Hey everyone! Thank you for sticking through for the past year! Like every year, I’d like to share an update for how my health is currently doing and what you can expect from me and my content in the upcoming year!

Looking back, 2023 has been a crazy year, both from a One Piece perspective and a personal perspective as well. So much has happened, between Egghead, Gear 5th in the anime, the One Piece Live Action, fan projects like Nakama Fest, and so much more, but especially on a personal level, it’s supposed a really big shift in my health condition as well. As many of you already know, I’ve been suffering from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for the past decade or so in a way that it has incredibly limited my ability to enjoy life (watch “How One Piece Saved My Life” on my channel for more info!). I’ve been largely bedridden for the past decade and have suffered a lot, both physically and mentally.

It’s a curable condition in my case, but the road to recovery has taken so many years it has required a lot of patience. But across this past year, it’s the first time I’ve noticed this significant of a change. I’ve still got a long way to go before I’m ever “fully cured” (if I’ll even get there), but it somehow finally feels like my condition isn’t impairing what I want to do that much anymore. For the first time in years I can actually go out of my house whenever I want, and the amount of things I can do has improved a lot as well.

This transition wasn’t easy. This is the result of a lot of painful fighting, being brave enough to face and go through a lot of past trauma, both physical and mental, but the result I’m getting at the end is a sense of freedom I haven’t felt before. But being honest, it’s all a bit overwhelming; I’ve realized that I’ve dreamed of living a peaceful life for so long that I’m not entirely even sure where to go from there now that I’m starting to achieve it. After living so many years with the mindset of just trying to survive, there’s a bizarre “well, what now?” feeling of not being sure where to move forward now that I have the peace and flexibility to do things, to the point that I even get a bit of existential dread from it. I’m realizing that just because I’m overcoming the things that tortured me for so long, it doesn’t mean that I’m automatically happy, but I welcome this as an opportunity to search for what I really want to do with my life, even beyond my work and passion for One Piece. And while I still need to improve a lot health-wise, there’s a lot of things I hope I can look forward to enjoying from now on as I continue to improve!

Aside from all that though, I’m still incredibly grateful that I get to continue enjoying One Piece like this, especially during such a special period that is the Final Saga. I’ve honestly been enjoying the weekly experience now more than ever, and I’m looking forward to everything this year has in store. Furthermore, now that I’m more flexible with my health, something I would like to try is to diversify my content. I feel over the past I’ve always stuck too much with just doing chapter analysis, and while I want to keep doing that, I also want to experiment more with different types of content. I want to do more character/thematical analysis like the one I did for Kuma’s backstory, informational videos, and a lot more creative stuff in general, but without any deadlines or pressure to deliver. I’ve realized that some of the mega-projects I’ve tried to get myself into have often gotten a bit overwhelming or exhausting, so rather than overworking myself more, I just want to get more creative and have even more fun creating content without worrying about the pressure! So I hope you can still be there the rest of the way!

I hope that you too can find the strength to overcome the struggles that flood your life, and that One Piece can help keep inspiring you to do so. But if I’ve learned something over the past year is to stop over-worrying about things so much and to sometimes just stop and appreciate what you have. It’s a legitimate miracle that we all get to experience this shared adventure together, so let’s keep sailing to Elbaf and beyond! Thank you for everything!!

TL;DR: My chronic health condition has been improving a lot over the past year, and while I still have a long way to go, it thankfully feels like I’m finally getting some sense of peace. As I am more flexible now, I’d like to experiment more and get creative with trying new types of One Piece content without forcing myself through big projects and deadlines, so please look forward to it over the next year! Thank you!