Neil Gaiman once gave a speech to a bunch of graduating college seniors in which he referred to his career as a mountain. And what I really liked about the metaphor was that, though the mountain represented his goals, Gaiman’s encouragement came as he described his journey. The journey was his career. And by all indications (and I think Gaiman himself might agree with this), that journey is still happening. The mountain is still there, but he may never actually reach it.

At first blush, that sounds terrible, doesn't it? “Set your goal, but know that you may never reach it.” What, then, is the point of the goal? Why dream, why put yourself on the path to something, if you may not get there?

That’s the thing… there’s a problem in your thinking.

Dreams are easy. Everyone has one. It may or may not be grand and sparkling. Your dream may be to have a lovely family, a comfortable house, and a job that pays a good wage without demanding too much from your life. That’s an honorable dream.

Goals are harder. Goals are dreams with deadlines, they say. “I want to achieve X by Y Date.” That’s pretty solid. And once you know your goal, you can start sussing out exactly what it takes to get there. But when you get there… then what?

If your goal was “have $10 million in the bank by the time I’m 50,” and you don’t meet that goal, then are you a failure? If you do meet that goal, where do you go from there? All that work and effort and heart and energy you put into the goal got you exactly what you wanted but… now what?

That’s usually the point at which people feel depressed. They go into a mid-life crisis mode, or they start casting around for some other target for their lives, latching on to whatever they find, chasing the high of accomplishment yet again.

I think we’re all missing the point, though.

Because the secret of the mountain is this: We should never reach the mountain.

The journey is the point. The purpose is our destination. And it should be a land so expansive and so vast that we spend our lives navigating and exploring it.

A mountain at a distance is awe inspiring and majestic. But a mountain up close becomes mundane. It’s just dirt and rock now.

The inspiration comes from seeing it on the horizon. And the growth we have comes from navigating the path toward it. We will always be happier and better off, we will always be more, for the journey we take.

So if you’re finding yourself frustrated that you can see your mountain clearly but you just can’t get there, stop. Pause. Take a breath. And take in the view. Choose the next waypoint on your journey, and enjoy the walk. The mountain will always be there. But the path you take is where all the life is.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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The end of a writer’s conference is sometimes a weirdly haunting, semi-nostalgic thing. That last morning in a hotel, when you’re the only person left who had anything to do with the flurry of activity from the week before, that’s a strange moment. You’re moving through the lobby and seeing about the same number of faces as you did in the days before, but you realize that you have no connection to any of them. You feel like, “Yesterday I was so big… and today I am so small.”

Life is like that, sometimes. Then end of high school felt like that to me, with everyone I’d known for so many years saying goodbye, and some of it being forever. Graduating college. Leaving a job. Moving to a new city. All those people and places that were part of your mental landscape now only exist there for you. And even when you go back, you’re seeing it all through a lens of “used to be.”

There’s a sort of sweet, nostalgic sadness in that. But we should look at it as a reminder—everything is fleeting. Everything changes. Especially us.

Our communities grow and shrink throughout our lives. And we change with them. For each new community, we bring in what we learned from the one before. And as we leave, we take the things that best resonated with us along to the next. That’s how communities grow. That’s how we grow.

My week in Vegas is done. But the memories and experiences I had this week are going home with me. They don’t take up much room. I didn’t even have to check my bag. But when I get on that plane, there will be an entire community sharing my seat.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

What a question, am I right? I mean, if you really want to put yourself into an existential tailspin, start thinking about whether you are or are not “in control” of your life.

You didn’t choose to be born (presumably… depending your particular spiritual views, maybe you did). You didn’t choose the circumstances of your birth, the culture you were born into, your family history or your genes and DNA. You can’t choose whether the sun goes nova or the earth opens up under your feet.

Ultimately… what exactly do you have control over?

Just one thing: Your response.

You control how you will respond to any and all of the above (the stuff you survive, anyway).

And even if you can’t control your physical response, you can control your emotional response. You can control how you will frame everything that has happened to you, how you will interpret it, how you will or will not incorporate it into your own personal story.

That, ultimately, is all the control any of us really have. But it’s a lot. It’s powerful. Those choices can influence our lives, and even reach out beyond our lives into the world itself.

Choose. And choose wisely.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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It could be you.

It’s certainly been me, most of my life and career

But if you find yourself slogging away, pushing and fighting, scratching and climbing, and you still haven’t moved any further along the road than when you first set foot upon it, it might just be that you are the obstacle.

That’s ok. That’s a good thing to learn. Now, though, it’s time to face some hard facts and bitter truths. It’s time to examine your life and your choices, your personality and your preferences, you principles and your habits, and ask: “What needs to change about who I am, so that I can become who I mean to be?”

Hard question. Even harder answer. But if you’re casting around looking for a light for this path you’re on, that’s your 1,000 watt bulb.

Figure out how you’re being a roadblock to your own success and dreams and goals, and then start working on how to compensate for yourself. And this may look like learning a new skill or attaining a new habit. Or it may look like paying someone to do the thing you do poorly. Don’t be afraid to face it, either way. Embrace it as a good thing, a great step forward.

Know thyself, then figure out how to work around thyself.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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This morning I remembered that I had not downloaded the presentation I’m giving tomorrow to my iPad. And since the hotel WiFi is “unreliable,” it decided I should try downloading it from my room.

But when I turned on the iPad, despite having three bars of LTE, I couldn’t get anything to work. After trying for awhile, I finally managed to get connected to the hotel WiFi, and from there I was able to download the presentation.

Sorry to short-cut the story… but there’s a point.

I was feeling the frustration and even the panic of dealing with all of that. I’m tired, because author conferences can be exhausting. And I slept in, which makes me feel like I’m behind. The anxiety goes up, and my patience gets tested.

Despite this, though, I want to maintain the discipline of my morning routine. The multiple journal entries, the affirmations, the blog post. Video… I’ve had to pause video. The logistics of it are too time consuming for the week. So, a sacrifice. And a lesson… I’ll have to work out how to do that, in the future, to maintain my streaks and my goals.

But the point is this: I was already feeling anxious and stressed when I discovered that the WiFi thing was an issue. I was already feeling impatient, and still had the whole list of writing to do. And in the past, I would freak out about this kind of thing and just ditch something. Leave off on the routine and go find some WiFi somewhere.

Instead, I pushed through. I tried things, let them run for a bit, and tried other things. And in between, I wrote. I did the work.

Ultimately, as I spoiled above, I had success. The presentation is now on my iPad. But in addition, my journaling and affirmations are done, and as of now this blog post is being read by you, so you know how that turned out.

In one of my journals I wrote, “Patience is a blade.” I went into detail about how blades can be nicked and their edges dulled with use. And how we have to take it to the whetstone, where we grind away at some of the material of the blade, to smooth the burrs and remove the nicks, and return the edge to sharpness. That lost material, that’s the sacrifice we have to make. That’s us changing to accommodate the things we have to be patient over. That’s how we grow and get better, by letting the whetstone of annoyances and disturbances and irritations help us hone our edge.

I have not traditionally been a very patient man, but I’m learning. That’s the point. Learn, do, grow, and repeat.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

This isn’t the first version of this post. I actually wrote a very nice, compact, wise account of the trouble I had getting to Vegas yesterday, and then using that to illustrate the idea that if you don’t choose your response, if you instead just let your emotions determine your reaction, then you’re going to end up living a default kind of life.

It was profound and poetic, if I must say so myself.

And then, for some reasons, when I tried to save it as a draft it disappeared.

