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LM: #366: The barely bearable burden of your life’s work
It’s my birthday today and I’m not getting younger. So the thing I experience at the end of every book is stronger than ever.
I was having dinner with a friend also writing a book, and he told me, “If I was in an accident tonight, as I was dying in the ER, I would feel very distraught over not finishing.”
This sounds crazy because you’d expect him to think of his wife and kids. But I understood completely.
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The other day, I scheduled a blog post to go out a few months from now. It shares my entire unrevised manuscript.
I don’t plan on dying. But if I do, this post will go live and the world will at least have my book. (If all goes well, hopefully I won’t forget to un-schedule it.)
Scheduling that post has brought me an inordinate amount of inner peace. Because the same desire for significance that motivates us to embark on work that matters makes the final stretch of any masterpiece the most harrowing: You’re in the odd position of feeling you’ve done your life’s work, while also wanting to live long enough to see how it goes.
So the closer you get to the finish, the more you stand to lose.
Yes, it’s supposed to feel that heavy.
Aphorism: “To lament that we shall not be alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago.” —Montaigne
Cool: Someone will get rich hacking together an AI-camera and water jets to make a consumer-grade Squirrel soaker 9000
Best,
David
