I made one a few months into my youtube journey

from January 2017

and then another one January 2018

reacting to the first one

so today I'm reacting to my reacting with video!

And we're going to see what I managed to achieve in 2018

And what I'm aiming for in 2019...

But!

It's not all roses... Oh no!

On this channel you get full open and honest chronic illness realism

with nice lipstick

Over the last few months I have been struggling a lot with my health

it's felt a lot like one thing after another after another

just like on top of me

you know when you get five colds in a row so it all just merges into one big cold?

that's me

I'm the big cold

but with hemiplegic migraines, dislocating hips and the norovirus

just keeping life chronically exciting!

I took three weeks off during November to try and recover

which is why this 'start of the year' video is three weeks late!

It's not at all because I forgot about it until someone reminded me on Twitter!

ahem

So in this video I need to look back at last year's five goals,

see what came true and what didn't

and then give you my five goals for this year

those of you who have been around for a while have obviously seen some of these things coming true

but if you're just joining the channel or you've been watching for

a few videos that haven't yet subscribed and do please go ahead and do so

you'll be able to watch me impressively achieve or catastrophically fail...

or both!

let's start with last year's video...

[2018 Jessica] hello lovely people and welcome to 2018!

I don't know why I clap like a seal, I just do!

firstly I still clap like a seal and

I wish I could remember which lipstick I'm wearing because it's gorgeous

Please, you can play along with this go back have a look at the comments tell me if

it came true and then tell me down below in the comments of this video

did that make sense...?

yes let's do that again

tell me in the comments if your prediction in last year's video came true

and if you're new then please write your predictions down below and we'll revisit them this time next year

[2017 Jessica] Hi future me!

[2018 Jessica] Hi past me!

[2019 Jessica] Hi past mes

Glad I got better at colour-correcting my videos...

Number one! we're gonna start with something frivolous...

"grow my hair"

Yes! okay glad I'm starting with this one

as something I actually managed to easily achieve

not that you can tell because my hair is curled...

so I'm not going to cut my hair for all of 2018

No, I did actually get it trimmed, that I'll give you...

my plan is when we have babies I will have really long hair!

I'm very unclear as to why I have tied long hair to having babies...

but there we go!

But yes my hair is longer now

I still want to grow it because I would like to recapture the heady days of my preteen

life in which I had waist length incredibly straight blonde hair

but in the wavy redhead version please.

Number 2! continue to write more. Just... more.

Maybe actually finish one of those books

Yes! Ha! I have also achieved this one

thank you to those of you who reminds me daily on Twitter about writing

Kiko, I'm looking at you.

I have written every day, even if just some days it was a sentence

of dialogue that I liked or the outline of the particular scene,

descriptive paragraph of a room that something happened in

yeah... I have been writing many things

and I just need to do something with it.

one thing I haven't shared publicly yet

is that I managed to get a book agent and have meetings with some publishers

but it was about a non-fiction book rather than the stories

I've been working on for years, which are all fiction...

and nothing came from it,

because they said my online platform wasn't big enough!

Which- excuse you!-

shouldn't it be about my writing ability?!

anyway, right now don't have an agent anymore

but I feel I learnt a lot in the process:

both that I want to go more in the direction of fictional books

which, I'll be honest, I already knew...

and about what I would want any non-fiction book I made to look like and to be about

A bit more about that in my '2019 goals'!

number 3 this sort of goes along with the exercise thing but not really

"increase general muscle tone"

no no

No!

Wha-?!

Why would I even...?!

NO.

Wow, I am overly optimistic sometimes

I have done absolutely nothing that constitutes any form of planned working out!

Other than casually swimming most days when were in Malaysia for two months

like I have it I have a vague memory actually of Claud and I joining a gym for two hot second in 2019

But then I realised that was a really silly idea

As much as I would like to believe that working out will improve my body and energy levels

It won't!

Yes, healthy bodies do need exercise

Yes, the more you do with them the stronger they get.

That's not my body though.

I have limited energy and I would rather do something productive with it

like writing or recording a video than being active in a way that means I'll be

wiped out for a few days

what was I thinking?!

I also have mixed connective tissue disease hypermobility type

and last week I just located my hip by sitting cross-legged on the sofa and leaning down to pick up a sock from the

I'm clearly not the Yoga type

I really enjoy swimming and I would like

to do more of it but leaving my house and getting changed are both things that

require a lot of energy for me...

“Getting changed requires a lot of energy?”

yes.

