Good morning Hank, it's Tuesday.

I still have a mustache because of a Project for Awesome promise and my voice is a little bit hoarse. Sorry about that, but greetings from my basement where the confetti is vast and the exhaustion is profound. You know what? Let's just go on a walk.

As I'm filming this, we've just ended the livestream of the 2021 Project for Awesome, which has so far raised over $2 million for charity. By almost any metric, this has been the most successful P4A in the project's 15 year history and I am so, so grateful to everyone who participated. Not just by donating, but also by making P4A videos and voting for charities and the endless brilliant jokes and memes shared in chat.

A huge group of volunteers work on the P4A to make it run, but we also count on the volunteer efforts of everybody who's watching, whether its reminding each other to stay hydrated or developing perk ideas related to Hank's bean Furby-- which, I guess, is now known as "Beanie Sandfurbs".

I should add that when this video is uploaded the P4A fundraiser will still be live; it goes on until midnight Eastern time [on] Tuesday so if you wanna pick up any last second perks, now is the time.

The digital download bundle-- available for a $60 donation-- is always the best deal of the P4A as it comes with all kinds of digital gifts that will arrive throughout the year, but you can also get everything from the P4A t-shirt to the commemorative coin with which to celebrate these strange and lovely 48 hours.

Hank, CrashCourse co-founder Stan Muller has said to me that when you're living in the middle of history, you never know exactly what it means. And living in this strange and extremely difficult time, I don't know what it means. I don't know how we will look back on this or, for that matter, when we will look back on it. This is the first time in my life when you can say "It" and have most everyone know exactly what you're referring to. "It" is hard, "It" is a grind, "It" is isolating and exhausting.

"It" is also, of course, temporary. When I said recently to my therapist that I felt like we were never gonna get out of this, she said "Well, but remember that everything else has ended", which is the kind of hope that I can go in for; the kind that isn't BS or Pollyanna-ish, but is real and verifiable. Everything else ends, so will this. 

I say in an episode of the Anthropocene Reviewed that the light-soaked days are coming. And I really believe that. It is February. There is snow on the ground. The trees look dead. But they aren't dead. 

E.E. Cummings wrote that "spring comes carefully out of nowhere". And it always does. How can something that happens every year be a surprise? But it is. 

For me, the great joy of the Project for Awesome this weekend wasn't that we blew past even our most ambitious fundraising goals, or that Hank's bean Furby became a celebrity. The great joy was being reminded that even amid "It", light-soaked days are possible. Or even if not entire days, then little moments. Little moments when we make it easier for each other. Or even wonder-filled.

This weekend I laughed and I cried, and, most of all, I felt connected to people again. I was reminded that humans are really good at being together and working together, collaborating across time and space to make and do things that none of us could do alone. This weekend reminded me of that; that we are together even when we can't be.

So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Hank, I'll see you on Friday.