Channel Update: i'm retiring. It's over.

Goodbye

Author/Casey Neistat

Well. That's it. I want to thank you for having followed me on this journey. It was a good run.

And it is now time to move on to the next portion of our channel, the next act of our life really, and that is retiring.

Hopefully, if you've been following my work you're rich from your crypto gains, are up to date on your Carl Jung and Dostoevsky, and know that Bush did 9/11.

I alluded to this major shift a few months back in an article titled "The Age of Making Money is Over. Middle-class is Disappearing."

Making money is no longer cool.

When we first started this blog it was jet fuel doused on a pile of dynamite sticks; each moment a fuse ready to ignite an economic revolution: Bitcoin experienced a resurgence, GameStop toppled hedge funds, and a tsunami of financial literacy autodidacts emerged.

Now the economy is just incredibly boring, and the coverage of it in the blogosphere and YouTube is utter shit.

Self-help. Boring. Listicles. Boring.

You know, I thought the point of being an artist was to leave something behind after you die?

A blog doesn't count.

Anyway, it's time for Act III of this blog. Of my life.

Act III.

Money holds a purpose, but once you lose interest in using it to climb the corporate ladder, people lose respect for you.

When you step away from the rat race it's a drop in status. You become a loser.

People ask: "You know, whatever happened to that guy? They used to be something, something cool. That person could have been big."

And you know what…?

That sounds like a path I might want to go down. Being that guy.

If anything, just for the laughs.

So, I've decided to quit writing after January. Instead, I'll be embracing a new adventure as a Green Beret while my body is still in good shape. Afterward, I'll use my GI Bill to earn a Master's in economics.

I prefer to play the long game and have something truly worth writing about.

You know what bugs me? The lack of pipelines in our country that truly uphold and celebrates masculinity. The Army, flawed though it may be, retains that essence.

I'm going in for purely selfish reasons: to better myself.

I'll end with this: a few weeks ago, I watched a documentary with my little sister about the Harlem drag queen scene in the 1980s. Paris is Burning. One of the queens delivered a soliloquy at the end that deeply moved me:

"I always had hopes of being a big star. But as you get older, you aim a little lower. Everybody wants to make an impression, some mark upon the world. Then you think, you've made a mark on the world if you just get through it, and a few people remember your name. Then you've left a mark. You don't have to bend the whole world. I think it's better to just enjoy it. Pay your dues, and just enjoy it. If you shoot an arrow and it goes real high, hooray for you."

(watch it here)