inspirational quote from Stephen King

Over the past few months, I've been fighting a battle with a book called The Overstory.

It's written beautifully. Every page is poetry. I've never read anything like it.

... but it's also hella dense.

(In fairness, though, as a grown man who uses the word "hella," I may not be the best judge of whether a book is dense or not.)

Anyway, as I was heading to Chicago last Thursday, I was about 60 pages from finishing the 172,816-word beast.

And there was a quote from Naval Ravikant rattling around in my brain:

"Read what you love until you love to read."

It literally took me months to finish The Overstory. And although I'm glad I read it, it was like eating a kale salad...

And I was ready for a cheeseburger.

I was ready for a book that was easy to read. One I could get lost in. One that would help me get back into the joy of reading.

So while I was walking through the airport, I ducked into a Hudson News store and grabbed Stephen King's new book:

If It Bleeds

If you've never read any Stephen King -- you should. He's an incredible storyteller.

Start with Carrie. It was his first novel. It's short (by Stephen King standards). And while I've only seen bits and pieces of the movie...

The book does a great job of making you sympathize with Carrie -- which is something that, based on my perception, is missing from the movie. (Although I could be wrong about that.)

Anyway, If It Bleeds is a collection of 3 novellas. One of them is called "The Life Of Chuck."

I won't give the plot away or anything like that, but here's what I will say:

Chuck loves to dance.

He learned how to dance from his grandmother, who taught him in the kitchen of her old Victorian home.

In middle school, Chuck joins a dance club called Spinners and Twirlers. He is one of 3 boys in the club. And he is the best dancer.

His favorite dance partner is a girl named Cat.

And the two of them tear up the dance floor at the school's Fall Fling dance.

A crowd forms a circle around them and starts clapping -- you know, the whole 9 yards.

It's like a scene out of a coming-of-age movie.

Afterwards, Chuck wanders out into cool air of the courtyard and looks up at the stars. Here's the passage:

"The universe is large, he thought. It contains multitudes. It also contains me, and in this moment I am wonderful. I have a right to be wonderful."

There are layers to this quote -- which you'll understand if you read the story. But in this email, we're just focusing on the first layer...

The words of it.

As creators -- people pursuing a dream, we have something in us that, deep down, we believe is wonderful.

And maybe if it's not wonderful now, we believe there's potential for it to be wonderful one day.

But whether it's through societal pressure...

Painful self-consciousness...

Or something else...

We don't nourish that part of ourselves.

Somewhere along the line, we begin to doubt whether we actually are wonderful...

And whether we even have a right to be wonderful in the first place.

But if we're going to make our dreams a reality...

If we're going to turn our passion into our career...

Or do the thing we've always wanted to do...

We need to believe that we're wonderful (or at least that we have the potential to be wonderful)...

And we need to believe that we have a right to be wonderful too.

Then, we need to get to work.