Good morning, John.  As you know, we only make one vlogbrothers video a week each, and this presents a problem because it makes me feel bad every time I make a video that isn't totally epic.  Making a video that's just like, here's what's up with me this week, it feels like a waste of an opportunity to do something important with the platform that I have. Which has, I think over the years, kind of changed how people perceive the vlogbrothers channel.  

Like, if you look at how our videos have done over the last couple of months, you will see that the ones that are more like, explainy, well-researched, politics videos, those ones do a lot better than videos that are more like travel essay or just like, talk about things and thoughts that are more traditionally vlogbrothers-y, at least in my mind. This is super not a signal for like, what direction we should be going with the channel, because like, getting more views is definitely not a path to happiness and also not really a path to success.  

Things are good here on vlogbrothers.  We got a lot of stuff going on in our lives, we don't need views. Like, that's not what we're doing here.  But it's hard not to kind of take it as guidance, 'cause it's like, okay, people like this, we should make more of this. I say no! We should not!  We have to mix it up, because that's what makes this channel interesting not just for people watching, but also for me, but it's harder to mix it up when we have fewer opportunities to mix it up, because we only make one video a week, but we have to only make one video a week because lots of good reasons.

The primary reason being that this community has given us opportunities to do really important, wonderful things that we believe in. Like I wanna make Wizard School a really amazing game. I wanna make VidCon a really amazing conference. I wanna encourage a new generation of video creators, and SciShow and Crash Course have become huge and I want them to be bigger and better. But as SciShow and Crash Course are now, amazingly, bigger than vlogbrothers, both in views and subscribers, you might be tempted to think that SciShow and Crash Course have become more important in my life personally than vlogbrothers. Which is not even close to the case. This channel is still, by far to me, the most interesting thing that I have ever done, that I am currently doing, probably that I will ever do in my whole life. 

All of you who watch whether this is your first episode or you've seen them all, whether you're an occasional viewer or an every episode viewer, having a group of people that relies on me to always have a good idea every week and that I can't imagine ever letting down. You are such a vital part to the amazing life that I am having. I cannot imagine having done any of the amazing things that I have done in the last ten years without the obligation that I have to nerdfighteria, to this community. But, this channel has changed many times over the years, it will continue to change. As our profiles have been elevated for lots of different reasons it's felt less safe to be as open, and so we're more guarded now. That also might be a symptom of the YouTube platform maturing and of, like, us maturing. We're ten years older now. And because of that I feel a little less desire to be silly, like if you go watch older videos there's a lot more sillyness. 

And likewise, my music has been on the back burner for so long that lots of people don't know that I even write music or that I never would have without this channel. Luckily, I now have Snapchat for the more silly stuff, we've gone almost a year now with the Dear Hank and John podcast which is a great opportunity for more conversational, brotherly connections, and I still get to go on tour with The Perfect Strangers which we'll be doing in about a week which is one of my favorite things to do in the entire world. Just play music for nerds. 

Sometimes I'm sad things must change and I'm sad things cannot be the way I would want them to be in a perfect world, but I also love to see how things have changed over the years and I really can't wait to see where it's all headed. I hope that I never let you down nerdfighteria. I spend a lot of my time thinking about how to do the things you would want me to do, and I hope it's going okay.

John, I'll see you on Tuesday.

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If you wanna hear about some of the stuff that I'm up to personally that means I can't maybe make all the vlogbrothers videos I want to, but that I care about and that I think are really cool, I've put a video up on Hank's Channel where I talk about things that are going on right now. If you want to watch that, frankly, I would be honored.

That's all. Have a lovely day.