So you now get this much shorter, less details version. But the lesson remains the same. And if anything, the lesson is sharpened to a fine point with what happened.

Because my first reaction could have been to throw my hands up in disgust, get angry, and storm out of my room to go find the coffee I so badly want.

Instead, I’m choosing to sit and do a bit more work. Because I want the results of my response, rather than the consequences of my reaction.

An undisciplined reaction will lead to an unpredictable consequence.

A disciplined response will, at the very least, allow you do decide on your direction, so that you can move toward the life you actually want to have.

That’s the gist, anyway. I swear it was much more profound before. But disciplined or not, there’s only so much a fella can do with no coffee.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

Yesterday evening, Kara and I hung a mirror over our new fireplace.

The mirror has a minor bit of personal history—it was a housewarming gift from a good friend of mine, back in my early 20s. It was a nice one, by my estimate. But apparently not up to modern standards. Kara asked my permission to touch it up with a bit of gold paint on the frame. I didn’t see any harm, and I have to admit it does have a whole new look, just from that.

The mirror had always hung horizontally everywhere it’s ever been on a wall. That just always made sense to me. But Kara wanted to turn it vertically, to make it more “dramatic,” and to add height above the fireplace. I didn't see any harm in this either, though it seemed weird to me.

These days I’m trying not to let my first impulse of “no, that isn’t the right way” be a barrier to trying things.

So, basically, when it came to this mirror I was already outside my comfort zone. A little. It wasn’t like I was worried it would catch the house on fire or something. It was just that “it had always been this way,” and I was having to adjust to the idea of it being that way instead.

Kara also wanted to rest it on the fireplace mantle, rather than hang it directly on the wall. Though she did want to anchor it to the wall somehow. This, too, was weird to me. I mean… mirrors hang on walls. But yeah, ok…. sure. And I put an anchor on the wall for it.

But then it was time to flip the mirror vertically and somehow attach it to that anchor on the wall. And that’s when my brain stalled.

“These days I’m trying not to let my first impulse of “no, that isn’t the right way” be a barrier to trying things. ”

When I’d first gotten the mirror, I attached two metal loops to the frame and I ran a multi-strand wire between these. I had mounted the hooks close to the top corners of the mirror, as it was oriented horizontally. And it had always been kind of a trick to get the thing on the wall and keep that wire hidden.

In fact, over the years and with dozens of moves I had tried numerous methods of doing that—from mounting two hooks a good distance apart on the wall to twisting and tightening the wire turnbuckle style, enough that it stayed below the frame. It had been like this for years. Like I said, I got it in my twenties, and as of last month I've hit 50 years old. So for almost half my life, this was the way.

Now, though, it was time to rethink things. It was time to turn the mirror on its side (from my point of view), and that meant reorienting those little buckles.

My first attempt was to just move one of the buckles so that it was relocated from what was now the “bottom” of the mirror to the corner opposite its mate at the mirror’s new “top.” This meant that, once gain, I had the buckles attached to the frame near the top corners. And, once again, I was struggling to get the wire tight enough that it would anchor the mirror to the wall but wouldn’t show above the frame. And, once again, it was going to be tricky.

And then I had what we will call “the aha moment.”

Why was I mounting those buckles so close to the top? If I just moved them down closer to the middle of the frame, the slack in the wire would work for us instead of against us. It would anchor the mirror in place, and it wouldn’t be visible at all!

Yes… yes, you’re seeing that right. This is a problem that literally took me thirty years to figure out.

Move the buckles.

That worked, by the way. With the buckles attached at a lower point on the mirror it hung like a dream—no worries, no concerns, no problem. I’d just been hanging it wrong for three decades, that’s all.

This is a lesson that’s applicable to my daily life, so I assume it will also be applicable to yours: When you’re facing a challenge, when your way of thinking doesn’t allow for an answer, start from zero and think about it in a new way.

In philosophy, this is sometimes called “beginner’s mind.” And it’s the source of genius.

Kids are great at this, by the way. For example, think of three answers to this question:

“How do I put an elephant in my refrigerator?”

And yes, I mean a real, full-sized elephant. Not a photo of an elephant. Not a stuffed toy. The real thing, trunk and all.

Go… I’ll give you ten minutes.

Back? Ok. I’m betting you thought of all sorts of interesting things. But I’m also betting that all of them had to do with dealing with the logistics and the physics of getting a big thing into a smaller thing.

When I tried this with Kara, she came up with some… well… gruesome stuff. Like cutting the elephant into pieces, or burning it and turning it into ash. Let’s just say I’m not eager to make her mad any time soon.

Your ideas may be similar, and there’s nothing wrong with any of them. But your adult mind, with all of its experiences and years of routines and everyday problem solving, came up against the physical limits of the exercise. The problem, to you, was “How do I get the big thing into the small thing?”

When this question was posed to a group of kids, though, their answers were a little different.

“Open the door and ask him to go in.”

“Put peanut butter inside and leave the door open.”

“Ride him like a horse and go inside.”

See the difference? To these kids, the task wasn’t a problem of logistics and physical dimensions. It was about convincing the elephant. Coaxing, luring, guiding.

That is beginner’s mind in action. And it’s a powerful tool.

If we can cultivate that way of looking at things, whenever we’re stuck on a problem, new solutions may appear out of nowhere.

Give it a try, the next time you find yourself stuck. Move the buckles. Ask the elephant.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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What you choose to look at determines what you will see.

I know, that sounds profound. Or maybe it doesn’t. It all depends on how you look at it. Irony.

But the gist is this—if you’re focusing all your attention on negative things, you’ll tend to see the world in a negative light. If you’re focused on angry Tweets and scary news stories and violent YouTube videos, then the world you see will reflect those things back to you. The hologram of the universe that you carry in your head will be a very dark, foreboding, miserable place. From your point of view, everything is always turning out awful.

If, on the other hand, you are looking for the good in people, looking for opportunities, looking for examples of kindness and love and positive thinking, then that becomes your filter. Even when things go wrong, you’re more likely to be optimistic, to look for the good that can come out of it. From your point of view, everything is always working out for you.

“What you choose to look at determines what you will see. ”

These are two diametrically opposed points of view, but the key word in the opening statement of this post is “choose.” You are the one who gets to decide what kind of filter you’re going to wear in your daily life. You either put on the dark and cloudy lenses, or you pull on the rose-colored glasses. It’s up to you.

And that means you are the one responsible for your experience, and for your outcomes.

Some people hate that (guess which point of view they typically have). They can’t stand the thought that it’s them who determines what the quality of their life will be like. They want to blame someone else, or something else, for the sorry state they’re in. Everything is awful, and they have no choice in how they see any of it.

Other people get the truth of this by instinct. They see that if they're the one ultimately responsible for the choices then they’re the one in control of the quality of their experience. They’re better off choosing to look for good things in the world around them. Focus on what’s good, what’s pure, what’s right, what’s loving—focus on finding resources and opportunities instead of always grousing about what you lack. That’s up to you. All of it.

Or not. Maybe the universe is just happening to you instead of for you. That’s one way to look at it.

What are you going to choose to look at in your life? What is it that you want to see?

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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I only have 465 subscribers on YouTube, as of right now. That’s up nine subscribers in seven days—which is worth celebrating! But it’s been stuck on that number now for the past four days, which is Sad Kevin.

But should I be sad?

