I'm trying to leave more of my calendar open for the spontaneous things. A lot of fun stuff that happened in previous years were things that were like, 'Hey are you available next week?' I wasn't really open unless it was planned months in advance. I'm excited to play it by ear and let a lot of stuff happen as it happens.
In 2016, one of the things I really hope to do is discover new talent and help develop it. Take what I've learned and what I can do and help amplify those voices.
I hope to introduce my audience to who I think is the next class of YouTuber.
I knew I could make a living doing my own videos instead of making them for someone else.
In my new book, 'Binge,' I share essays about everything I've never told my viewers - touching on the best and worst days of my life, some hilarious, some embarrassing, but all extremely personal.
In elementary school, I loved the 'Bailey School Kids' series. It was about a group of classmates who would speculate whether adults in their lives were supernatural beings. I read literally every single book in the series.
There's something about YouTube, where you're not being anybody but yourself. You have the opportunity to start as yourself from the very beginning. From the very first video, you choose what you say, and you choose what's right and wrong for your presentation of yourself.
There's no Hollywood tradition of maybe not telling people that you're gay to protect your future ambitions. The YouTube world is a little unprecedented. I think what people are seeing is that the more true to yourself you are, the more an audience will connect with you.
A lot of YouTubers get that mainstream celebrity, they get these big deals, maybe a book deal or a TV deal or whatever it is they aspired to do, and they kind of abandon ship on what got them to that point.
I'm essentially working from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. It's my biggest hobby but also my favorite career that I could ever have. Every single platform is important.
A lot of the education that I got at Michigan State I still use to this very day.
All the money that's donated to the Trevor Project provides resources that directly affect the youth that actually watch my videos. It's a cool thing to see them basically provide resources for each other.
I think a lot of what I wanted to do in 2014 was build a repertoire or a portfolio for what I can do with traditional celebrities or with brands or whatever. Maybe 2015 is the year I start reaching out to people I always dreamed to do stuff with.
I definitely have aspirations outside of YouTube, but I think there's a lot of people on YouTube who want to leave YouTube. I don't want to leave; I love it.
You don't go to your 9 to 5 and share every story with your coworkers, and in the same way, not every YouTuber shares every story with their audience.
In creating my YouTube videos, I don't want to speak for my audience and the people I represent; I want to amplify their voices.
The moment I realised anyone could be watching - and this is going to sound so name-droppy - was when Ricky Martin reached out to me on Coming Out Day 2012. The Internet has this massive potential, and you can never know the effect you might have on others by just being yourself.
I spend all day replying to tweets and reblogging posts and sharing fan art. I think it's the most important thing I can possibly do, to stay involved in the community as a part of the community, not ahead of the community. I'm very much the same level of them in it.
