm 18. If you're 13, 14, 15 or 16 years old, please watch this...

I'll be 18 when you see this video, I'm 15 right now. I'm going to continue to put work in every single day and I know I'll be there someday. 2018, the most enjoyable year of my life. I was a 12 year old kid who had just gotten his first girlfriend and I thought she was going to be the love of my life. I would go to school every single day, I'd play basketball every day after school and then I'd game every single night. It was heaven on earth. Fast forward around eight months into 2018, my love of my life broke up with me and ever since that event, everything went to, excuse my language, shit. I graduated primary school with my friends, I had an amazing night, I won the sports award at school which was like the most prestigious award you could ever get. I enjoyed my summer holidays like the last summer holidays of my life. I played basketball every single day because I had dreams of making the NBA at that point and I told myself because I had so much confidence that if I didn't make the NBA, there would be no point in even living. But I was so sure of myself that I was going to make it, that it was actually a thought. There's no point in even living if I come second. Then high school hits, here we fucking go. I walk into school the first day and this Eshay kid who is like, what do you call them? You know, the road men in the UK, it's like one of them and at this point he's very, very scary to me. I'm a really small kid, I've just entered a new environment. My primary school was really small so no one was really going to do anything but now there was kids five years older than me at this school. I get called a faggot by this guy first day because my socks are extremely high. That was the start of a hectic high school experience. I'm not going to mention this too much because most of you already know this, but I was rejected by a girl on my third or fourth day of school. We tried to start a conversation, I just couldn't, my face blew up red and those two events brainwashed me into believing that I could not relate to anybody. I had no ability at getting girls, there was no point. So what does a 13 year old do who doesn't fit in with the people around him? He goes to something that allows him to escape, video games and I later discovered what was the downfall of me, porn. I started watching this one or two times a week and especially because I couldn't get girls because I was so nervous, it was heaven and the more I watched it, the more I wanted to watch it. So I grew into something I used to do at least three or four times a day. I think it's around two or three weeks after year seven, high school starts, I find out that the most attractive, at this time in my life, the most attractive girl actually has a crush on me. Apparently, she tells one of her friends who tells one of my friends because they're like really close and I thought my life was complete, I've got the most attractive girl, that's all I need. But I told myself at that point that I didn't want to get a girlfriend because I wanted to focus on basketball because basketball was more important and I didn't want any distractions. At that point though, if I look back at it, it was also, I would use that as an excuse because I didn't want to get heartbroken again. We talk every single afternoon, she gave me comfort and when I played a bad game of basketball, I would get very, very upset with myself. For the next couple of days, I'll just be depressed because I just thought I was a failure but this girl was kind of a therapist for me. I talked to her about my games, I played bad, she'd say to me that's okay because she knew my dreams about playing in the NBA and I'm very glad that that happened because I don't know where I would be if it wasn't for that experience in my life. Later throughout that year of year seven, I started to realize that practicing for half an hour per day was not going to be enough. An hour a day, just light work was not going to be enough. I had a little bit of talent but I needed to work as hard as I possibly could so I started training 90 minutes per day, not just playing with my friends anymore, I never played with my friends, I would just sit up because there was two courts, I would sit up on the other court with my cones, I'd get there before anyone else got there and I'll just train for 90 minutes. And you can imagine how my friends thought of me when I did that, really weird, trying to be better than us. At least that's how I looked at it, anyway. Now this continues for maybe about a year and on the most exciting day of my life. And I'm like, fuck yeah. Gaming, basketball, all day, nothing else, I don't have to worry about seeing girls at school, I don't have to worry about my face going red in class, I can turn my camera off on the Zoom meeting. For the first two or three months of lockdown, I loved it, I started getting in the gym, I started working out, I started, you know, really practicing the video game I was playing and at that point in my life, if you were good at this video game. Hey guys, so I'll be showing you the best standing build NBA 2K20. People would perceive you as powerful, I was working on my body, I was like one of the only ones showing up to class, so when I did get back to school, I was ahead of people because everyone else was just being lazy, but I'd either be grinding on my game or grinding in my life. Why couldn't this just last forever? But then tryouts come around for basketball. The team that would help me make the NBA, definitely helped me get there, get exposure to scouts probably all across the world if I made this specific team. I go there, first day, I actually do pretty well. There's four groups or there's five groups, sorry. First group is the best group, okay? This is the best group, this is the team, if I did not make this