November of 2008. I had more hair, a flip phone, and absolutely no idea what was coming.
Let the cymbals of popularity tinkle still. Let the butterflies of fame glitter with their wings. I shall envy neither their music nor their colors. — John Adams
Letters of John Adams Addressed to His Wife
“If I’m not famous by 30, I might as well put a bullet in my head.”
That’s an actual sentence I spoke to one of my closest friends. At the time, I was 28.
Fortunately, unlike during my darkest period in college, I wasn’t serious about suicide. Nonetheless, the sentiment was real. I felt like I somehow needed fame. In retrospect, there was a lot of self-loathing from tough childhood experiences, and I desperately hoped that love from without (i.e., from masses of other people) would somehow make up for hate from within.
As luck would have it, I got to test this hypothesis.
The 4-Hour Workweek, my first book, was published in 2007. It hit the New York Times Hardcover Business bestseller list, where it stayed for an unbroken four years and four months. It was quickly translated into approximately 40 languages, and shit went bonkers. Everything changed.
I was 29.
Soon, I was engulfed in a hailstorm of both great and terrible things, and I was utterly unprepared for any of it.
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