Good morning, John.

I've been keeping a secret from everyone and I'm going to tell you about it today. So going through chemotherapy, unsurprisingly, worst thing that's ever happened to my body. I don't really know how to talk about chemotherapy except that it sucks, like, immediately and then like gets a little better but then always gets a little bit worse with, like, moments of it getting--it's like the Star Wars prequels. Like, you think maybe it's starting to make a little bit of sense and then it'll be like, "I don't like sand. It's coarse, rough, and irritating." I'm sorry if you hate the prequels. Look, I'm an old guy!

One of the things that chemo does to you is it makes it very hard to think because your body's all messed up. I don't know why. But it's not like you can't think, you just have to think in very specific ways. Like, I couldn't watch a movie but I could watch Seinfeld. I couldn't write fiction at all, but I could write non-fiction. I think everybody who does chemo gets extremely good at at least one mobile game, like, I was infinite on Marvel Snap, which you don't know what that means or maybe you do in which case, I that--I did that. This isn't a cancer thing, but I feel generally much better if I feel like I can create things. And it was very hard to make stuff while doing cancer treatment because your body feels bad, your brain feels bad, they're not working together very well, but I discovered something that I could do. I could design socks. There was something about it that was just, like, the right kind of task for me. It was just like one step at a time, one shape at a time, one line at a time. You can step away from it and come back. You can do it over a long period of time. You can fall asleep while you're doing it, wake back up, start doing it again.

And as I was doing it, with my brain locked in this particular situation, I got really obsessed with three different things. First, I wanted more socks that were just patterns. Weird patterns, fun patterns, interesting patterns, but just patterns. Second, I wanted every pair of socks to use the exact same color palette so that if they ever became real, I could mix and match. If I couldn't find a pair in that moment, I could just pair up two unmatching socks but they would still match, and maybe I could have a little fun with that. And three, I was very taken with the idea that these socks could help other people feel as bad as I was feeling in that moment right then, which is a weird way of saying, uh, while I was going through cancer treatment, I was pretty obsessed with the reality that I was extremely lucky. Like, I was lucky to live at a time and in a place where the treatment for my disease was available and I was probably going to be okay. Hodgkin lymphoma is a curable cancer. If you get it and get treatment, you have almost a 90% chance of dying of some other thing when you're old. And these treatments are old and they're not that expensive, but they are hard to get to different places.

John, a couple of weeks ago, you made a video about a kid in Sierra Leone who spent years waiting to be diagnosed with Hodgkin's and then more years before he was able to get the good chemo at a hospital in Rwanda. A journey of over 4,000 miles. It just shouldn't be that way and there are people who are working really hard to have it not be that way, and so 100% of the profit from these socks is going to go towards making cancer treatment more available to more people in this world. Part of the money will be going to the very hospital in Rwanda that Mondeh was treated at. And now, I would like to show them to you. My cancer socks come in two flavors: There's Morning and Evening. And can I tell you exactly why I feel like one of them has the vibe of the morning and one the vibe of the evening? Not really. But these ones that you've seen so far are morning and these ones that you're looking at now, these are the evening socks. They come in three different sizes. That's more than the Awesome Socks sizes, so if you have like little feet, that will be more satisfying. I'm sorry to all the people who haven't been Awesome Sock subscribers 'cause your feet are too little.

At the product page, you can click on the style that you want: Morning, Evening, or All Eight, and you can click on the size. They're comfy and they're cozy, they're stylish. I hid a pelican on every one of them. They're all designed by Hank Green, and I don't wanna brag, but this is an excellent gift for anyone, for any reason. Cool socks designed by a weird guy on the Internet who is going through cancer treatment and all the money goes to make cancer treatment more equitable. What else could you ask for? They're available at good.store or there's a link in the description or you can just google Hank's Cancer Socks.

John, I'll see you on Tuesday. And John, yes, the rumors are true. If you order early, there is a chance that I will put one of my prize collection of antique Garfields in your cancer socks box. There's even a very small chance that you will get an Odie.