It has been a while since I've seen you around these parts, I hope all is well and you're taking good care of yourself!
Hi there! I appreciate you reaching out, @should-be-sleeping!
To tl;dr it: Things are going well, and I’m doing a mostly good job taking mostly good care of myself.
Maybe the best way to structure the longer version of my response is to explain why you haven’t seen me around these parts.
In the years since I was really active here and regularly created on YouTube, I’ve consciously stepped back from the social internet. This is partly because I now work at a famous public company and fear that things I post could be misconstrued (innocently or maliciously), or otherwise taken as representing company policy or philosophy or etc.
Additionally, my personal life has changed in ways that have been ultimately profoundly positive, but were, in process, tectonic and traumatic: Two years ago, I left my marriage to a woman I’d been with for literally half my life. Because it was so painful for us, it felt somehow disrespectful to post anything — as if in doing so, I was acknowledging or even gloating about my ability to move on. (I don’t know if this was “right,” but there it is.) Even if I were to someday become more engaged online, I’ll keep my personal life — to the degree it involves other people, anyway — private.
One last thing: I just didn’t know what to post. I felt — and continue to feel, mostly — kind of bewildered about why I would even do so. Like, I’m not saying this is correct (and please know I’m not fishing for compliments), but it is my belief that in a world of essentially infinite content choices, I cannot necessarily offer anything of unique value. And if that’s true, it just seems wiser to not expend energy merely contributing to the noise.
Put another way, I kind of informally committed that I wouldn’t be a regular Internet Person until and unless I could figure out a way to make A Something that was 1) unique enough to feel undeniable and 2) be worth the inevitable hardship of creation.
Part of me wants to end this post by hinting that I’m working on A Something that fits that description. I’ve thought that before, though, and felt disappointed in myself when it didn’t come together. And honestly, if it never happens, that’s okay! In the best possible way, I don’t really care.
So that’s how I’ll end this post instead: by saying that although my life looks very different from the one I presented years ago, and looks virtually nothing like what I’d imagined back then, I’m actually very happy and content. I hope y’all are, too.