 Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. I have to tell you about a profound mortification I recently experienced, but first, it's time to manifest second shot in arm. Let's go get vaccinated. I changed into a short-sleeve shirt so they can have easy access to that arm. Sarah's driving because I'm too nervous. Sarah, how you feeling about getting vaccinated? Fantastic. Yeah, I'm definitely very excited, but also the excited parts of my brain are, like, very close to the nervous parts of my brain. I'm not sure if that's true literally, but it's definitely true figuratively, so mostly I just feel a lot. Right, so I have this friend Craig, who is a great guy, he's a teacher, and like me, he's also a big soccer fan, and so we text a lot about his team Watford and also about AFC Wimbledon's perpetual proximity to relegation. Hold on, I gotta pause the story to get the vaccine. We did it! We are double vaccinated! Now I'm gonna go home and put back on my vlogbrothers outfit. There are two other things you need to know for this story to make sense. One is that I have never in my life spoken to my watch, but my watch nonetheless frequently believes I am speaking to it, which is annoying, but also I don't know how to make it stop because, hey, can I turn you off, please? Watch. Yeah, it's just not able to help me. And lastly, I've been fortunate to have lots of cognitive behavioral therapy to help me deal with my mental illness problems, and one of the techniques I've learned and use all the time is called positive self-talk. This is where you like talk to yourself in an encouraging way, and I use positive self-talk many times every day to reduce stress and to break cycles of self-loathing and despair. Sometimes when doing this I refer to myself as you, other times as we. Like, for instance, if I lock my keys in the car, say, I'll get really angry and frustrated and then I'll take a deep breath and I'll say, okay, we need to transition to a solutions mindset. We need to stop ruminating on what happened, and we need to start focusing on what is going to happen. Or if I'm feeling frustrated and afraid about something, I'll say, you can do this. You've done hard things before. One thing about positive self-talk, you'll notice from both these examples, is that it tends to be aggressively cheesy, but whatever. I only say it out loud when I am thoroughly alone, and it works. It works to treat myself like a team I am rooting for. Right, so last Tuesday I was behind on everything and everything was taking longer than expected, and I had to make my vlogbrothers video, but I didn't have much time because I had to pick the kids up from school, and also I've been struggling with fairly severe anxiety for the last, like, eight to ten weeks. So I did some positive self-talk to calm myself down, and then I shot the video, and then while I was editing it, I got a text from Craig, and the text was like, I know exactly what this is, and I think it's wonderful, and I'm proud of you, and you're right. You can do it. And I was like, well, that's a bit of a weird text to receive, but whatever. I gotta edit this video. I'm super stressed out, so I finished editing it, and then while I was uploading it, that's when I actually checked the text chain and realized that my watch had texted Craig a transcript of my positive self-talk. The text in question read in its entirety, okay, okay, you can still get this done. Just get in the right frame of mind. Let's take a breath. Okay, you've got this. You know how to make a video. You can do it. There's still plenty of time. You've got this. Yeah, yeah, okay, you can do this. Good morning, Hank. It's Tuesday. I hate this thing. So what's the moral of the story? Get vaccinated as soon as you can, but also, one, don't be afraid to use as much positive self-talk as you need. Two, get friends like Craig who will love and embrace you even when your watch reveals your mortifying self-talk. And three, like it says on my 2021 vision board, you've got this. Whatever it is, you can get it done. Hank, I'll see you on Friday.