First, foremost, and forever, I’m a writer. I got a lot of books out there to prove it. I have blog posts which, until now at least, haven’t always been regularly written and posted. But there are a lot of those, too. And daily I write thousands and thousands of words that all fit my stated mission: To inform and inspire, educate and entertain, in the service of God and humanity.

I do the work. I’m doing even more of it now.

And I’m putting in the work for YouTube these days, too. It’s been exactly one week since I started posting a video every single day. An entire week of finally sucking it up and doing what I’d been dreading. I struggled with doing even one video for months, and in seven days I’ve done seven. I’ve suddenly discovered I enjoy it.

But then there’s that number… 465. Stalled. Still. Tiny. Taunting me.

The thing is, if you’re going to be a content creator of any stripe, you need two things: An audience and validation.

The trouble comes when you start seeking validation from the audience.

I have readers. Thousands of them. They buy my books every month, and that has allowed me to keep food on the table, but also to own a table, and a house to put it in. We currently live in what I jokingly but seriously call “the house that books built.” My words get read. I have an audience.

But the words could use a bigger audience, I will admit. My income is directly proportional to the number of people who discover and buy my work. And my theory is that by producing content that is at least tangentially related to the books will help draw that audience.

That’s called “marketing,” in case you’re wondering. The term covers a lot of ground, but certainly the notion of creating content with the express intent of funneling people to your books is, indeed, a marketing tactic, and hopefully part of a larger marketing strategy.

So when you’re not getting that audience in a timely way, it can feel a little daunting. Disappointing. Depressing, even. But see… there’s the real problem. That’s me looking for validation from the audience. And when that’s the case, when that’s my metric of success, then I’m in for a long, hard slog.

“Considering what you get out of it is important.”

Seeking validation from an audience dooms you to misery because, for a start, it makes you ungrateful or unappreciative of the audience you do have. I see that number—465—and my first impulse isn’t, "Wonderful! I’m reaching 465 people with my message!” No, it tends to be, “C’mon! ONLY 465? Why isn’t it growing!”

For sure, audience growth is a metric you should consider. There are other metrics as well, from retention to engagement to click-thru. And beyond, really. There are a lot of ways to measure success.

But the lesson, really, is that we shouldn’t get too caught up in those metrics, looking for the magic number that will make us feel good about our efforts or our lives. We sometimes fall into the trap of “No one is listening, so why bother?” That’s usually around the time we give up.

Maybe that’s something to consider, if creating what you create comes at a great cost. Just like when I wrote about ROI, considering what you get out of it is important. And sometimes the reality is that if the cost outweighs the benefit, you may be better off walking away.

But another approach is the one I’m choosing, at least for now.

First, I decided from the start that the content I’m creating is meant for really just an audience of one… and that one would be me. I’m creating content that I like, that makes me feel good about myself and my work, and that allows me to feel like I’m contributing something positive to the world.

Second, I decided that I would focus on making content creation as easy and fun as possible, to give myself some breathing room and to avoid feeling overwhelmed and burnt out. In other words, I’m creating what I like, and I’m doing it in a way that doesn’t make me want to stab myself in the brain.

And third, I decided that I would seek my validation elsewhere. Rather than pinning all my hopes and dreams on finding an audience and seeing that subscriber count skyrocket, I’m deliberately choosing to accept and appreciate and be grateful for any and all subscribers. I will welcome them, and treat them with honor and respect. And my validation will come from being able to look back at my work, seeing it grow and improve with time, and knowing that I am capable and creative. I’m letting the work be the reward.

Which is not to say, obviously, that I wouldn’t welcome more subscribers. So as always, I ask that you subscribe, that you help me share content like this blog and the videos, and that you comment and let me know how I’m doing, or what you think of a particular topic, or just anything you want. Let’s make a conversation out of it. (in marketing, we call this “engagement”)

But to be clear… if you do none of the above, I’m going to feel just as validated. Because I’ve finally come to understand that creating is just what I do. It’s the way my soul expresses itself. It’s the tool by which I live out that mission statement above. And I do it because the work causes me far less pain than not doing it.

You might look at your own life, your own choices, your work and your motives, and figure out where your validation comes from. If it’s coming from anything other than you, consider that a red flag. You deserve better.

Be your own best audience.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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The world came into being last Thursday.

Seriously… the world, the universe, all of reality is only one week old. As of today. I’m not making this up.

That was someone else.

I’m talking about “Last Thursdayism,” which is a… well, we’ll say a hypothesis that everything around you, everything you know, everything you’ve ever experienced, even you, yourself, all sprang into fully formed existence last Thursday. That includes history, archives of books and films and TV, stacks of comics you’ve read, rings in giant red oaks, all of it. The whole, complete, all-encompassing entirety of all of existence… it all started last Thursday.

And that’s why you don’t realize it. Because along with the stars and the planets and the Tom Cruise films, your memories also started that day, fully formed. And whatever argument you’re thinking, whatever you’ve come up with to contradict or disprove this hypothesis… nope. Just more fully created stuff that came up a week ago. All that so-called “evidence” that makes it look like the universe is billions of years old… that’s all fake. It was created to look that way. Sorry.

Infuriating, isn’t it?

Last Thursdayism is branch of what’s called the Omphalos hypothesis. The TL:DR version is that this was an attempt to offer a reconciliation between Creationism’s view that the Earth was really only a few thousand years old, based on the literal interpretation of scripture, and the fact that science tells us that it is much older. Current estimates are around 14 billion years, but with the Webb space telescope coming online and peeking further and further out into the universe, some folks think everything may be much, much older.

There’s another theory about that which is equally mind-frying—that reality is actually just a simulation. It’s called (wait for it) simulation theory. Maybe I’ll create content around that some other time.

But the point is, the Omphalos hypothesis solved the problem of timelines not matching up by slapping some spackle on it and claiming that all of creation came to us fully formed. That included the fossil record, rings in trees, ancient ruins and temples buried under the desert sand, all of it. On Day One, it all just appeared. Let there be light (and dinosaur bones).

Last Thursdayism got it’s name mostly from someone tossing up their hands after hearing the Omphalos hypothesis and saying, “The universe might as well have popped up last Thursday then!”

So let it be written, so let it be done.

The reason this argument is so infuriating is because you can’t actually refute it. No matter what you think of to counter it, your argument can be shunted aside by “God did it.” And hey, I’m a believer. God is real, in my book. But I haven’t read anything in the Bible about God being a troll. And this would certainly be some universe-level trolling.

The point here is that there will always be theories and arguments that we can’t refute. There will always be a perspective so bizarrely alien to our own that we will want to shut it down, drown it out, grind it up and run it down the garbage disposal. But we won’t be able to. It will always survive, as long as someone—anyone—is willing to believe it and insist on it.

It’s what’s known as a “circular argument.” A logical fallacy in which someone states a fact, then uses that very fact as support of said fact. And if that confused you, then you’ve got the right idea.

We see this sort of logical fallacy—and many others—in our everyday society. In fact, with the prevalence and growth of social media, it’s just increased. Billions of people now routinely share points of view that are no more grounded or provable or disprovable than last Thursdayism. We see it in everything from arguments about politics to assertions about vaccinations or conspiracy theories about protests and insurrections (or the lack thereof…?).

Sometimes I kind of wish the world really was created last Thursday. It would explain a lot.

How do you overcome circular reasoning? Mostly, just don’t participate in it. Don’t let yourself be drawn into the argument. Just let that circular reasoner go rant about their ideas in the void. Maybe toss them some Crayons to draw with.

