YouTube video transcript (Kara & Nate Buchanan) giving a life update about their long-term travel project. They describe starting full-time travel in January 2016, setting a public goal to visit 100 countries by Nate’s 30th birthday (March 20, 2019), and six months prior to this video deciding to extend that deadline to January 1, 2020. They explain reasons for the extension (not ready to stop, avoid rushing, want flexibility for other opportunities), answer anticipated FAQs (they don’t yet know which last 18 countries they’ll visit; they don’t know plans after reaching 100), and close with thanks and a request to subscribe.
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About six months ago, we made a pretty big decision, and we've been meaning.
To share it with you for a long time. We just haven't had the time to sit down and film this video.
This whole journey started in January of 2016, when we left home to travel the world for one year. At least, that was the plan. But we had no idea what we were doing, what our goals were. We didn't know if we'd run out of money.
We didn't know if we'd get homesick three months into the trip and regret this idea to go traveling full time. We didn't know if we were gonna do the YouTube channel. We had the camera, but we didn't know if it would, like, get in the way of us enjoying our travels.
So from the very beginning, we've always just been like, okay, let's just travel to as many places as possible during this short time in our lives when we can actually do this.
How you feeling?
I'm pissed.
So fast forward to six months into our first year of full time travel. And that was the point that we realized one year was not gonna be enough. We couldn't stop traveling at the end of 20. So it was at that point that we got really serious about this idea of trying to turn our YouTube channel into a business that would sustain our travels.
We knew it wasn't going to be easy, but we really wanted a goal, something that we could aim for in the future that would keep us going, that we would look back on and be like, wow, can you believe we did?
Sitting in a rocking chair?
So that's when we pretty randomly decided, let's go to 100 countries.
And then we're like, wait, do we know 100 countries?
Are there actually 100 countries that we want to go to?
So naturally, Nate made a spreadsheet. I was looking at Google Maps, and we were like, okay, how many countries do we actually want to travel to? And turns out there were more than a hundred. So we're like, okay, good goal, 100 countries.
So that's what we like. That was pretty much as quickly as the decision was made. So we were like, let's start telling everybody we're going to 100 countries. Like, that's the goal of this YouTube channel.
But then we decided we couldn't just say we had a hundred country goal without a deadline. And pretty much as fast as we made the goal, we decided the deadline would be Nate's 30th birthday, because it just sounded like a good amount of time.
About two and a half years, two nice round numbers. 130. So yeah, that was the goal. Go to 100 countries by March 20th of 2019.
And that's probably how most people know us. In our channel at this point is the couple who is going to 100 countries before 2019.
Which brings us to about six months ago we were having like these deep conversations. Like we were just going through one of those periods where you just kind of like stay, step back and evaluate your life. And it was at that point that we kind of started to have some doubts about our hundred country goal.
As great as it looks on YouTube and social media, traveling can be really hard and tiring. And we love our friends and family and we miss them a lot. And I don't know, we were just feeling a little.
We don't always eat as healthy as we should on the road. I feel like we're jet lagged half the time.
But in the end we decided that it's always worth it. We love traveling and we're nowhere close to being ready to stop, which is.
Why we are not stopping. We are extending our goal, which means that we are going to be traveling through the end of 2019.
So basically we're just pushing the goal back nine months. We were originally trying to go to 100 countries before March 20, 2019, and now it's before January 1st of 2020.
We didn't think anyone would mind this announcement of us continuing to travel for another year, but we felt like we needed to make this video to make it official.
So pretty much what this means for you is that you're going to continue receiving the same content that you've been receiving for the past three years, at least through the end of next year.
There are a few reasons why we did this. One, we weren't ready to stop, like we said. And two, we felt like recently we've been having to say no to really cool and fun opportunities that we wanted to do just because we have this goal that we made up two years ago. And we felt like that wasn't really right.
We didn't want to have to rush through these last few countries just to meet this arbitrary goal that we set two and a half years ago when we had no clue what the future would hold.
So that's why in the last video we got to go to Texas. And then you'll see in the upcoming videos, we road tripped through Kansas, Canada for two weeks. And those are two things we wouldn't have been able to do if we were still trying to get to 18 more countries before an A's birthday. So little things like that, it's gonna be better. Now we know that this video is going to generate some questions and specifically two questions that we get a lot. So we thought we'd go ahead and address them now. The first one being what are your last 18 countries going to be?
The true answer to that is we have no clue. There are at least 30 countries that we still really want to go to, so we'll do 18 out of some of those 30. The way that our travel schedule normally works out is like we get some trips lined up and those kind of work as pillars that we like build the rest of the year round. And so far none of those pillars have actually fallen into place.
So yeah, that means that we don't know and it'll be a surprise for both of us. And the next question that we know we're going to get is, what are you going to do after you hit 100 countries?
We've thought long and hard about this. We've been getting this question for so long and. And we finally decided that.
We have no clue.
We don't even know where we're going at the beginning of next year or tomorrow.
So thank you everyone who watches our videos and who has supported our journey the last three years. We are having so much fun and we hope that you continue to enjoy our videos for another year.
If there's one thing that you would like to do for us, that would be awesome. We don't ask for this very often, so. But if you could hit the subscribe button, that really helps us out. It lets YouTube know that you like our channel and it also helps you out because you get notified when we post a new video. This is why we don't do this. It just feels awkward.
It does feel awkward asking for things, but if you want tea.
That's not it.
On myself A we made a pretty life changing decision.
To get really strange. Don't say life changing.
Just say okay.
About.
This is gonna be a long. It's gonna take a long video. Okay.
Gosh dang it. About six minutes ago you just inhaled so loudly.
