Draw my Life

Okay! So I am probably literally the last person on YouTube to do this, but when I asked you guys, what you want to me to make, this was the most requested thing, so here we are. Before I begin, I’d just like to make the point that I can’t draw for shit. So this is just going to be horrible.

Hi, I am Dan Howell and this is my story. In the beginning whoa not that early, so I was born in South West England in Berkshire, the Royal County in a kind of crappy house with mom and dad. I had quite young parents, which was actually kind of cool, as my mom graduated in philosophy and my dad was a DJ/special effects guy for films who used to sneak me into movie sets, which was pretty cool.

We had a dog, which they got just as I was born, which used to run into me as baby and tear up the furniture. I was apparently the happiest child of all time, who never stopped smiling, or laughing, or bringing joy to others so basically I was the freaking son from the Teletubbies. I was brought up watching too much Winnie-the-Pooh, which is why I have my posh-but-not-kia articulate voice.

See my life is always sunshine and flowers until dun, dun, dun preschool. I suddenly encountered the first negativity in my entire life, when I meet other children. But it’s okay, because the guy the pushed me over on my first day, was obsessed with this girl who kissed me in the playground, and said, she wanted to marry me, and he cried, so well too bad.

I’ve memories of my dog finding a huge bone in the woods and me freaking out and doing a lot of travelling with my parents, which was amazing. But hey, who needs that, when you have a PlayStation 1, yes, Soccer universe, Crash Bandicoot and Final Fantasy characters could be my role models. From the age of five, I supposedly expressed an interest in acting when I was cast in the lead role of Santa in the schools obviously satanic Christmas play.

You know, I was one of those guys who have actually joined the Theatre club when I was about eight, so my parents decided to send me to a musical Theatre school on Sunday as much to the horror of my Christian grandma.

I went to my first Proper-Date with a girl to the cinema who was scared by the movie, we watched and cried for two hours before being picked up by her parents. Smooth moves Dan, my mom then popped out a little brother and before I knew it, it was time to go to secondary school.

So hey this is the part of video where the music stops and it gets really sad, and I explained that sometimes it wasn’t that great, because the place was full of giant dick heads. Now if my utterly, friendly and joyful personality didn’t help me out in preschool, it definitely didn’t help me out here, as for some reason being nice was clearly a bad thing, that needed to be punished. The thing was, I never retaliated to anything, which when I look back, I thought, man I was just threw my shoe at that guy or made classy or mom joke, but now I realized all these kids probably had shitty things happening in their life and I was kind of being the bigger person.

[Say I] had the joys of being a teenager, school, homework, family drama, friend drama, dog dies, Hormon’s and fun, fun, fun. But guess what everybody had to deal with that kind of stuff and like everyone says, it gets better, you just need to survive and one day you will be where I am seeing that the whole unemployed burger flippers undone friending them on Facebook, out of pity.

I did have a few good friends and a couple of inspirational teachers and all that coupled with good video games, equals a lot of procrastination. Oh, I was so lame back then, I remember seeing pictures of Emo Guys on Myspace, and being like wow, they looks so cool. Yeah, I am totes emo now. Oh, just give me a moment to cringe and be filled with regret. Thankfully, I got over that and had the piano and my nerdy obsession with acting to keep me occupied, as I was in load of productions in a nearby theatre, for Romeo and Juliet and Miss Missouri and fame and blah, blah, blah.

But then when I was 17, I kind of changed my mind, I don’t know why these kids who are mildly cooler than the nerds I lunch with rule, hey Dan you should come down eat us side with us in the woods at 10 pm. And this little voice in my head said,

Dan you’ll never actually be an actor you know that right.

So I went yeah probs. Okay, then and ditched everything. I had a lot of fun and sometimes incredibly embarrassing moments with these guys including going to winning festival four years in a row and the time we went to a surfing holiday where I actually pulled the string of a girl’s bikini on a beach and felt so bad about it, I cried.