Because in the end, a hypothesis that can never be proven or disproven benefits no one. It may have some impact, but that impact tends to be isolated quickly. Cooler and more logical heads. usually prevail. Or, we really hope they will.

You’ll never be able to control that impact anyway. All you can ever control is your own response. So, focus on that.

See you next Thursday.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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We have a real temptation to celebrate when someone we don’t like fails at something.

Yesterday was an Election Day, and I can’t think of a better example of this idea than what tends to happen around every election. One side typically tends to dominate over the other, and then they like to rub it in by crowing and castigating and cat-calling. The failure of the other is cast as an indication of how right the winners were. “See? We’re right, because we won!”

Kind of nonsense though, right?

Because win or lose, what was at stake in an election was whether the people voting believed in one philosophy or another, or were disappointed by the actions of one side, or were alarmed at what one side was doing or not doing or proposing to do… there are a lot of factors. But what is not true is “winning mean’s we’re right.” We can look at a couple hundred years of elections and see that.

Now I’m as guilty as the next guy when it comes to this. I have my own perspective on things, and there are outcomes I’m hoping for. And when I (or my team, or my party, or my business) “wins,” that is absolutely something to celebrate. Celebrate every success.

But why would you ever celebrate failure?

Well… ok, maybe you’d celebrate failure if you were more like Thomas Edison—who famously told his son to go find his mother and bring her to the site where Edison’s Orange County workshop was burning to the ground. “Go get your mother! She’ll never see a fire like this again!”

Edison had the debris and ashes cleared by the next morning, and started right back at it. Failure was a setback, but it wasn’t the end.

“Celebrating someone else’s failure, or misery, or pain is like telling the universe, ‘I like this stuff. Give me more of that.’”

And of course, Edison is famous for other failures. Like the lightbulb. I mean, I know… the lightbulb ended up being a huge success that literally changed the world. But to get to that success, Edison had to wade neck deep into a sea of failure. Thousand of tries, thousands of duds. And then, finally, he had his literal lightbulb moment. The idea that evolved humanity into creatures who could see into even the darkest spaces.

Failure can be worth celebrating. It tells us what not to do, to get the result we want. It marks our progress. It gives us feedback.

But the failure of others… celebrating that is the worst idea.

I don’t know what you believe, but here’s a guiding principle in my own life: Celebrating someone else’s failure, or misery, or pain is like telling the universe, “I like this stuff. Give me more of that.”

Our highest command is to love, and celebrating someone’s pain isn’t love.

Of course, nobody said we had to like each other.

But the decision to exclude your annoying neighbor from your Christmas card list is a very different thing from popping champagne and toasting to the fact that his business failed. You believe what you want, but I think it’s dumb to tempt fate. Or karma. Or God.

So as election results roll in, maybe (maaayyyybeee) those of us who got what we wanted from those results can have some empathy toward those who are feeling a keen loss and an existential sting. We do not have to agree with each other, but we should at least go out of our way to avoid hating each other.

Don’t tear people down for what they’ve lost. It’s always going to come back to bite you.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

A question I’ve been asked a lot in my life is “How do you get all of that done?”

It usually follows a conversation about my books, and the process I practice every day. Sometimes it comes up after I mention my morning routine—all that journaling, on top of writing? Or it comes up when I say I do all of that while also handling marketing for Draft2Digital.

And now, when I mention that I’m currently doing a YouTube video every day, on top of all of that, people want to know If I sleep.

I do, actually. Eight hours every night, and a ~30-minute nap every afternoon. I also take a walk every day at 5PM, if that puts anything into perspective.

I know it’s a lot. But I still occasionally feel like I’m “slacking off.” No idea why. Quirk of personality, maybe.

The truth is, getting a lot of routine things done every day is a self-discipline thing, but you shouldn’t ding yourself if you fail at adding a laundry list of To-Dos to your life. If you start feeling overwhelmed about “getting it all done,” it may mean that you need to step back and figure out which parts you actually want and need to do, and which you can let slide.

Sometimes you let the wobbly plates drop so you can keep the rest spinning.

I didn’t add all these things to my routine at one time. They all sort of crept in. And as some came in, other things went out. There are routines I abandoned at some point, because they didn’t meet one very vital criteria: They weren’t adding anything to my life.

They weren’t necessarily taking anything away, either. But they weren’t enriching me or helping me grow. They weren’t giving me any advantages. They had no ROI (return on investment), or the ROI was so low it made the task pointless.

“Sometimes you let the wobbly plates drop so you can keep the rest spinning.”

For sure, there are tasks in our lives that we don’t like to do, don’t want to do, or simply don’t feel good about doing. I don’t like doing taxes every year. It feels like being voluntarily robbed. I also don’t like going to my cardiologist, because I kind of resent the necessity brought on by having a birth defect in my heart. But these are necessities in my life, if I want to A) avoid going to prison for tax evasion and B) avoid dying. I’ll do a lot of things I don’t like to avoid those two outcomes.

But the rest of my life is a little different. I’m starting to come around to the idea that I should be focused on doing the things that I find joyful and fulfilling. And… well… only doing those things.

Yes, there are things I have to do that suck. And avoiding them would cost me more than I’m willing to pay. So. yes, I do those. But otherwise, everything else… I’m skipping the stuff that I don’t like. I’m going to let it slide. If the cost of that is something I can tolerate, then I’m gonna make like Elsa and let it go.

Here’s the real key, though: Focus on the things that bring you the greatest ROI.

Whatever you’re putting your energy into, make sure it’s paying you dividends that more than compensate for the work, effort, and energy you’re putting into them.

I journal every morning—and I mean, I actually put energy into five different types of journals each morning—because I’ve learned that the work and effort I’m putting into that helps me in dozens of ways. It’s a bit of self-discipline I practice daily; it allows me to center myself and be in a healthy meditative state; it allows me to tap into my innate inner wisdom (I actually think this comes from the Holy Spirit, but that’s a me thing); it allows me to explore and express new ideas; it allows me to have a daily record of my life; it’s a tangible way for me to show progress in my own personal development. And frankly, it helps to make me a better writer—because “the first million words are practice,'“ and all that.

And recently, I’ve added writing a daily blog post and doing a daily YouTube video to the mix. Why? Because I have a theory that doing both will increase my reach with new readers, whom I can invite to join me on my mailing list, and to buy my books. The books are the whole point for me. That’s my life’s work.

All of it is, actually.

If I do the daily post and video for awhile and start noticing that I’m not getting any return for it, then the answer will be to stop. Try something else.

But what I have discovered, over the years, is that sometimes the ROI is different than and often more than you were expecting. Sometimes your efforts pay dividends you weren’t aware were even a possibility.

I may be aiming for more readers, and find that doing this daily gives me some other benefit that’s equally as desirable. Maybe it allows me to express and explore ideas I don’t typically get to share with anyone. Maybe it becomes a secondary source of revenue. Maybe it allows me to meet a new friend who adds value to my life, as I add value to theirs.

You never know. And you never will know, until you try it, and do it consistently, and give a chance.

But if you find that what you’re doing is costing you more in time, effort, energy, or even money than you are getting in return—if you find that all that input isn’t getting you any decent output—then it’s time to cut the line and let it sink. It will probably cost you less to let something slide than to keep trying to make it work when it just doesn’t.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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I’m listening to Leonard Da Vinci, the excellent biography written by Walter Isaacson and narrated by the incredible Alfred Molina. Who, obviously, will always live in my mind in the duality that is both Satipo, the betrayer from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, and as Doctor Octopus, from the Spider-man films. I know he’s had other roles… these are the roles that live in my head. AND MY HEART.