team, I was not going to play for them. Then you have like the second, third, fourth and fifth team, I got put in the fourth team off the bat because I didn't know who I was. I was new and new people are kind of rare, right? New good people are very, very rare. I stay in the fourth group and day one, I'm already better than all of them, so I move up to number three. I move up one spot, okay? And I'm feeling extremely proud of myself. I genuinely believe if I just move up one group per day, I'm going to make this first team and everything's going to go well. I'm going to hopefully make the NBA one day, but second try out, I don't move. I stay in the group three, but I'm still kind of proud of myself. I played very, very well. Third day, because there's four days. Third day, the coach calls me over with this other one dude who is doing extremely well. He's new as well, right? And he says to this other coach, do you want these two? Because, you know, he's been eyeing us. And he says, yeah, yeah, but only this guy, and it wasn't me. I was five foot five. This other guy was like six foot at the age of 15 or 14, it would have been at the time. And that broke my heart and it killed my confidence. And if I look back at it today, I wish that never happened because I was actually good. I was actually good, bro, but because of that, it killed my confidence and I stayed in group three. I genuinely believe I was better than this other dude who ended up making the first team. He ended up making it. I genuinely believe I was better than him. And if I just had some confidence, I could have made it. That happens and long story short, I would say I was pretty, I like to use this term very, very lightly, but depressed for a week or two. I had no purpose. I lost all my confidence. I'm like, I'm not making the NBA. I'm too short. I'm too unathletic. I can't do this. I can't do it. Then I was sitting in class, humanities class, like history class. And somehow I think of the idea to start a fitness YouTube channel. I've been getting in the gym. I've been loving the gym. That's the second most enjoying thing after video games and basketball. I've been loving it recently. I've been making quite a lot of progress and I'm like, holy shit, let's do it. My whole life has lit up. I've been granted this sense of purpose again. I told my parents about it. They don't necessarily agree. They say, Jack, you're going to get judged on social media. Why are you going to put yourself out there like that? You can't make money until you hit a thousand subscribers. It's going to be so hard. You know, I'm only a 15 year old. I don't know how, you know, to start a YouTube channel. I don't know how to do anything. Right? But I'm like, mom, let's just try it. Let's just do it. I had that belief. I had that confidence again. So I posted my first video and I wasn't planning to post my YouTube video link on my Instagram story. I wasn't planning to do it because I didn't really want my friends and the people at my school, especially the girls in my school, seeing my YouTube channel before I'd actually gotten subscribers. But I'm just like, let's just do it. Let's just fucking do it and see. If I post this on my story, it's game. You have to be successful with this. There's no giving up now. You can't give up on two dreams you've told others about twice. Well, here we go. The girl that I was attracted to, who I wanted to date at year nine, year nine came around. She wasn't my type anymore. I didn't really find her attractive anymore. She got into the wrong type of friend group, or I don't know. I don't really know. I didn't really pay attention, but I just lost attraction for her. So it was me versus myself every single day. This is my time. This is my year. And I hope 2022, 23, 24, and 25 do me good. I had no other sense of purpose except my YouTube channel. This one right here. I post for the first few months and everything seems to go okay, but there's a lot of rumors spreading about me. You can just see people look at me differently. I lose friends. People start calling me Jack Pickett instead of Pickett or Jack. And you can just tell they're, you know, they're becoming spectators and not friends anymore. This just only fed into the side of myself that was ready to give up. I didn't really want to do this. I wasn't making any money. People my age were getting jobs. They were making $500 to $1,000 per month at the age of 15. I was making nothing but working harder, working weekends. I didn't really have a childhood when I was 15. I didn't really have a teenage life when I was 15. And then around three months after this, around halfway through 2021, I'm sitting in class and my classmates are talking about having a party tonight. It's a Friday afternoon. And I want to get invited even though I don't really want to go, but I want to get invited still so I can still feel part of the group. I don't get invited. But around 7pm, I go and take my dog for a walk just around the block. It's still daylight, but it's still getting, it's getting dark. And I see the party which is happening when I walk past the house around the block. I see it happening. I see people, you know, drinking at the age of 15. People are yelling, there's loud music. And I'm like, that is the party that they were talking about. So I see that house and I just stop and I just walk the other way. I walk home, but because I just want to see it again and just see and kind of feel like I'm there, but I'm not. I go back, I put my hood on and I just stand there and just stare. Not really stare, but just spend some time looking at the party. I think I hit like a quick workout as well. You know, there's like a park across the road and I can hear the music still going. And this just amplified my loneliness even more and made me feel, you know, very, very left out. You know, following this event, I try and