Thank you & a couple announcements for 2021 #thanksgiving

Thank you so much everyone for those wonderful, wonderful wishes. I'm really humbled and beyond touched. There are so many things, so many great things people have done today, and I'm really totally humbled. Thank you so much. I'd like to, uh, start by saying a great grand thank you to my family, my parents, my wife and daughter, who specially made a special clay-based play card in the night, midnight, and we had a video call. So a great and special year 2020. Generally, if you know, in my channel I upload a video on Tuesday and Friday, but today Since it's my actual birthday, I thought it would be great to talk to you all and, and have some sort of discussion. One of the clarifications I want to start off by giving is today is my actual birthday, which is to say it's not my official birthday which falls on June 15th and it's on record, but it's also very special for me because this is also the marriage anniversary of my parents. Yes, they've been married for 42 years and I'm 6 years less than that. So yeah, I completed 36 years. The year 2020, as we all know, has been quite a surprising year, as with the world and for me as well. I traveled to UK in February end, February 23rd to be precise. And the plan was that my wife and daughter will join me somewhere around April or May, but that did not happen. And they're still in India, I'm still in UK. We had a few personal losses as well. We lost a few near and dears, and I must say that, no, this year has been quite a challenging year, and, and if I don't acknowledge that, I would probably be doing not, not doing justice to that. Having said that, for me personally, this year has been a year of exploration, a year of journey, a year of trying new things. When I was stuck in my house in March and there was lockdown all over the world. We could not go outside, so we started switching to the online and inner world to say. And this whole year I've been experimenting a number of things. We had various Toastmasters group that we talked to, and without, without having to change, without having to have long travels, I was able to go and meet people from across the world, India, US, other countries as well. And it has been a heartwarming occasion for me. A lot of learnings happened. Also during this course, I explored a number of things with the help of my friends and on myself as well. So we started with one of the Instagram live session. I'll call it Instagram inspiration, where I started inviting people that turned into a YouTube channel. And I'm very happy to say that some days, few days back, my channel has hit 10,000 views. I've got 140+ videos of different category— motivation, game changer, interviews, Hindi reciting, etc., etc. And we've got 195 subscribers. I would probably call them a tribe or extended family who have been part of this journey. We have grown so much during these months. I was also part of a special global online Toastmaster club where Toastmasters from 4 or 5 different countries are coming together to form a new club. That in itself is a great feeling where we are able to provide value to both native and non-native speakers. For non-native speakers, it would be an opportunity to connect with native speakers directly, get mentored by them. And for native speakers, it would be an opportunity to make their message global. So that is another initiative that was formed out of this 2020 lockdowns. So I'm really, really proud of that happening. The next thing that happened was related to something which is very close to— I am from India and my mother tongue is Hindi. And on Hindi Diwas or Hindi Day, some of us thought about why not have a Hindi Toastmasters Club, especially in North India. And few of us got together and now we are coming really close to opening a Hindi Toastmasters Club. If you have not attended the meeting, you must, if you are from India, or if you're anyone who loves speaking Hindi, talking Hindi, you must attend our session. That would be amazing experience for all of you. We had one meeting last Sunday. So that was another thing. We, some of our friends, get together to have something called Indian Video Summit, where we realize the need to have a few, uh, people who can talk us about how to become better in YouTube, how to create good content, how to have, you know, better editing, how to find out what is the search engine optimization, and lot of other things, thumbnail, etc. So that's how we created, uh, two series of Indian Video Summit where we got some experts and they gave some excellent session for us to learn about how to make it better in YouTube. And similarly, we have been part of multiple initiative. So if I have to summarize this whole year of 2020, This year for me has been a little— a year which I won't say I'm very, really proud of in terms of the atrocity that has happened to the world, that personal losses that we all have suffered. But it's also an year where we explore, we went beyond the boundary setup, we went out of the box to learn, to explore, to do new things. And I'm pretty sure as I'm talking You can also remember the different things you have tried. Nobody thought that, no, the work can be done at such a large scale from home. So now, having said all of these, the reason I came to this YouTube Live is for having couple more announcement. I, every year when my birthday comes, it's in the December, and we start planning for next year when we come about December. So I wanted to introduce you all to two new ventures or two new initiatives that I'll be taking part of, especially coming in 2021. Number one has been my dream for many years to be an author, and because of my friends Akash, Abu, Taiba, and Deepak, we have been forming a group to do some sort of book creation. Uh, so in next year 2021, you will see a book authored by yours truly, Haritosh Srivastav. So that is, that is going to be another new thing that I will be taking over, and I'll be talking more and more about that. I've in fact created a new YouTube channel where I constantly vlog about what chapter I'm writing and what is the summary about that. The next big announcement that I wanted to make is that when I was creating YouTube videos, doing some Instagram session, lot of people suggested that, no, why don't you create podcast out that? Lot of people would like to listen, they will not have time to watch. So I want to again have second announcement of having a podcast created in January 2021. Again, this is still that I'm exploring, I'm getting all the required equipment, all the required knowledge. But rest assured, we will have a new podcast coming up in 2021, which probably initially I will have it on a fortnightly basis or a weekly basis, but then it will be more regular. So these are the couple of announcements, and thank you so much, all of you. Thank you, uh, people who have given me wonderful, wonderful message. I've been receiving calls, I've been receiving messages. WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram. Thank you so much. Uh, sitting alone and celebrating birthday is not fun, but when you know you are truly connected to a global family, it can really help you go out of this. So thank you so much. I will keep you posted about this progress, and I will keep posting new videos. Until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and keep going out of your comfort zone. This is Haritosh Srivastav. Keep watching it.