But that’s what we’ve agreed to here, haven’t we? We’re not going to lie to each other. My books are not almost gone, this pre-order campaign has been an unsuccessful ordeal, and I find myself constantly grappling with the decision to have written a book in the first place.

That’s the truth. And if that’s your heart you feel going out for me, I say thank you, and I also say: here’s the pre-order link again.

Let’s talk for a minute about doubt and regret and self-loathing. Oh, happy day.

Today is my wife’s birthday. The kids all made cards and notes and illegible drawings. I’m at the office now, wondering what I might do to celebrate her 37th. Jesus, we’re getting old. She’s not on LinkedIn, and besides, I’m pretty sure she’s done with proofreading my writing. Bless her soul; I don’t blame her one bit.

I just texted her asking if she could pick up an ice cream cake. For her birthday. She’s nine months pregnant, due any day now, but she’d be passing the bakery on her way home from carpool, and you know … efficiency!

But look, was there something that struck me as perversely imbalanced after I hit ‘send’? Yes, there was.

It’s a sort of ambient guilt, humming in the background of my mind like an old generator. For the love of all that’s good and decent, I asked my wife to pick up her own birthday cake? Shouldn’t I be the one getting the cake? Isn’t that the whole point of a birthday—to be celebrated, not tasked with your own celebration?

And while we’re on the topic of ice cream cake, who was I trying to fool? A cake after thirteen years of marriage, three kids, and a fourth orbiting inside a placenta ready to go ka-boom any minute? How pathetic have I become? Where is my creativity, my energy, my instinct to express something grand?

We began our relationship (and I don’t think I’m unique in this way) with extravagant birthday celebrations. Overnight stays at hotels, surprise parties at the house, spa days with the girlfriends, jewelry (every single piece returned). Okay, maybe not extravagant, but compared to a cake you have to pick up yourself? Grand, indeed.

At some point, as we flowed down the river of time, we went from recognizing birthdays with extrinsic objects and things to something I want to believe isn’t only laziness and disengagement but a subtler joy less obviously expressed, reliant on a more intentional form of inner awareness.

There is something true and genuine about maturing beyond the trappings of outrageous, out-of-body, but ultimately shallow forms of external validation. Look, if we’re really being honest, I’m sitting here writing about the beauty of internal self-esteem, but if I had enough self-worth to paddle down the tributaries of life only knowing that I know that I’m good enough, I wouldn’t be sitting here writing any of this in the first place.

Asking my wife to pick up her own birthday cake, and following the thoughts that selfless act of gracious gentlemanliness inspired, I got to thinking about what’s really troubling me about this book launch.

I’m not afraid of my book failing. I won’t feel ashamed if readers hate it. I’m sort of dead inside, in that sense, at least.

I’m afraid that I’m behaving like newlyweds do—desperate for extrinsic ornaments because they’re unable, yet, to enjoy the quietude of a more layered relationship.

I’m uncomfortable that if the book succeeds, it’ll succeed because I’m a manipulative marketing fraud, pushing my book into the world with influencers and advertising and posting #1 new release badges to my WhatsApp status and the “limited first-edition hardcovers” line that even I know sounds ridiculous … fighting bleary-eyed for every shred of extrinsic validation I can get my grubby hands on.

There’s this image of the ‘real author’ I can’t seem to shake. He’s in a cabin somewhere in Vermont, surrounded by crumpled pages, hands ink-stained, miles from status updates, influencers, and affiliate links. He laughs with pity every time I refresh my Amazon pre-order page while he writes because he must, not because he hopes it will sell. His words are so undeniable that readers discover his work naturally, like stumbling upon a secret path through the woods. His book doesn’t need giveaways, persuasion tactics (only a few first-edition copies remain!), or free gifts with purchase. It simply exists, and because it exists, the world comes to it.

That’s it, I think. Not that the book will fail, but that I’m a fraud. I’ve taken the lower road, the noisier road, and when the dust settles, the only thing I’ll have proven is that I know how to beg, not how to write.

But is that really true? And like most things, truth and ideas really do exist on a spectrum, and that’s an important point worth thinking about.