I’m enjoying the book, both because it is well researched and well written (and well read), but also because the subject has always fascinated me. Leonardo was the prototype of the “Renaissance Man”—the well rounded, self-disciplined, self-educating soul who masters an array of skills and who becomes expert in an eclectic, decentralized wealth of topics. Leonardo was an artist and painter, a sculptor, an engineer, an anatomist… he did it all. He mastered it all.

And the body of work he produced, through journals and sketches and paintings over a lifetime, was just astounding. Not just in quality but in quantity, and more importantly in the range, breadth, and depth of it all.

I’m just in awe of the man.

But this post isn’t about Leonardo.

I mean, it is, but it isn’t. What I really wanted to dive into today was more about the fact that Leonardo—artist, inventor, genius—was not a specialist.

You could argue that he was. His art, after all, was kind of a central component of all of his life and work. He used his powers of observation and his skills in illustration to explore the world at the smallest and greatest levels he could perceive, and he used his unfailing curiosity and patience to ask questions of the natural world, to ferret them out to their deepest secrets, and to document them to the finest detail.

The guy did autopsies and drew illustrations of the workings of the human body that are still in use in the. medical discipline today, 500 years after his death.

But again… this post isn’t about Leonardo.

It’s about the fact that Leonardo was a generalist.

Another book I’m reading at the moment is David Epstein’s Range. Though I’ll confess, I only started reading the book last night. So I’m barely into it. But I’m already excited about the topic. Because it, too, is about generalists. In fact, the sub-title is the big draw: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World.

I’m looking forward to seeing what Epstein has pulled together.

But the topic itself is one that I’ve thought about a lot over the years. Because, honestly, to paraphrase Norman Osborn (yet another Spider-Man reference…), “I’m something of a generalist myself.” And I always have been. In fact, I kinda got dinged for that during my thesis review, in college. But who’s laughing now, dean? Who’s laughing now!?!?

We live in an increasingly specialized world. One in which not only does someone go to medical school to be a doctor, they specialize in heart medicine… and then specialize further as an electrophysiologist or a cardiac rehabilitation specialist or a heart failure specialist. There are probably some specializations happening below that level, too. What do I know? I’m not heart doctor specialist.

Now again, I haven’t read much of Range yet, but I know that part of the exploration of the book is into the way the specialization can actually be a detriment. Maybe even harmful.

“To be fair, though, the flip side of this can be summed up as “details matter.””

Among all those heart doctors, for example, there can sometimes be the “hammer for every nail” problem. You know the one… when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. And that really is a problem, because if you’re just going around smacking nails into dry wall, you could miss the signs that the real problem is a rotting infrastructure, or a broken water pipe, or maybe just that the house itself is on fire.

A generalist view is a top-down view. It’s a wider angle, a sweeping look, and exploration. If you think like a generalist, you’re taking in the whole picture.

To be fair, though, the flip side of this can be summed up as “details matter.”

Leonardo was a generalist in his interests and in his skillset, but he was also meticulous in his exploration. He asked questions about the general object he was studying—the human body, for one of thousands of examples—and then he started using those questions, that curiosity, to delve deeper. He tried to understand the process of the whole by understating the minutia of processes underlying it.

The key to greatness, right there.

I’m a generalist, but I tend not to be patient enough to go into the details. I like the big picture, and get stressed out by the pixels. But cultivating that willingness and ability to look closer, while also maintaining the ability to keep a broader view, creates opportunities and grants me insights I would miss, if I specialized.

I guess to sum it up, think of it this way: If you are the world’s foremost expert on brake systems, specializing in them to exclusivity, then you may not be the best mechanic in the world. There’s a whole car there. Widen your perspective a bit, see how the brakes integrate into the rest of the machine. Expand your understanding by being willing to generalize and then drill down.

I’m sure I’ll come back to this subject, as I read Epstein’s book and think about these concepts more. But for now… that’s the general idea.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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More important than time

Look for the simplest path and conserve your energy.

Simplicity. Brevity. Directness.

Man, we tend to overcomplicate things. And to overthink them. We tend to create more pressure on every decision and more anxiety over every interaction simply because we’re overthinking it.

The most recent example for me is video.

For a long while now—years, really—I’ve wanted to make YouTube a regular part of what I create. I wanted to have a show that would draw in millions of subscribers, and become part of my platform, extending my reach and helping me find more readers and sell more books. And I’ve done a lot of YouTube stuff over those years, including a regular live show for Draft2Digital. But for some reason, I kept flubbing it with launching something of my own.

I couldn’t decide what the topic should be, for a start. I had the Wordslinger Podcast, which was mostly aimed at indie authors, but I really wanted to branch out from the author-centric audience and create content that appealed to the sort of people who would read my books. So I dabbled with posting content about the things I learn in my research, such as bits of weird history or science, tidbits about human psychology, that sort of thing. So that was a general topic.

The problem was, I get bored talking about the same thing all the time. But there was an even bigger problem than that—I couldn’t decide on a format.

Time and energy are really valuable commodities for me (aren’t they for everyone?). And really, I’m finally realizing that it’s about energy more than time. Because it’s true, we can’t make more time. But we actually have loads of it, if we’re willing to stop lying to ourselves. There are pockets of time everywhere. We convince ourselves that time is short, though, because what we really lack is the energy to use that time.

Think about it this way: You get up at 6AM, go to work, spend all day doing work things, and when you get home you’re exhausted, ready for dinner and some TV, and then it’s off to bed by 10PM.

“Energy management is more important than time management.”

That’s sixteen hours of your day. If you’re being truly honest with yourself, was every minute of that sixteen hours filled? Or… and hear me out… was there an hour her, fifteen minutes there, half an hour of driving and three hours of idly watching TV that you might have put to use on something productive? True, right?

But you didn’t. And the reason you didn’t use that time is because you didn’t have the energy.

See what I mean? Energy is the key here. Energy management is more important than time management.

Now, back to the video thing… what kept me from doing video more often was the absolute dread I felt ever time I even thought about it. And that dread came because I kept thinking about all the steps I would have to do in order to record, edit, post, share, respond to comments, yada, yada yada, etc.

I dreaded all of that because the process I came up with, the format I landed on for any given show, demanded a complicated set of steps. It demanded that I expend energy and (yes) time, both of which I felt were in short supply. And of the two, mostly energy was running short. I have books to write! I don’t have the energy to do that AND record, edit, post, share, respond to comments. And all those yadas? Fuhgetaboutit!

Now I’m going to confess that I’m still dealing with that sort of thing. I’ve posted exactly one YouTube video since August, and that was yesterday. So to be completely transparent here, I do not have a track record yet.

But I do have a simpler idea.

“The truth is, real professionals are consistent.”

Yesterday I was able to get up and run right through my entire routine. Make the coffee, write in the journals (there’s a lot of journaling… it’s kind of the biggest chunk of my morning), do some marketing, do some work on the book, write a blog post. And then I recorded a video. And to make it easier, I made it simple: Talk about the blog post, edit that in the simplest way possible, post it.

And for comments… I have the app on my phone alerting me when one comes in, so I can reply to it then and there. Or I’ll circle back around once per day and answer all the comments I’ve left unanswered.

My previous attempts at doing YouTube stuff revolved around building a very complicated and complex show. I wanted it to be like the sort of thing I used to produce for radio and television. I wanted it to be “professional.”

But I realized that adding complexity doesn’t increase professionalism. The truth is, real professionals are consistent.

