I watched a video on YouTube this week and that was the title.

“I’m Dead.”

It turned up in my suggested videos with over 3 million views at the time (as of writing this it’s wracked up more than 7 million). Me, with my fascination with death and the psychology of death couldn’t resist watching it.

At least for the first few minutes.

It was published by a man named Paul Harrell. I didn’t know him before the thumbnail popped in front of me. But, he has/had a popular shooting YouTube channel with well over a million subscribers. That’s no small feat.

The video was odd.

He starts by explaining that if I’m watching it (I was), that he was dead (he is). He then explains that he had pancreatic cancer that spread to his bones.

I expected to hear a big existential pronouncement. But I didn’t.

I heard a thank you. An apology for getting cancer. And a I heard that he was proud of what he built on YouTube.

This made me think about my own YouTube channel, The Mountain Project… and what it means to me. I think about how some number of hours or days or years from now I too will be dead. But the Mountain Project videos will live on indefinitely. If my daughters have kids, their kids or their kids kids might learn about me by watching a silly little hunting YouTube Channel.

Did I swear too much? Did I drink too much?

Was there some message behind the videos that made the time and effort it took to make the videos worth publishing and leaving them to immortalize some small vignette—some shadowy glimpse of who I am?

Well, before I die let me say… I am grateful to everyone who watches our videos, who’s taken the time to subscribe and comment (even the dude who thinks we’re all city boys who have to pay money to kill Coues deer in Mexico) or otherwise engage with what we publish. I watch our subscriber count grow, and some days its one or two people. And I appreciate every single one of those ones or twos.

The question now is what do I have to do to be proud of the legacy it leaves about me and the friends we showcase on it?

And maybe that’s a question for all of us.

We all publish and ship something. Whether we’re installing pipes or writing novels. Our work is our publication library. Our work is what we leave behind. Embrace it, and honor your life and time by “shipping” something to be proud of.