Creator & Life
creator · work · life in La Réunion
It is easy to tell the story of building something online afterwards, once the channel has grown and the business works. What would it look like instead to write the story while it is still happening, untidy parts included?
That is what this section of My Daily Journal is for. It is where I document the messier, more personal side of building something online while navigating life in La Réunion.
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What this section covers
I share updates on growing my YouTube channel, Treasure Hunters Digital (its handle is @Light_Camera_Story), thoughts on the creator economy, the realities of teaching and creating at the same time, and honest reflections on what it means to build a digital presence with ADHD, bipolar I disorder and Complex PTSD.
It is not a polished brand story. It is the journal of someone doing the work and writing about it while it happens.
- YouTube growth: what I am learning about video, thumbnails and building an audience.
- Creator business: the financial and operational realities of independent work.
- Personal stories: things that happen that do not fit anywhere else.
- Life updates: La Réunion, family, the mundane and the surprising.
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| do the work |
| channel, teaching, business |
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| write it down |
| while it is still happening |
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| publish it here |
| no schedule, just honesty |
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back to the work
Why write it while it happens
There is a research tradition behind the habit of putting experience into words. In a review in Psychological Science, the psychologist James Pennebaker summarised a decade of studies in which people who wrote about emotional experiences went on to show improvements in physical and mental health, and he set out the limits of those findings as well (Pennebaker, 1997). Those studies mostly concerned private writing, so they do not show that a public journal is a treatment. They do suggest that putting experience into words can matter for more than record-keeping.
The conditions I write with are also clinically defined rather than figures of speech. The US National Institute of Mental Health describes bipolar disorder as a mental illness that causes clear shifts in mood, energy, activity levels and concentration (NIMH: bipolar disorder). Complex PTSD is also a diagnosis in the World Health Organization’s ICD-11, separate from PTSD; it adds severe and persistent problems with regulating emotions, beliefs about oneself as diminished, defeated or worthless, and difficulty in sustaining relationships (US National Center for PTSD: Complex PTSD).
I write about those conditions in more depth elsewhere: My Mental Health Journey, Bipolar I at Work, Four Anchors: ADHD Stability Routines and On Starting Over: What Complex PTSD Taught Me About Resilience.
What is published so far
Posts in this section will appear as I write them. No schedule. Just honesty. These are the ones you can read today:
- How to Create Your Micro-Entreprise as an Independent English Teacher in France (Step-by-Step Guide 2026)
- Comment créer sa micro-entreprise de prof d’anglais indépendant en France (the same guide in French)
Related writing on independent work: Teaching English From the Edge of the Map, Building My Own Job Lead Automation System and What Bipolar Taught Me That Every Productivity Guru Got Wrong. All of my career pieces are collected under Career and Professional Development.
The takeaway: this section is a working record, not a finished success story. It follows the channel, the business and everyday life in La Réunion as they happen, and it treats ADHD, bipolar I disorder and Complex PTSD as part of that work rather than something to hide.
More from the journal: My Daily Journal · Europe Travel · Photography and Software · Books and Ideas · About Me