Hi Everyone. And greetings after a rather long absence. It’s been a while since I’ve written a blog post, and I wanted to say hello and share a bit of what I’ve been up to. Mostly in terms of creative output I’ve been making new videos — I’ve caught the video bug again. It’s been an intense and largely rewarding venture. And most surprisingly, one of these new videos became more popular than anything else I ever put up. It’s my video on “Six reasons I quit being a therapist” (embedded below) and as of the date of this writing it’s been viewed more than a quarter million times. This is totally unexpected. And the strange thing is, I really don’t know why it’s happened, because when I recorded it and put it up on Youtube I didn’t think it was particularly better than anything else I was sharing. But somehow it seems to have struck a nerve with a lot of people — and somehow that translated into Youtube promoting it with their mysterious algorithms. What I have learned from the comments, though — more than 3,000 of them at the time of this writing — is that there are quite a lot of people out there who have had very bad, painful, even harmful and traumatic therapy experiences, and really are trying to make sense of them. Most of the feedback on the video, probably more than 95%, has been positive, but some has been negative. There have been a few therapists and psychiatrists who have felt I’ve spoken incorrectly or in an overly negative way about the mental health field, though frankly, I think just reading the far majority of viewers’ comments contradict that, which I admit pleases me. (It also pleases me that quite a lot of therapists have found value in the video too — so not all mental health professionals dislike it.) Meanwhile, I’ve been making more and more videos. And I find a real pleasure in it — a pleasure, though, laced with anxiety and the inevitable self-doubt of creativity. But the pleasure of it drives me forward — the pleasure of creating, of speaking my mind, of sharing my life experience, and hopefully of offering some help and support to people out there in the world. It is very gratifying! So again, a warm hello to you all! Daniel