I also faint if I change temperature quickly

And I've fainted way too many

times in a swing pool changing room it's disgusting that floor is not sanitary

so clearly the only option is to turn my entire downstairs into an indoor swimming pool(!)

number four get even better at making videos

okay I'm too British just that I've achieved it

but I'm too Jessica to say I haven't

[ding]

I've sped-up my editing for one, despite the fact I made my last month's

worth of videos with a broken microphone the audio is definitely improved from

last year again really sorry the microphone thing I hope it sounds better

right now but editing when deaf is hard- shocker!

we should be on the right track now

In 2018 I spent two months with my wonderful wife in beautiful Malaysia

concentrating on nothing but making videos and honestly it was such an

amazing creative experience that I'll never forget I really think we both

improved on editing and filming... I have a clear vision in my

my mind's eye of exactly what I want this channel and individual videos to look like

I've tried to put some more of my personality into the editing style

and I hope you can tell that!

I'm really proud of the bad baking video I

edited as part of Christmastide where Claude and I basically just had a lot of

fun failing at things

I think it's probably up to you to be the judges

though so if you've enjoyed watching my videos for a while you've seen an

improvement please do let me know

and number five I'm gonna go with another subscriber prediction

This year though, were not going to get quite so-

we're not going to get quite so overexcited!

I'm going to say...

I mean to be honest at this point I'm gonna be shocked if 300 happens

so the first time I made this video I said I was really hoping to be on 20k by the end of the year

and I was thinking in November that it wasn't going to happen, because I was on 15k-ish and it was such slow climb...

and then I ended the year with 200K!

And then last year I said:

400,000?

No! That's too much...

no, that's too big!

I'm doing it again, see?!

I have a thing and then I pull it back...!

Three. Okay, we're gonna settle: 350!

Boom!

Hello 400K!

honestly, I genuinely continue to be flawed and humbled by your kindness when it comes

to watching, liking and sharing my videos

I would not have got here without you

whether you've been watching for a while or you've only just joined I'm honestly

so happy to have you be a part of this community!

another big part of 2018 when it came to the channel was the launch the Kellgren-Fozard Club!

which is part of the YouTube channel membership system

it's like patreon but integrated into the platform

basically having the club, where people pay a set amount each

month for access to behind-the-scenes videos, posts and chats means I have a

slightly more stable monthly income from Adsense

Oh Adsense... (!)

Allowing me to panic less and actually give myself breaks

it's okay, Jessica, the healthy people give themselves breaks you can chill sometimes too

Alright, now, time for things I hope will happen in 2019

I would love to say: not get sick, have more energy, finally wake up with naturally curly hair...

but I am going to be reasonably realistic!

Number 1 Move house- yes!

Kellgren-Fozard Club members already know this as I mentioned it in our Christmas livestream!

Which, by the way, is so fun!

but we're playing to move house this year!

Currently we live in a two-bedroom house in the city in a

terraced house and our only bathroom is upstairs

we are paying the benefit of being able to walk into the centre of town

but I can't walk any more than three minutes without needing a sit down

so we drive in anyway...

so we're going to move somewhere a little further out to where maybe it takes us an extra 10 minutes to

drive into town but we can have an accessible house with a bathroom

upstairs and downstairs and maybe a room downstairs that can be my bedroom when

I'm ill or my legs aren't working...

if you don't know I have condition that occasionally

paralyzed in my limbs yeah

I have to commando crawl up and down stairs in this house

sometimes though I'm just stuck upstairs away from the kitchen and

have to rely on other people for sustenance

We would also like a bigger garden for the dogs

so when I’m unwell I can just open the door and they can go play by themselves.

why don't I throw the ball but from inside the kitchen

Number 2!

Fix your eyebrows Jessica!

Fun fact, I don't have eyebrows

okay, I do; miniature ones.

if you are wondering why my eyebrows look different in this video to the one

last year and the one before that...

they're fake!

I started losing hairs on the outside of my eyebrows a few years ago, I guess,

and they've been shrinking in width ever since...

so I draw them on.

Apparently differently...

every year

tune in next year to see what the hell my 2020 eyebrows will look like.

Hopefully more consistent to be honest.

Don't worry too much about it though,

my grandmother had about three hairs by the time she was 40

so... I've still got another decade.

I am considering getting them micro-bladed

ie semi-permanently tattooed onto my face,

because I spend a lot of money on eyebrow pencils

and it's difficult for people to know I'm shocked without wearing makeup

if you have a connective tissue issue and you've had

your eyebrows micro-bladed or actually any other type of tattoo

please do let me know if it interacted negatively.

I need to focus group...

Unless your name is Stevie Boebi- I cannot use a lone person as a focus group, Stevie!

Although... damn how eyebrows are amazing...

Number three! Get a talent agent!

there comes a point in one's career where you realize that waking up daily to 40 demanding new

emails is perhaps a bit much and that potentially being without any legal

training you can't actually deal with multinational corporations contracts and

not come out on the losing end...