By keeping things simple, I’m increasing the odds that I’ll get more done. The work becomes an easy thing to manage. I enjoy it more. I’m able to do it more consistently, with less energy and less anxiety.

Will I keep this up? Well, let’s see. But I think the key to all things is to examine what you’re doing to see if you could remove some of the complexity. Find the simplest way to do what you intend to do. You can always complicate it later.

Manage your energy. Be precious with it. Energy is the resource we need most, and the one that lets us better utilize all that time we have.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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My favorite kind of morning is one just like I’m having, right now.

The temperature has dropped to a chilly 47°F. The sun is lazily rising, brightening the sky first in gradients of grey and black, and then ultimately reds and yellows and blues. The air feels crisp and alive, like it’s trying to remind you to be content with and appreciative of your own skin.

I have my cup of coffee, and I have my window. A gentle turn of my head, just to my left, gives me a view of the valley below our hilltop home. Miles of trees and houses, signs of commerce and activity in the distance. And the sky—ripples and fragments of clouds stretch like muscle fiber toward the horizon, like the sky is waking up and getting warmed up for the day.

“My favorite kind of morning is one just like I’m having, right now.”

I have music, a wordless lofi beat that encourages me to focus on the screen in front of me. I have my keyboard—a lifelong companion that partners with me to tell the world what’s in my head and soul. I have this office space, perched like a nest at the top of our home, decorated with inspirations and memories to help ease me into the creative world I occupy throughout the day.

Another sip of coffee, another glance out of my window, another moment of reflection.

And then there is you. Without you, reading this, what’s the point, really? I can write for myself just fine, and even enjoy it. But how much better is it, to have you here?

If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

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I’m not sure how long ago I listened to it, but a few years back (maybe four or five years ago) I took an early morning walk while playing a podcast episode from Tony Robbins. It was a weird “special episode,” if I recall. He was in a sound booth, and I think he had just finished a session recording an audiobook or something else “official.” The producer kept the audio recording going, and captured Tony talking to the sound engineer and anyone else in the room about goals and success.

At one point he addressed the “problem” of not having any ideas about what to create, how to market something you’ve built, what to do with your life, etc. I won’t try to recall the exact wording or even the exact topic, but his answer was something that hit home for me.

“Get a journal and every day write down three ideas. And at the end of 30 days you’ll have 90 ideas to work with. At the end of 365 days you’ll have over a thousand ideas (1,095, to be precise).”

At that time I was trying to think of ways to market my books, beyond the typical “pay for ads, engage in social media” blah-blah. That stuff works, by the way, but there’s a sort of diminishing return. Maybe I’ll got into that some other time. But “build a mailing list” is still the best marketing advice I’ve ever gotten.

I spent 30 days writing down three marketing ideas, every morning. I was already keeping a daily journal by that point, so I just made that part of the routine. And, true to Tony’s word, I had 90 ideas for marketing my books by the end of that month. Some of them were good. Some weren’t. Some worked. Some didn’t. But the point was made for me: This is the way.

You can mine your own wisdom, three chunks at a time, and get results.

“You can mine your own wisdom, three chunks at a time, and get results.”

I was tired of trying to come up with purely marketing ideas by that point, so I tried it for other things. Three daily ideas about how to be a bitter husband; three ideas about losing weight and getting fit; three ideas about improving productivity. If I spent 30 days writing three ideas about any topic, I came away with a month full of things to try. And the result is always the same—I always find something that helps.

Somewhere along the way, I decided I would see what else this method was good for. And what I landed on was “three pieces of wisdom.”

I have always been a “pantser.” In the writing world, that’s shorthand for “writing by the seat of my pants.” Meaning I don’t plot or outline, I don’t pre-plan. I just sit down and write. This post, by the way… also a pantsed post. I did what I do with most of my books, and started with a title. And then… words happened.

It’s like magic.

So much like magic, in fact, that I wanted to see what would happen if I just decided to write down “3 Pieces of Wisdom” every single day. Since my writing is somewhat automatic, and I figure my subconscious is responsible for steering the ship when it comes to the ideas I express, I wondered if I could tap into that to learn and record some innate wisdom—some piece of spiritually refreshing thought that might be a useful guide in life. Basically, 3 Ideas from My Soul. Though this is literally the first time I’ve ever referred to it that way.

Every day, then, I started my journal entry with “3 Pieces of Wisdom.” And I did that for 30 days.

The result was… profound. There were ideas there that I couldn’t believe came from me. I mean, I would really like to think of myself as a wise person, but I don’t always prove that out with my actions, or with what I say out loud. But when I looked at the results of this daily exercise, it struck me that I was somehow sitting at the feet of a wise man, getting answers for questions that only my soul could ask. And, apparently, my soul could also provide.

This was so profound to me, in fact, that I passed right by the 30 day mark, and just kept going. And for years now, every single day (with surprisingly few gaps), I sit down with my little pocket Moleskine notebook, I write the page number, date, time, temperature, and location across the top of the page, and then I write three pieces of wisdom. Every day. For years. It’s stacked up.

For example, here are three pieces from just a couple of days ago:

• In the end, as in all your days, it’s just you and God.

• Build an inner place that relies on nothing to exist.

• Many have and will lose their way, so be gentle and lead.

Here’s set from a few weeks before that:

• Stand for what is right, even if it makes you fall.

• Refuse to kneel to tyrants—even if they force you to your knees, your spirit will not bow.

• Know that not all victories are evident in the moment.

And this set, from the day after I returned from a conference in San Francisco:

• The right answers only come from asking the right questions—questions are more important than answers.

• When you don’t know how to solve your own problem, solve someone else’s problem.

• Journaling gives you a way to spot the patterns in your thinking.

I could definitely go on. I don’t even think these are necessarily the best of the best. There have been times when I wrote something that sounded so unlike me, that was so far outside of my usual thinking, it shook me. It changed my direction. It made me try to be a better human.

Over time, I’ve added more “3 Things” to my daily routine. In those Moleskine notebooks, I have the three pieces of wisdom, but a couple of years ago I also added “3 Things I’m grateful for and bless.” These can be literally anything—”I am grateful for my Moleskine notebook, and I bless it.” But I feel like it’s helpful to start my day being grateful for things big and small in my life, and blessing them. We don’t bless things (or people) enough.

“I feel like it’s helpful to start my day being grateful for things big and small in my life, and blessing them.”

More recently, just a few months ago, I created a new journal in the Day One app called “3 Ideas.” This is where I daily type up 3 ideas (go figure) about any given topic. The topic changes from day to day, and sometimes the ideas are kind of mundane. But it helps me get my head in the game, and to occasionally get that aha! spark—the moment of excitement when something occurs to me that I’ve never really thought about before.

Here I jot down three ideas about marketing, or about products I could create, or about story ideas, or about what to have for lunch. It can be anything. But the regular practice and routine of doing this helps put my mind in an open and receptive state. Plus… well… I have a whole journal full of ideas I can mine, if I need them.

Doing them in Day One lets me tag them by topic. So if I ever need marketing ideas, I can click on that tag and scan through all the entries I’ve written that talk about marketing, and see if there’s anything I can put to work.

The power of three.

I can’t explain why it works. I have theories. But it does work. It’s useful. It’s something literally anyone can do.

Try it yourself. And let me know the results you get. You can leave a comment here.

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If you like this post, there’s a blog full of this kind of stuff. And Side Notes is basically an extension of my Note at the End, which you’ll find in all of my novels. And you can find those by clicking here. Share this post with your friends, if you found it helpful. And buy my books if you’d like to support me and my work!