I actually had a girl friend for over three years, which was cool, but that’s not really the period in your life where you need commitments, we inevitably broke it off, because it was time for university. Yep, suddenly out of no where bam, hey Dan childhood over.

So what are you doing with your life?

Oh, well I wasn’t doing any other acting crap, so I thought, as I have no idea what I want to do with my life, I’ll go to university for a few years. I got quite good grades so I thought what degree will make me look clever and employable.

Law! So I took a gap here that I spent getting fired for selling access to 10 years old and playing a lot of Xbox and this is when I started goofing around on YouTube. I have been watching things on this website since the beginning, like you guys I watched YouTube, for years, people like Shane Dawson, Charlie McDonnell, Community Channel and after being persuaded be by some friends I decided to start making my own YouTube videos.

Then before I knew I was at the University of Manchester. Traditionally an English University as you spend most of your first year not doing any work and drinking until you’re violently ill, which is exactly what I did. But I had some incredibly fun times with the friends I made, so I was very glad to have had pretty much the perfect first year experience. I then decided for the next year to move into an apartment with my Internet friend Phil, as we both needed someone to live with, and we knew by then that we both like the same TV shows and food, which is literally all you need in a friend, but it was also cool because we both did YouTube.

Then out of nowhere came the Existential Crisis, I don’t know where it came from, but one day, I was just studying for an exam and just freaked out I was like. I hate Law this is so boring and awful, and I don’t want it to be my life, so what do I want to be my life, it’s too late to go back and make other choices, oh God. So I took a year out for you need to basically roll around on the floor pondering about the universe for 10 hours a day, and go to a bunch of YouTube events. I called this my Internet Hobo year then luckily in the summer someone from BBC Radio 1 called our house and was like hey, you and your friend Phil are cool, want to do weird video show in Christmas and we were like, hells yeah, so I took the plunge with my mothers blessing and decided to go for it.

I dropped out to pursue this radio thing and actually start trying with YouTube thing I do. So me and Phil decided to move to London where it was all happening and for the first time I’ve really started putting effort into my YouTube Channel, and it started to pick up steam. This is when people from the radio will like, want an official weekly radio show and we were like wholly crap. Okay, so as of 2013 me and my friend Phil have a show on BBC Radio 1, every Sunday which goes out to the entire world, which is crazy, but we think our show is awesome and we are loving it.

Then soon after my YouTube channel have 1 million subscribers, which is something in my three years of YouTube after having watched and idolized other YouTubers for most the third of my life, I never thought would ever, ever, ever happened. And I was basically ASDFG…

So I am now happier than I’ve ever been because I finally feel like I mean in control of my life and I’ve grown enough and have the confidence to be the person I want to be. I literally hated life from ages of five to twenty. But now I feel like the people I meet are finally treating me in the way I’ve been treating others my whole life – back to teletubbies son.

And now I am spending my days telling stories and opinions on the Internet, like a philosopher who could be great, but just turns his brain too much by sitting on Twitter all day. It’s weird that I am doing something that I didn’t even knew exited when I was kid, but I love doing it. And that’s what’s important no regrets, if I ended this video by saying, oh, be yourself, follow your dreams and probably be so cheesy, you’d throw up, but seriously. My only regrets are that moment when I doubted myself and took the safe route and all the time I wasted trying to please other people.

As I’ve said before on YouTube life is too short to waste anytime being unhappy. Don’t care what other people think, you decide who you want to be, and do what you want with your life. I wish I had someone to tell me these things. So no matter who you are or how old you’re, I hope you’re listening. Okay, I honestly have no idea what my future holds, but it kind of look exciting, so when you on this interested I look forward to you coming on this journey with me and learning more about the world as I do.

I am Dan Howell and that’s kind of my life so far. The end.

It’s the sexy stickman dance – this is just looks utterly awful, but well – please hit the like button if you have enjoyed this video, and you can click here to subscribe to my channel, if you want to see more of my videos. Thanks. And seriously look at my hand, you see that, that’s what it’s like to be left handed all the time. Can you imagine writing essays with that, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you want to be me, no, I don’t think so…