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I've Not Been Doing Well

2025-09-26 · letter vlog · Hank · 8:11 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Personal life (also: US politics & society, Nerdfighteria) · mode: Personal update · tags: heavy topic, self promotion

Hank tells John he has not been doing well: years of treating himself as a tool have made him more effective but less happy; months of stress, fear, exhaustion and aches sent him for tests that show he is still in remission; and he looks forward to Pizzamas as a chance to simply enjoy being a vlog brother.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Nineteen years of internet life and Hank's growing sense of himself as a tool

  • ★★ Hank says that over 19 years of changing internet life, one constant has been that every year he feels more like a tool he needs to use. — 00:00:00

00:00:25 — Hank's upcoming Hank's Channel video on a misleading HHS press-release sentence about autism diagnoses

  • ★★ Hank says that tomorrow he will post a Hank's Channel video about one bizarre, manipulative paragraph from an April HHS press release. — 00:00:25 · hankschannel
  • ★★ Hank says the HHS sentence argues that expanded diagnostic criteria for autism have nothing to do with the increase in autism diagnoses. — 00:00:25
  • ★★ Hank finds the claim baffling, since it goes against common sense and research, and fascinating, because he enjoyed working out how the data were manipulated. — 00:00:25
  • ★★★ Hank finds it horrifying that Americans' tax dollars are now being spent to intentionally mislead and misinform the American people. — 00:00:59 · United States
  • ★★ Hank says he felt incapable of not making the video: once he spotted the oddity he had to see it through, frustrating as he has other things to do. — 00:00:59

00:01:29 — Power and responsibility, Spider-Man, the lesson from his first novel that others solve problems too, tool versus happiness

  • ★★ Hank says the world is full of such things and he feels bad that he cannot do more, since everything he wants to do competes. — 00:01:29
  • ★★★ Hank says John and Katherine are great at advising him, but he feels he has a lot of power, and with that power comes great responsibility. — 00:01:29 · John Green, Katherine Green
  • ★ Hank jokes that no one shows Spider-Man weeping in therapy over sharing the load; maybe he likes being the only one, though a multiverse of Spider-Men might solve it. (playful) — 00:01:29
  • ★★ Hank says one of the most important moments of his first novel for him, rarely noticed, is Maya correcting April: a problem will not solve itself but be solved by other people. — 00:01:58 · An Absolutely Remarkable Thing
  • ★★★ Hank says he struggles to remember that problems are solved by people everywhere all the time, that he is not the only one, and that their work matters as much as his. — 00:02:27
  • ★★★ Hank says the more he imagines himself as a tool, the more he accomplishes and the more impact he makes, but the less happy he is. — 00:02:27

00:03:06 — Months of stress, fear and physical symptoms; cancer tests show he is still in remission; possible causes and the internet

  • ★★★ Hank says that for the last couple of months he has been feeling bad: stress, worry and probably fear. — 00:03:06
  • ★★ Hank fears for people he loves who he thinks are less safe in their country than before, and fears losing things he believes in and is proud of about America. — 00:03:06 · United States
  • ★★ Hank says closer-in fears come from stewarding what he has built: making it sustainable without him while also fuelling it himself. — 00:03:36
  • ★★★ Hank says he has also had a lot of exhaustion, lack of motivation, physical aches and pains, and headaches, though he is not a headache guy. — 00:03:36
  • ★★ Hank says he wanted to ignore it and not talk publicly before it was resolved, because everyone would freak out about cancer. — 00:03:36 · cancer
  • ★★★ Following his oncologist's advice to come in if anything feels weird, Hank had tests and blood work and was relieved to find he is still normal and in remission. — 00:04:25 · cancer
  • ★★ Hank says one of the risk factors for relapse is stress, which he finds hard to avoid right now. — 00:04:25 · cancer
  • ★★ Hank says waiting for test results over the last week was not relaxing, and at such times he is grateful for work and research rabbit holes. — 00:04:54
  • ★★ Hank says he loves his work and sometimes cannot believe he has such a cool job. — 00:04:54
  • ★★ Hank says sometimes work is stress on the stress, arriving out of nowhere from public-figure or behind-the-scenes matters, often with no way to fix it. — 00:05:24
  • ★★ Hank says that since cancer is not responsible for how he feels, it is something else, and he feels he has been improving. — 00:05:46 · cancer
  • ★★ Hank says it might be a more significant manifestation of anxiety than he has had before, or his body changing as he ages. (hedged) — 00:05:46
  • ★★ Hank has wondered whether he has a delayed bout of long COVID; many of his symptoms overlap with post-viral syndrome. (hedged) — 00:05:46
  • ★ Hank jokes that he is made of trillions of tiny balls coordinating by chemical and electrical signals, so he shouldn't be surprised if he feels off. (playful) — 00:06:16
  • ★★★ Hank says the internet, the place where he lives, appears on balance to have been a bad idea, though there are obviously good parts. (hedged) — 00:06:16

00:06:45 — Pizzamas as work nostalgia, a plan to drop social media and enjoy being a vlog brother; sign-off

  • ★★ Hank tells John that Pizzamas need not be delayed for his rest: he is really looking forward to it. — 00:06:45 · Pizzamas, John Green

  • ★★★ Hank calls Pizzamas the weirdest vacation, work nostalgia: a simpler era of work when he can clear his schedule and be 2007 Hank. — 00:06:45 · Pizzamas, Vlogbrothers

    “It's work nostalgia.”

  • ★★ Hank has the idea, just now, of deleting other social media from his phone for the two weeks of Pizzamas. (hedged) — 00:07:14 · social media, Pizzamas

  • ★★ Hank says much of his stress is the fire hose of misery he must sometimes engage with, so he needs to do things he enjoys: if he doesn't, he forgets how. — 00:07:14
  • ★★ Hank says that for the next couple of weeks he will just try to enjoy being a vlog brother. — 00:07:43 · Vlogbrothers

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says this is the last chance to sign up for Hank's Tea Experience. — video description

Threads in this video

Where the stories that moved here went next

Mentioned

Central: Pizzamas · psychological stress

Also: People: Katherine Green

Projects: hankschannel

Works: An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Organizations: United States Department of Health and Human Services

Concepts: anxiety disorder · Autism · cancer · Happiness · Long COVID · Multiverse · remission · social media

Places: United States

Characters: April May · Maya · Spider-Man

Only in the description or credits: Hank's Tea Experience

Also centred on psychological stress: Raw Onion, Twerking, and Speech Jam · Stress and Joy · Let's Talk About Stress! · Finding Respite in 2018 · Doing This Makes Me Happy, but Maybe it Doesn't' Seem that Way? · I feel like I can't talk about this…

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