NEWEST RELEASE

I never used to have anxiety. It’s kind of new. It started for me around 2011, when I was working for an ad agency in Houston. It wasn’t my first agency job, but for some reason it had a bigger impact on me than the others.

The place was a small, boutique shop, aimed mostly at creating marketing materials for clients in the oil and gas industry, and in the medical industry. O&G and hospital systems are the biggest business sectors in the Greater Houston Area. You don’t work in marketing without working for them, at some point.

This little agency wanted to be rebellious and creative, though. It was part of the reason I was attracted to them. And I went in hard—I made demands for salary, for remote work, for benefits. I gave them my background and experience, and we all seemed to like each other.

Here’s the thing about working for an agency—any agency, in any creative field—there are certain unreasonable expectations.

Work/Life balance? Forget it. It’s a marketing talk point, not a real thing. Because every agency I ever worked for had certain unwritten rules that superseded the jargon you found on their job listings. And the number one rule was, “We own you.”

I’m not even exaggerating here. Throughout the agency part of my career, I had employers tell me all sorts of absurd things. One agency sent a memo to everyone on staff to tell us that we were not allowed to participate in creative things outside of the office, such as participating in the 48-Hour Film Festival or exhibiting work in museums or art shows, or even writing novels or short stories. “We’re paying you for your creativity, so if you’re doing creative work outside of the office, you’re stealing.”

I kid you not, that’s a real quote.

That bothered me, but I gave it the middle finger at the time, and carried on. Because it was a ridiculous thing to say, and it was unenforceable besides. I mean… I didn’t sign any contract saying I couldn’t create outside of work. And even if I did… sue me. There are some things contract law can’t mandate. I’m betting that’s one of them. I was willing to roll those dice, anyway.

The boutique agency, though, somehow they got to me in a different way.

There is, in the agency world, a long standing tradition of creatives being effectively chained to their desks. There’s an expectation that everyone will gleefully arrive early and work late. Very early. Very late. And on weekends. On holidays. I was once asked if I could come straight to the office after a family member’s funeral.

That’s the kind of place this was. And it didn’t seem to matter that I was generating content faster than anyone could ever reasonably expect a writer to produce it. The fact that I was checking in at 6AM but leaving at 5PM was “concerning.”

Even when I was getting up and starting my work day at 4AM, from my home office, then zipping to work to be there by 6AM, and working through lunch every day, it was still “concerning” that I wasn’t there past 5PM. My explanation that I had a wife and home responsibilities and a life outside the office was rejected as “not committed enough.”

So, eventually, they fired me for not being enough of a team player. And they cited that I had asked for more money as something that offended them as well. They had agreed to all of this, of course, when I came onboard. But it was my fault, and I was greedy.

The thing about me—and I think this may apply to a lot of creatives—is that I take criticism hard. I have a very solid work ethic. And I produce. A lot. My writing output is easily quadruple that of most writers. And I do it again and again, every day, always. But when people tell me that I’m letting them down, it haunts me. It kills me. Because I have this work ethic built into my DNA.

I will work on those weekends and holidays and funeral days. I do work. Work often consumes me.

That’s no way to live, I’m just putting it out there that it’s how my life has been for a very long time.

I started feeling anxiety while I was working for that little agency. I would wake up in the middle of the night, feeling so much dread and existential horror, all I wanted was for God to kill me. I was never suicidal. I could never go to that. It’s not in me. But I was fine with God giving me the mercy of sweet, sweet oblivion.

I no longer feel like that. But it feels like that time in my life altered my DNA somehow. Because before that experience I could shake off stress and just live, feeling happy with my life. And since then, I… can’t.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression. I have joy in my life. I love that I have become—am continuously becoming—the author I always dreamt of being. I have good family, good friends. We’re starting over in a new community, so there’s some room to grow in all these areas. But I have a good life.

The anxiety is just something I can’t quite figure out how to get rid of.

I study this. I study philosophy, at least, and I’m always looking for the cure for this. If I ever find it, I’ll let you know. But for the most part, I am continuously suffering from this nagging sense that refuses to resolve into anything solid or concrete, that I can actually deal with.

It has no cause. It has no target. It’s simply there.

I can’t even describe it in terms that make sense. Sometimes I feel like I’m “bad” or “doing something wrong.” Sometimes I feel like a fraud. Sometimes I feel like bad things are happening, or about to happen. Sometimes I feel like no one likes me or loves me or wants me around. Sometimes I feel like I can’t relate to anyone or anything, no one understands me, I don’t even understand myself.

A lot of the time I feel like a failure. Like I screwed up, missed out on all the opportunities I had.

The thing is, my rational mind tells me the truth about this: None of this stuff is real. There’s nothing here for me to be afraid of. I didn’t screw up. I didn't fail. I am loved and respected.

But this isn’t something rational. And it won’t be reasoned away.

And so every single day, I start over. Every day, I try to figure it out, I try to find the path out of this muck. And I think back on the time before, when I never felt afraid or felt dread or felt like I was worthless. I remind myself that those are the lies, and that the truth is something brighter, lighter, more nourishing.

It’s a work in progress.

Anyway, there’s no real point to this post. I don’t have any words of wisdom to offer on this. But maybe you feel like this, too. So, we feel it together. And this post… it’s therapy. For me. Maybe for you.

Maybe, one day, all this anxiety just stops.

I’d be very grateful.

Get your copy of Aftershock

My latest book (Aftershock) isn’t exactly autobiographical, but once I put that last period on it I realized something kind of weird and profound: It’s metaphorically autobiographical. The whole series is.

And I never quite realized it.

The whole Quake Runner: Alex Kayne series really started as a contest entry. I took James Paterson’s Masterclass, and in it he invited people to submit outlines for a book, for the opportunity to be chosen to co-author something with him. Such a thing can turn out to be a launchpad for a success rocket, so I was keen to give it a go.

At that time, Kara and I were living full time in a 38-foot RV. We were traveling, whenever we could, and living on the road. I was writing books and producing podcasts, and starting to do some work for Draft2Digital. And so, when I wrote my outline, I was in a headspace that leaned toward “travel.” And, because I’d only sort of recently stopped working for a string of companies that just could not have cared any less about me, I was still sort of thinking in terms of “escape.”

Throw into that mix an unhealthy dose of artist angst, and there was this part of me that felt guilty about not doing things the way everyone else does. Instead of working my desk job, like I was supposed to, I was instead telling fanciful lies about a made-up reality. That’ll guilt ya.

Looking back now, I can see this stuff was at the heart of what was most on my mind. I’ve always had a fascination with “escape,” with withdrawing, going off grid, disappearing. I’ve studied it. I’ve read books, articles, and blog posts, I’ve watched documentaries and Netflix series and YouTube videos, I’ve listened to podcasts and interviews. I’m fascintaed by it all. But I’m only just starting to realize I was also acting it all out, to a degree.

Kara and I spent two years living in that RV, traveling as far and wide as we could. And then, for about four years after that, I traveled the world by air, attending author conferences and other events, sometimes spending a month or two away from home. It could be grueling at times, honestly. But it was an adventure.

And then Kara and I got back on the road, this time in a camper, and then eventually in a van. And for two more years, we traveled the US, exploring some of the nooks and crannies we couldn’t have gotten to the first time, in our giant RV.

All of that is important and relevant, but let me get back on the path for minute.

