It’s really a bummer to share that the Break the Fear Youtube channel was deleted around May of 2019.

It wasn’t my choice. In fact, I was (and still am) seriously sad that it happened.

About 8-9 years ago, I created a Google Apps account and connected my @breakthefear.com email address to it. I ended up not needing Google Apps for this account, however, deleting Google Apps would have brought complications (I forget the details after all these years), so I left it as is… after all, all I did was associate my @breakthefear.com email address with Google Apps… or so I thought.

Then in May 2019, there were a number of emails from Google Apps saying my account would be deleted. It said it would delete the Google Apps email, calendar, drive, and other associated items… all of which, I did not use. So I wasn’t concerned. The email didn’t mention Youtube, so I thought nothing of it. Again, I just thought it was an associated login to Google Apps and an “empty” Google Apps account that I didn’t use. And I controlled and hosted the email on my own server, so I knew I wasn’t losing the email address. So because I still controlled my email, and the Google Apps notifications said nothing about Youtube, I didn’t even connect the two things.

A number of these email warnings came, giving me 90 days notice, then 60, then 30, then a final email saying that the Google Apps account was deleted.

A few weeks later I realized an embedded Youtube video wasn’t working. I went to login to Youtube (using the @breakthefear.com email address) and it said “there is no associated google account”… or something like that.

And after I realized what had happened, it was too late to recover the account. I had already received all of the warning emails (although they made no mention of Youtube) and there wasn’t even a way to contact Google Apps to recover the account. I tried numerous ways.

So it’s really unfortunate that this happened. And I feel sad. I’m super organized with my tech and logins (I used to manage 1,500+ passwords/accounts when I ran a web development business), so I feel wronged here. But I don’t like to play the victim card, so I’m taking responsibility and going to make the best of this.

It’s not all bad news though. I have most of the original content on my hard drive. I just checked. I have about 108GB of video footage, however, it’s not that simple to just “pop it back” on Youtube. I’d have to start all over again, from scratch.

And while that’s not a huge deal breaker, my energy and focus isn’t here on this site. Break the Fear has taken a back seat over the past 4-5 years. I’ve been building a business in the legal industry (since 2010). As you might be able to tell, the last post on this site was nearly 4 years ago. My bio is outdated. There’s design issues, there’s broken links, there’s things to clean up. But I just haven’t had the time, energy, focus, or care to put any of my attention here.

With the channel being deleted, I lost all the views, comments, and history. So while I could re-upload the videos to Youtube, it’s far more involved than that. I’d need to title all the videos, write descriptions, and add tags (I’m pretty sure I had transcripts written for a number of videos too). But it’s not that simple. Some of these videos I made are 8-9 years old at this point. I don’t even remember what I said in the videos. And my focus hasn’t been here on this content… the videos… the site; so I’d have to watch parts of the videos to figure out what they’re about in order to title them and write tags and descriptions.

The best way to explain how it feels to me: it’s like someone asking you to take a project you completed 5-10 years ago, and do it all over again… from scratch, using your original materials.

The strange thing about all this stuff for me, is that while I know the videos help a lot of people, seeing myself (seeing my attitude, words, thoughts, etc.) from so many years ago is hard to get inspired about. I’ve grown so much. I’ve matured in so many ways. I may even hold contradictory opinions to certain things I said.

So it’s just really tough for me to be excited about this. But I don’t want to lose all that work I created and all the value that was being delivered to people. So I’m conflicted.

Ultimately, I will likely re-upload the content (or hire someone to help). For now, I just wanted to share the details of why the videos aren’t playing on the site.