I thought finishing the book would be such a weight off my shoulders. And don’t get me wrong, it is, but it’s not really done. It was rushed, all in an attempt to finish it before my 34th birthday. All driven by ego. All driven by the desire to say I published it when I was 33 instead of 34. Who the fuck cares? Why not just make it as good as it can be and let it be published when it’s done… when it’s really done, instead of when it’s just at a convenient stopping point. After 5 years of delaying gratification to finish the project and do it the right way, I somehow still, at the end of the day, ended up pursuing the ego-driven desire to have it published a year younger (in the eyes of other people . . . in the record books, for anyone who cared to look — and seriously, who would even care to look?) And so I published it a few days early, before I had time to go through and smooth it out one last time. That’s why there are the cringey parts. That’s why I’m having trouble promoting it. Because I know it wasn’t my best effort. Because I know that it was still rushed to be what it was.

But I guess what other way is there to promote it besides what I’m doing here? Right now? Writing this letter to you?

I guess I could try to get on radio shows and podcasts to discuss the ideas in the book. I’m sure all the leadership gurus would get hard-ons from the content. But is that really what I want to make myself out to be? A talking head? Repeating the same sound bites over and over, a million different times, one single way? Just another broken record. A guy who let his success — or desire for success — remove him from the present moment. Remove him from seeing and experiencing and creating the magic that is possible right here and right now. Just another dead guy. Just another guy asleep within the dream, waiting to die, all in pursuit of some future glory. All so he can be told by other people that he is good and talented and worthy and desirable and whatever the fuck else he doesn’t intrinsically feel in himself.

Yikes.

But, in the end, it’s not really even about the leadership concepts. I only broke those down as a means of justifying my own anarchistic behaviors. So that I could logically, rationally, justify the pursuit of my own emotional whims. Building up my defenses so high that no one could argue against what I was doing without being pulverized by years of scrutinous thought in preparation.

In the end, I just love doing it. I just love making it better. I just love seeing the product come together. Watching as seemingly disparate concepts distill themselves down to just the right potency. Creating a harmony of interaction I never imagined could exist. But at some point I need it to be done. I need it to be done so that I can share it with the rest of the world. Share it with you, my friend. Send it out there and start on something new, like these letters.

Do you feel this same compulsion? Do you find it as debilitating as I? Do you know what I’m talking about?

Anyway, now that it’s done I have to find something else to fill my time with. I have to face the great void, once again. I have to find some other way to give my life purpose. Easier said than done. Part of me wonders if it took me so long to finish writing the book for no other reason than because I didn’t want to (wasn’t ready to) face this reality yet. I was still riding high from the insecurity-driven ambition, pushing me to finish the book (the same ambition that pushed me to start writing it in the first place). But now that the book is done, and gone, it’s left me asking, what’s next?

It’s like I’ve been climbing this mountain for so long, nearly as long as I can remember, and now all of a sudden I’ve realized that I’m on perfectly level ground again, at elevation 0. With nothing gained besides a scar or two and — one can only hope — a halfway decent story to tell about the experience. Countless peaks in the distance, but who could decide which one to pursue? And will they end up just being more false summits, like this one? Life truly is a game where you can climb and climb and climb and, even long after reaching every summit you’ve set your eyes on ascending, you end up in the exact same place you started. Damn peculiar.

You just get better stories and more experience for your next hike. But that’s all we’re doing anyway: just ascending the endless mountain. Summiting our peak only to realize all it did was get us right back to where we were before we started. In the great void. The great unknown. And who can stand to be in such a place? At least for very long. Without aim, without direction, without purpose. How do you not let the anxiety tear you apart? How do you hold it all together?

You just choose to do something, not for the potential destination it will bring (you will reach), but for the experience of the hike itself. And, in that case, the way you hike becomes more important than the direction you are hiking. It’s all about embracing and appreciating the experience. Which means it’s all about doing it as well as you can. As well as can be done. Caring about it. And when you care about it, you try to do it well. You try to do it with a high amount of quality. You don’t just try to get it done, because there will always be something else to do . . . there will always be another mountain to summit. Instead, you focus on doing it as well as you can. As well as it can be done. That’s what ends up giving your life purpose. Not based on creating a future outcome, but by living this moment better. Living it as well as you can. That’s how you decide what’s a good life. That’s what I meant about the question: what is a paper well-written soon became: what is a life well spent? In either scenario, all you’re trying to do is live the best you can live, in the moment.

Yes, adding some type of pinnacle adds a build and climax to the story, (and who doesn’t like a good orgasm?), but in the end why chase that if it means missing out on the entire experience that preceded it . . . all of the flirting, the introduction, the foreplay. Letting the tension build until it is no longer bearable to resist. That’s where the real fun comes from. That’s where the real life is lived. In the aliveness that can only come from that deep, primal, instinctual animal impulse — from that desire to explode, to express, to be everywhere and do everything . . . all at once. To be purely in the moment.

So, I don’t really know the point of this letter, or if there even is one. I guess that’s what I was just trying to say. Sometimes what you do doesn’t need a point, at least not while you are doing it. The end point may be realized later, but in the moment of action, it’s okay sometimes to just do it for the experience of doing it. After all, isn’t that what we’re all here for anyway? To experience what we’re experiencing? To live a life worthy of living? To feel? Something? Anything? Even if from all of the self-indulgent ways you know are clearly unfeasible to sustain?

Who knows?

In the end it will always be whatever you choose to make it.

Anyway, I hope you are doing well.

I’ll write again soon (I’m aiming for every two weeks or so. I feel like that will get us into a good correspondence.) I promise it won’t always be this melancholic — it’s just the downswing of this whole mental illness thing — but honestly at this point I just have to write whatever my life circumstances dictate I write. I’m plum dry of wild and crazy ideas. Or maybe I just don’t have the heart to share them anymore. They all feel so . . . fake. Artificially stimulating. Arbitrarily important. Just another digital drug, delivered in pixels of binary code straight through the retinas of unsuspecting addicts.

But where’s the juice? Where’s the substance? Where’s the love?

Again, who knows?

Either way, write back if you want. I know you’re busy but I always love to hear from you.

​Tony