Midlife-Crisis Mushroom Cloud: What Do You Love Right Now, and Why Aren’t You Doing It?
This is embarrassing. Almost every day, I coach my clients on keeping their email lists and social media presence consistently active, but, as you may or may not have noticed, I haven’t written a new blog post or posted anything significant on our social accounts in four months. Life got difficult last fall, and I fell off the wagon. Hard. I think some of my writing muscles atrophied, because wringing this piece out of myself has been a Herculean effort.
…But you know what? That is absolutely, 100% fine.
My clients sometimes apologize to me when they miss a deadline, which I always find a bit funny, because they’re paying me—I’m not the boss, here! Nor do I want to be. I’m your employee, your coach, your cheerleader, and above all, a human who recognizes your humanity. As AI continues to threaten, well, everything, I think leaning into our humanity is the most important endeavor we can undertake right now. (Shoutout to our buddy Dave Hersh, who’s working on a business book about this as we speak.)
That’s actually why Eva and I started Copilot Publishing in the first place. Years of pushing ourselves too hard up the corporate ladder left us utterly burnt out. Our mental and physical health had been compromised, and we realized that if we wanted to work in a place that put our well-being first, we’d have to build it ourselves. So we did. Which means when my world imploded into a midlife-crisis mushroom cloud, I was allowed to step away from promoting the company. And when our intern had a bunch of finals to study for, we gave her time off so she could focus. And when Eva’s not feeling well, I get to lovingly berate her for not resting enough. (Girl, you better not be at your desk right now!)
I know many people do not have the luxury of giving themselves this kind of latitude, but I really, really want you to try—at least when you need to. Because you deserve it. Because you are human. Because, as Mary Oliver wrote in “Wild Geese,”
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Today, while I was driving my car and agonizing over what to write for this piece, I saw a handwritten sign for an estate sale and made a spur-of-the-moment decision to stop and take a look. I’m a bit of a voyeur, endlessly fascinated by sonder—the awareness that each individual you encounter has a life as intricate and multifaceted as your own—and I could not resist the temptation to step into the remains of someone’s home. I entered the house with the hushed reverence I’d feel at a funeral. Someone’s grandfather lived here, I thought, and these are his things.
I’ve never owned a full matching set of glassware, and after I searched through the dusty kitchen cabinets for one, I stopped to admire the sunny view of the yard through the window above the sink. How many times had the occupant of this house looked at those trees while doing the dishes? And when he looked for the last time, washed the last dish, was he aware of that fact, or did he leave a coffee mug in the sink and think to himself, I’ll take care of that tomorrow? There was an out-of-tune piano in the living room, and I wondered if it belonged to him or someone else in his family. A cabinet full of old records. Vintage bottles of aftershave in the bathroom. Bow ties, cummerbunds, and scarves strewn across the bed. Shelves of medical textbooks.
I overheard the host of the estate sale say he was a military surgeon. I bet that guy dealt with some work stress. I bet he saved a lot of people, too. Such a big job, and yet at the end of it all, his life was reduced to a house full of things being sold at liquidation prices. I left with a crystal set of wine glasses and champagne flutes for $7. A toast to you, dear stranger. I promise I’ll think of you every time I use them, a tiny echo of your brief existence.
I suppose this is all just a very long-winded way of saying, “Life is short. You should be kind to yourself and do things you enjoy.” For four months, the most important thing I could do was try to heal my broken heart. Now that I’ve patched it up a bit, I’ve returned my attention to the business—and I truly love it. I love talking to you like this. I love my clients. I love their books. If you’re going through a rough patch, I think you should take all the time you need to take care of yourself, marketing be damned. But if things are going great, and you want to publish a book, I think you should do it—and I think you should email us.
