John: Gooooooood morning, Hank. It's Friday. Pizzamas rolls on. Only one week left to get all your Pizzamas stuff at pizzamas.com.

So, I have a couple friends who are professional athletes. In fact, I recently officiated the wedding of my friend Kylen Granson, who is currently a Philadelphia Eagle. And being in the NFL is obviously a lucrative career, but it's also a hard one on many levels, and it's usually quite brief.

The average American football professional career is between three and a half and 6 years, depending on how you calculate it. And I've heard it said for athletes that when it comes to retirement, the game tells you when you're done. I've always liked that line.

You get injured or you get slower and the game tells you you're done. Now listen, Hank, I do not labor under the delusion that a career in online video is exactly analogous to being a professional athlete although I am an extraordinary physical specimen. But YouTube careers also tend to be short.

I can't tell you how many YouTube friends I've had over the years who were able to make YouTube videos for a living and then eventually went on to do something else. Natalie Tran, for instance, my absolute favorite early YouTuber, is now the co-host of The Great Australian Bake Off. I have other friends who move behind the camera or onto careers that don't have anything to do with content creation. Because one way or another, the game just tells you when you're done.

People stop watching or you get burnt out, and you decide that feeding the content machine is no longer worth it, so you retire. Like I remember talking with MatPat and Steph about this when they retired from YouTube not long ago and they told me that I would know when I was done... But will I? Like, Hank, over nearly 19 years we've both gone through periods of burnout or feeling like making videos wasn't worth it but I've never felt like being in Nerdfighteria wasn't worth it and that's what's kind of carried me through those periods where frankly I didn't enjoy making videos that much. And also I do believe there's real value in, like, creative discipline.

And for most of my adult life, I have made a YouTube video every single Tuesday and that's kind of the organizing principle of my creative production. That said, Hank, I'm 48 years old, an absolutely impossible age.

I never imagined when we started making YouTube videos in our 20s that we would still be doing it in our late 40s because social media platforms didn't last that long, let alone careers on social media platforms. And honestly, I'm not sure I want to be doing this, at least not every Tuesday, when I'm 58 or 68. Like, I'm already a geriatric YouTuber, although the upper limit of YouTuber age does seem to go up one year every year as Rhett and Link and Hank and John age.

But honestly, I just don't see this as a career for old me. Like, I would like to retire someday, at least retire to just being a writer again. And I don't know when that day will come.

Maybe MatPat's right. Maybe I'll just know. But I don't know how to calculate it.

I don't think I want to retire now, although I do increasingly feel inclined toward taking a week off here or there. Now, Hank, you didn't even take any time off when you had cancer, so this may not be an issue for you, but I don't think Nerdfighteria is much weakened by the occasional week away from videos. But man, it is hard for me to imagine a world without Pizzamas or a world without the Project for Awesome.

But of course, that world will eventually exist. Nothing lasts forever, not even cold November rain. See, I'm so old that I just made a reference that none of you got.

Anyway, the main reason I want to keep making YouTube videos at this point is not to be in the public eye. I mean, the desire for public attention was beaten out of me a long time ago, but because I feel like this community still has awesome stuff that we can do together. And I still feel on some level like I can maybe help the people who are watching these videos, if only to feel less alone in an increasingly isolating world. But I'm curious what y'all think.

I know many of you will be disappointed when we finally call it a day here at VlogBrothers. But I also know that you'll go on doing amazing stuff together and that indeed many of the connections formed by this community will survive by many decades VlogBrothers itself. But is it something you think about and how do you think about it?

Like should we just trust that the game will tell us when we're done or should we be more intentional about it? Hank, there's one other thing to consider here which is that we started this channel all those years ago in the hopes of becoming closer to each other and in that we - we have definitely succeeded. And in addition to everything else, I really value having a project with you.

So maybe it'll slowly taper. Maybe we'll go from taking a few weeks off to eventually taking most weeks off. Maybe it'll be abrupt, but whenever it ends, I hope we'll still have projects together.

And I know that I'll have so much to look back on and so much gratitude for this placeless place. Hank, I'll see you on Monday.