Corey Pemberton

Writes dark, character-driven fiction. Blogs about creativity.

On Bucking Trends and Being Great: Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday

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I have a confession to make:

I’ve been putting my life on hold. I’m guilty of doing this from time to time. But last year was my worst (and longest-lasting) experience.

What do I mean?

I’ve adopted the terrible habit of tying my sense of well-being to external metrics. Worst of all? Because they’re external, they’re beyond my control.

It took reading devouring Ryan Holiday’s excellent book Perennial Seller for the epiphany to deliver its cold slap just in time for the new year.

Let me give you some examples of what I mean…

I entered 2017 with a big, bad, audacious goal of making $X a year selling my fiction. I had a different number in mind for my freelance work. I wanted to be 165 pounds with 12 percent body fat.

(And on and on. You get the idea.)

While I wasn’t exactly the paragon of productivity last year, what I lacked in efficiency I made up for in hard work.

Which made it even more maddening when I closed out the year without hitting some of those marks.

If it sounds like a less than blissful way to live, that’s because it is. When your entire life is defined by striving for external metrics:

  • Happiness is delayed
  • Every morning you wake up without being there makes you feel like a failure
  • You deprive yourself from savoring small victories

I tend to put a ton of pressure on myself. (Are you the same way?)

Bottom line: I got so wrapped up in the metrics last year that I started mistaking them for success.

Failing to hit everything I wanted forced me to step back and reevaluate.

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The Stranger by Albert Camus: Finding Life After Alienation

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I should be depressed right now.

After all, I just blew through Albert Camus’s The Stranger. Doesn’t that come with long, thin cigarettes and a spiral into existentialist angst?

Not for me it didn’t. I haven’t spent one second staring out the window muttering “nothing matters.” If anything, reading L’Étranger was a liberating experience.

This was actually a reread for me. The first time was all the way back in my sophomore year of high school. Back then I didn’t get it. My mind was occupied on more important things – like goofing off, whom to ask to homecoming, and what my friends were up to.

Basically all I remembered was that the main character was a weirdo, and he died at the end.

And so The Stranger remained on my shelves collecting dust until I finally decided to give it another go 14 years later. It’s a slim volume. Not the least bit intimidating. Which made it the perfect palate cleanser between the door stops fantasy novels I’ve been reading.

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