Good morning, Hank.

It's Saturday, August 3. It's Esther Day, which seems like a fitting reason to return to YouTube.

I have taken my longest break in eleven years. I'm feeling much better. Thank you for all your kind messages.

More on that on Tuesday. But today it's Esther Day. Happy Esther Day. I missed you.

It's good to see you. Anything weird happen while I was gone? But anyway, it's Esther Day. So back in 2010, our community came together to create a holiday on the birthday of Nerdfighter Esther Earl.

Esther was dying of cancer, and we asked her what kind of holiday she would want us to celebrate in her honor. And she said she would like a holiday where we celebrate love, especially the kinds of non-romantic love that often, you know, don't get included in our conversations about love. And so if you have a moment today, I hope that you will take it to tell someone that you love them in honor of Esther. Hank, I love you.

Traditionally, we've only said this on Esther Day for fear of being, like, too cloying or sentimental. Also, there's just something hard about saying I love you. But since you got cancer, it's become a little bit easier. We're just more focused on it and more aware that, you know, this is silly - not to tell people you love that you love them.

I'm just extremely grateful to be your brother. I have many jobs, and I like them all, but my best job is being Hank Green's brother. I just - I love you, to the moon and back.

Also, thank you for encouraging me to take some time off, which has been so helpful and also so productive. Even though I wasn't primarily in the business of trying to produce stuff for public consumption. I really took this month to reflect on, like, what I want out of life and why I've been so misaligned in the way that I've actually been living it, and also how to make the long term changes I probably need to make in order to be, like, happy and functional. But the most important thing I've learned this month, and the thing I really need to hold on to, is that I deserve to be happy and functional. And so do you.

So, Hank, there's a wise man who once told me, you will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful. Whoever wrote that should really take those words to heart.

Anyway, happy Esther Day. I desperately wish Esther were here with us. She would be 30 years old, Hank. She would be a grown up.

Her Nerdfighter friends are grown ups. I'm so proud of them, by the way, and all the people who've allowed us to be part of their growing up. How cool is it that all those people are in adulthood now and discovering that adulthood is not some, like, destination where everything ends, but instead an opportunity for more growing. Oh, right.

Speaking of Esther's friends, Esther’s friends and family will be celebrating her tonight and celebrating Esther Day tonight, eastern time. I'll put a link in the doobly-doo, but I'll be there. WheezyWaiter will be there. Fluga will be there.

It'll be great. We'll celebrate Esther, and we'll also talk about This Star Won’t Go Out, the amazing charity that Esther's family founded in her memory that provides financial support to kids with cancer and their families. So, Hank, one thing I've been reminded of in this last month is the importance of community. And I'm really grateful that Nerdfighteria could be an important community for Esther and that it's been an important community for so many people. What a blessing that amid the messy and at times dispiriting Internet, like, this happened. Nerdfighteria happened.

And I'd like to take credit for that. I really would. But genuinely, Nerdfighteria is something that is made up all the time by the people who are part of it and by the people who have been part of it, like Esther. So, Esther, thank you for that, and thank you for giving us this wonderful day to celebrate the kinds of love too often neglected by our social order.

I love ya. And, Hank, I love you, too. I'll be texting and calling lots of people to let them know that I love them today and how grateful I am, now more than ever, to be interwoven into humanity. Hank, I'll see you.

No - you will see me on Tuesday.