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  • Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday.

  • As this is my last Vlogbrothers video of the decade,

  • I wanted to share with you some of my favorite days of the 2010s,

  • although I am leaving out some personal stuff.

  • Like, the two best days of my decade and also of my life were the two days my kids were born,

  • but I'm not going to talk about that here, because you have to draw the privacy line somewhere

  • and that's where I draw it.

  • But other than that, my very favorite day of the decade was January 15th, 2013,

  • when you and I played a sold-out show at Carnegie Hall while wearing rented tuxedoes.

  • That Evening of Awesome included my favorite band the Mountain Goats

  • and Kimya Dawson and Neil Gaiman and so many friends,

  • and Sarah and Katherine and our parents were all with us.

  • And then at the end of the night, I found out my best friend Chris had flown in to surprise me,

  • and I cried with happiness and the whole thing was just magical!

  • Plus, Hank, I'll probably never again see you in a tuxedo so I am glad I took the opportunity when it came,

  • and the Mountain Goats played one of my favorite songs, “You Were Cool,” which includes the lyrics:

  • It's good to be young, but let's not kid ourselves

  • It's better to pass on through those years

  • and come out the other side

  • With our hearts still beating

  • Having stared down demons

  • Come back breathing

  • Next day, May 30th, 2016. The world's favorite fourth-tier English football team AFC Wimbledon,

  • who wear DFTBA on their shorts, play at Wembley Stadium in a playoff final

  • for the chance to become the world's favorite third-tier English football team.

  • Everything about that day was perfectfrom singing with AFC Wimbledon fans at a pub before the game

  • to being at Wembley with my dad and Rosianna and my friend Stuart

  • and Wimbly Womblies co-founder Meredith.

  • And then Montserratian international superstar Lyle Taylor scored to put AFC Wimbledon into the third tier,

  • and we partied all night with fans and friends and players and my dad, and it was just awesome!

  • A best day that wasn't videotaped: December 29th, 2016. I'd reached a point with Turtles All the Way Down

  • where I just wasn't sure if it was ever going to be a worthwhile or useful thing,

  • and I was staying alone at a small cabin in Michigan with nothing but a loaf of bread,

  • some peanut butter, and an obscene quantity of Diet Dr Pepper.

  • I'd been awake all night the night before, and I just couldn't find my way through

  • to a better ending for the novel, and so finally in desperation, I called Sarah

  • and I was crying and she was like,

  • It sounds like you just need to do a time jump.”

  • And then I hung up and wrote the last fifteen page of Turtles All the Way Down all in one go,

  • and it was roaringly, wondrously joyful to finally see a way through

  • both for Aza and for me.

  • So thank you, Sarah.

  • Okay, my final best day: Hank, for so long, you have supported my writing

  • like in 2008 when Paper Towns came out, you and Katherine drove around the country with me

  • in a rented minivan and played libraries and bookstores and anyone else who would have us.

  • And you were always theresinging your guts out every time, transforming yourself into a Turtle Professor

  • or a Sock Puppet to make those readings something more than readings,

  • to turn them into events that would matter to people.

  • And then on September 25th, 2018, your brilliant first novel An Absolutely Remarkable Thing was published,

  • and I finally got to support you a little bit at the launch event at Town Hall in New York City.

  • To see you surrounded by copies of your book was one of the great joys of my life.

  • So I hope you'll share some of your best memories of the decade in the comments section below.

  • I kind of need that positivity, and I feel like the rest of the world might, too.

  • But for me, while those are some of the days that stand out,

  • a lot of my favorite moments in the decade were little moments.

  • Going to a Joan Mitchell show with Sarah.

  • Rosianna and I sprawled out across a lounge at VidCon, exhausted and exhilarated.

  • Hank and I eating hamburgers in the hot Southern California day.

  • Seeing the Pettibon spiral for the first time and being stopped dead by it.

  • My mom showing me her painting of the La-Z-Boy where I've written all my books.

  • Filming Crash Course with Stan, wasting card space

  • because we couldn't stop laughing at each other's jokes.

  • It's good to be young, but let's not kid ourselves: here's to the next ten years.

  • Hank, I'll see you on Friday.

Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday.

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