In February 2009, my 15-year-old self thought it would be a good idea to start uploading videos on YouTube. I was doing a lot of singing at my secondary school at that time and I really loved memorizing the lyrics to Japanese songs, so it made sense to me to start uploading Japanese covers. I don’t exactly know what my goal was at that time — perhaps I wanted to challenge myself, maybe I thought I could become a professional singer, or maybe I just wanted attention, a shot at having my time in the limelight. Whatever it was, I am certain that the me back then never thought that I would ever reach this far. Five years later, here I am with a YouTube channel that has over 8,000 subscribers and 1,200,000 views. But despite this ‘success’ (I guess that’s how most would perceive it to be), I now find myself starting to drift away from the community that has shaped the way I am today.

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