Life rarely offers us the clarity of clean categories—good husband or bad, thoughtful or careless, selfless or selfish, fraudulent or genuine. We tend to think in binary rubrics when the truth—or whatever we can conceptualize that approximates truth—lies along a broad and hazy gradient.

A spectrum isn’t a line with neat, labeled ends. It’s a vast expanse where red melts into orange and orange into yellow so seamlessly you couldn’t say where one ends and the next begins. It’s why love can be both joy and pain and why growth isn’t a straight line but a winding path that regrettably circles back on itself before moving forward again.

A mosaic of overlapping notes, one which our brains go to great lengths to avoid, not because we’re unintelligent but because we’re terrified by the complexity and answerless-ness inherent in the rich ambiguity of a continuum of emotions, desires, and character traits.

Am I a fraudulent attention-mongering sellout? Or am I a competent writer trying to see this project through its end goal with honor and integrity?

I don’t know, but I think I’m neither. Or, maybe, and probably more accurately, I’m both.

R.L. Stine’s Masterclass was my favorite of all the writing courses and workshops I’ve taken over the past few years. In his opening lecture, he tells his readers that the most common piece of profound writing advice successful storytellers give to their amateur students is this: “Write from your heart.”

Then Bobby looks into the camera with the cool confidence only one of the world’s best-selling authors of all time could exude and says, “That’s the worst piece of advice I’ve ever heard in my life. It’s utter nonsense. I’ve written over 300 books, and not a single one of them was written from my heart. I’ve never written a single sentence from my heart.”

I love R.L. Stine for saying that, and I think he’s one of the most authentic authors still alive today.

There’s this moment that every parent knows, often unspoken but deeply felt—a sudden, quiet realization that no one’s coming to clap for you. Reminds me of a great Bill Burr skit on motherhood; I won’t get into it now.

The baby’s tantrum subsides, you wipe up the puke from the floor (the carrots look just as much like carrots coming up as they did going down), the LEGO pirate ship you spent all night building is destroyed by a demonic younger sister—and no one stands up to applaud or offer you any sort of recognition.

Isn’t there something so awesome about that? Doing hard things because they’re worth doing, not because anyone is watching.

I say something to this effect in the acknowledgments of my book, the place where authors like to thank all the people who wrote the book for them, or with them, but I always felt there was something disingenuous about that. Authors write their books themselves, and while there is usually a cast of supporting characters who helped make the book better, or the writing process less lonely, they still wrote the book themselves. While that’s a hard thing to feel proud of—again, because no one is applauding you—it’s worth trying to feel proud of.

I stumbled out of bed at 4:30 a.m. every morning for three years. I sat alone in the basement. One sentence. One paragraph. One brick on the canvas at a time.

No one clapped as I revised the same chapter 17 times or paid for another round of edits.

Here’s the truth: Most people have ideas. Fewer people start to execute. Fewer still see something through.

I saw this damn thing through. Of all the things I’ve started and quit, each a barnacle on my collective (and ever-weighty) psyche, this is one thing I finished, and I can say that while I’m not a great writer, and this book isn’t going to win any awards, I did give it a reasonably serious shot. Maybe it’s the best I’m capable of, and that’s something.

Yes, I’m tempted to undercut it—to point to the nagging belief that I’m some kind of fraud—but maybe I can counterbalance my self-loathing over seeking external validation with the recognition that, simply put, I did a hard thing.

I refused to stop when nobody cared if I continued or not. I cared. Maybe that’s enough.

Of course, we all not only seek external validation but need external validation. (That’s why I’m on LinkedIn, after all, broadcasting my inner monologue to you fine people.) But there’s something subtly rich, something almost sacred, in sitting with the quieter kind of pride.

Maybe while the kids are choking each other over who gets to blow out the candles on the birthday cake my wife bought for herself, she and I will feel that richer, subtler joy—the joy of lasting thirteen years, of sacrificing ourselves for these ungracious, psychotic, but beautiful whirling dervishes who each have hearts deeper and wider than all the oceans combined, knowing that there will always be enough left to swim in when summer inevitably comes rolling back around.

Maybe, in between the emails and LinkedIn messages and “only a few first-edition hardcovers left!” headlines, I’ll take a second to think: I did a hard thing, and that’s pretty good.