make the most out of school every single day and most of the days I do. Right. It wasn't like school was an extremely bad environment to be in, you know, but it wasn't really the place for me. I didn't really find much purpose there except hanging out with some of my really, really close friends, right, who had stuck by me. But then last year, around this time, because that continues for maybe two years, yeah, the same type of stuff, I'm posting content, I'm not really seeing any success. I get monetized, I make like five bucks a day, nothing crazy, even though my friends are making like, you know, a thousand dollars a month, so I'd still feel behind. This time last year, around this time, the only man who wanted me to do better than him, my dad passes away and it couldn't come at a worse time. I'd seen my dad around three weeks before him passing. He drops me off at home where I am right now because he was, he lived around three hours away for work purposes. And I only got to see him once every school holiday, so it was four times per year. Little did I know, last time I'd seen my dad was the last time I'd ever seen him. And it hit me, bro, I didn't believe it for the first like two or three days, I did not believe it at all. I know I've yapped about this the whole video, but I didn't want to socialize after that happened. All I wanted to do was work and work and work and work because it was a way for me to escape the way I was feeling. It was the only way I could feel proud of myself. I know, well, I felt like my dad would be let down by me if I went out and had fun. That was my idea and I've definitely changed, but after, I'd say the following two, three months of this event, that's what happened. I don't know if this was the reason, but October last year, I finally saw some success on YouTube. Finally, I was getting a hundred subs a day, then it went to 500, then it went to a thousand, then it went to 5,000 and I had gained 300,000 subscribers in 90 days. I went from 10,000 subscribers to 310,000 subscribers in three months. January came along 2024 and I'm going to be open and transparent with you because this is a very, very transparent video. I was making hundreds of dollars per day. It was a massive jump and I couldn't believe it. I had one or two shorts go extremely viral and because my viewers, I think, genuinely liked my content, they started watching more of my videos, watched them more and more and more, so those videos started getting pushed out and it was just a snowball effect. That's why I blew up so much and I'm only saying that to prove the point that the work you're putting in right now, the videos I had made for years, every single day, if I hadn't made those videos, I wouldn't have blown up. The work you're putting in right now, especially as a young person, is going to pay off. It finally felt like it was coming together. Finally! I know it's, you know, kind of an ego thing, but I was finally making more than my classmates who would, not all of them, but some of them, would talk shit behind my back, they'd probably say things like, I'm not going to be successful, I'm never going to be big and I'm just like, Finally, I can just not brag about it to anyone else, but just think to myself and just relax in the idea that I'm actually doing well for my age, because I never thought I was. I had followers, but for no reason, I was inspiring people, but no one cared about that at my school. They only cared if I was making money from it, so I was extremely happy that that happened. And it was a way, you know, this success that I saw, and I'm only saying this to motivate you, my friend, that's all I'm doing it, that's all I'm saying it for, because I don't like boasting or bragging. It was kind of a way that would, it was a way I could escape my dad's death. It was, because it hit me hard, extremely hard, especially two or three months later. And 2024, one of the best years of my life, honestly, it's been one of the most stressful years of my life because school was picked up, this is the last year of my schooling. I have socialized a lot more, but I've also felt the most lonely in my life. I know I've been on about loneliness this whole video, but it's been the most prevalent thing in my life, man. And I know a lot of young people experience this, and that's why, like, that's the basis of this video, you know. You know, parties are really big now, 18th birthday parties, but not, it's nothing against the people, I just don't like the environment, I just don't really like partying. Maybe I will like partying when I think I've made it in life, which will probably be never. Yeah, because I'm always striving for more, which is a good thing, but it's also a, can be a negative as well. Cursed with ambition, eh? No, I love my dad, but he always used, and I would never say this in probably a regular video that I make, but because this is longer, only the true ones are here now. My dad never really used to use alcohol for the right reason, you know. He was an addict to it, and this is all pure love and respect to my dad, I don't care what, I didn't care what he did, he was still my dad, and he still had, you know, pure intention for me, and I still had a pure intention for him, and I think I had a lot of trauma surrounding that. So, that's one of the reasons why I am not a regular teenager. At least I look myself in the mirror with pride now, knowing that my hard work has paid off. My circle is a lot smaller than it once was, but as I say, you'd rather have one diamond than ten pieces of gold, eh? You'd rather have one diamond than ten pieces of bronze. Hopefully, my story inspired you, that was everything, of course, there's some things I left out because I want to save some stories for other videos, but yeah, that's the foundation of it all. Much love, my brother, and I'll catch you in the next one, peace.