When I pitched that story to James Patterson, the idea was that a female protagonist would be a fugtive, and that she was being hunted so that someone (the government, mostly) could get their hands on the next-level AI software she’d invented. That should sound familiar, if you’ve been reading Quake Runner. But that character wasn’t named Alex Kayne—she was named Jane. Because I wanted the title of that book to be “Run, Jane, Run.”

That seemed like a very Patterson title to me.

Ok, briefly, back to the travel.

After the RV but before the van, there was that period of traveling by air. And at that time, I often found myself hanging out in resorts and hotels, attending and speaking at conferences, and often with a lot of down time. I use downtime for writing, so that meant I was writing from a lot of inspiring places.

I was at a Disney resort hotel, having finished breakfast on a day when I had nothing else scheduled, when I finished one of my Kotler books but wanted to start something new. And so I wrote a scene in which a protagonist named Alex Kayne was meeting with a potential client.

That should sound familiar. But wait…

Alex Kayne, at that point, was a male protagonist. The series was called “The Consultant” (a title I’m repurposing for something I’m co-authoring with Nick Thacker). And there was no AI. Alex was a fugitive, but he was more of a Jason Bourne type.

The thing is, this was cool and all. But for some reason it wasn’t quite working for me. It felt played, for one thing. It felt like it had been done before, and by me, no less.

I liked the idea of a fugitive. I liked the idea of that fugitive being framed, and wanting to help others. But this wasn’t working.

And that’s when I remembered my pitch to Patterson.

That hadn’t gotten as much traction as I’d hoped it would. Someone else got that coveted co-author spot. But my outline got some kudos from people online, and I had tucked it away as something I could circle back to.

The premise was somewhat similar to “The Consultant.” So… why not cross the streams?

I switched Alex’s gender, did some rewrites to the scene, and then started leaning in on the stuff from my Run, Jane, Run outline that felt exciting to me. And before I knew it, Quake Runner: Alex Kayne was born.

Now, four books into that series, I consider it some of my best work. I love the characters. I love the plots. I think it’s amazing.

But it never occurred to me that it was semi-autobiographical.

Just to be clear, I’m not a literal fugitive. But I’ve felt like a fugitive at times—running from the “crime” of not having a “normal job.”

I’m an escape artist, like Alex, in that I use clever tricks to keep myself on the road and making a living.

And because I travel so much, I have some unique insight into what a fugitive lifestyle might feel like.

It all makes sense, eventually. Ultimately. Once I started thinking about it, I realized where the parallels were.

And this recent book was the clincher.

I won’t give anything away, but there are definite echoes of recent events in my life, woven into Kayne’s story. As Kara and I shift from life on the road to life in our new house, there are echoes of that in the events of Aftershock. There’s loss, and there’s gain. There’s old dreams and new plans. There’s challenges and there’s resolutions.

And it wasn’t until that final scene, that final page, that I really clicked to how much of the story was being fed by my own life and experiences.

You’'ll just have to read it to see what I mean. But you won’t mind, I think.

At any rate, the observation I wanted to make for this post was simply this: As writers (artists, storytellers, filmmakers, content creators), our lives are the fertile soil for what we create. The more experiences we have, the more robust the crops we produce. I see my writing and content creation as a service to the world, and so I have an obligation to go live as rich and full a life as possible, so that it translates to the page.

That’s my job. Even when I don’t fully remember it.

So, in that way, I guess, all of my work is “semi-autobiographical.”
It isn’t about me. But it does represent me.

And your work probably does the same for you.

You know, I have “Write a blog post” on my schedule, recurring three days a week. But sometimes… I don’t want to.

Sometimes I don’t have a topic. Or my time is in a crunch. Or I’ve just eaten a big, carb-heavy lunch and all I really want to do is nap. Sometimes, writing anything feels like torture, even if I do love it.

Today is a good example of that.

The last thing I really wanted to do right now was sit down and write. It’s excruciating. I’m tired. I’ve got so many other things on my task list. I had that big, carb-heavy lunch.

And yet, here I am.

I love writing. I love everything about it. And I write a lot—multiple thousands of words every single day, stretching back years. I can’t recall a day when I didn’t write, actually. There is always the writing.

Still, that doesn’t make it easy.

You’re going to have days where the writing (or whatever else it is that you love and want to do) feels like someone is pinning you to the wall so they can drain all the blood from you. It happens. And on those days, it’s incredibly easy to say, “It’s fine. I’ll live. I don’t have to.”

And you’re right on all three counts.

But just think, if you could go ahead and push through, write something, just think what you’ve accomplished.

More than 99% of the world ever accomplishes, in terms of writing. Because instead of writing nothing, you wrote something.

That’s really all this destiny of yours asks of you. Write something. Create something. Do something.

It’s true for writing. It’s true for everything.

An inch worm scales a 100-foot Oak tree one tiny cluster of centimeters at a time. A canyon gets carved out of miles-deep stone one drop of water at a time. A marathoner runs 50K one step at a time. And you, if you would dare to write, finish a short story, a blog post, an article, a novel, one word at a time.

Doing something consistently can change your life and change the world.

Do something. Even when it sucks. Even when you suffer. Do the one little thing that you’re able to do, even if it’s not quite as much as you could do. Just do the thing, and then do it again.

And watch what happens.

I think these may be the three most powerful words you can use:

“That’s on me.”

I have an obsession with personal empowerment. I believe, wholeheartedly, that regardless of your age, race, gender, sexual preference, education—regardless of any aspect of your life that you might perceive as limiting you in some way—you can be empowered beyond it. But I also equally believe that it’s entirely up to you to choose empowerment.

In Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl talks about his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp. He talks of his tremendous, heart-wrenching loss—his family, his friends, his career, his life’s work. But one theme that arose out of that experience was that, ultimately, the circumstances and tragedies and horrors of his life did not define who he was. Ultimately, it was his own choices, his own perception of himself and the events of his life, that defined him.

He defined himself, by choosing how to frame his self perception.

That’s a profound way to think of life. It shifts you from being a victim of your circumstances to being an untouchable, ungovernable power in and of yourself. Your freedom and liberty can be taken from you, as can your health and even your life. But what no one can touch is who you are. You can choose. And if you choose, you are undefeatble. Not even death can take you away from you.

And what this comes down to, for me at least, is the idea that ultimately, the more responsibility we take for what happens in our lives and in the world around us, the more empowered we become. We have more agency when we are the one responsible for it all.

I make a lot of mistakes. I screw up often. Part of that comes from a willingness to experiment, to try things, to put myself out there. When you do that consistently, you’re going to occasionally bomb. It’s inevitable.

And sometimes the screwups come from someone else. Someone who works for you, or someone you’re partnered with, or someone you have no authority over at all—sometimes what other people do puts things wrong, despite even your best plans.

In either case, one simple three-word phrase restores your power in the situation: That’s on me.

By owning responsibility for it, rather than blaming someone else or passing the buck, you’re saying to the world that you have some authority over it. And because it’s something that got screwed up, people are typically going to be willing to let you have that authority. “It’s your mess, then. You fix it.”

And yes, this means you’re now the one who pays the penalty for whatever went wrong. But that’s ok. It’s rare that problems have no solution. And most solutions take less effort and energy than we fear. If you’re the one willing to roll up your sleeves and deal with something that no one else is willing to deal with, you are also the only one who gets the credit, and gets the victory.

And if you are then willing to share that credit and victory with others anyway, you’ll also pile up the good will and favors and gratitude from others.

Owning it lets you win. Choosing to be the one responsible gives you power.