Almost making friends with a celebrity but f***ing around instead (not-quite weekly wrap #17)
This weekly wrap-up is not so much a wrap-up but a confession of a f--- up.
A few years ago I almost made friends with a celebrity, but I screwed it up.
Well, online celebrity at the least, but fairly mainstream famous too. I’ll tell you exactly who in a moment.
I’m over it now, but even in the first place I wasn’t upset that I missed out on becoming adjacent-famous, it was that I know that this person is a legitimately cool dude amongst a vast line-up of ‘Internet personalities’ that are not so much.
So here’s the story.
I had my first foray into podcasting in 2014. I did it for the same primary reason I do it now - to have great conversations that inspire me and hopefully meet and make some really cool new friends along the way.
I’ve been really lucky in this regard in that I have made some fantastic friends and deepened some friendships through this medium. I can sometimes tell when a guest and I are likely to take our relationship to the next level.
Even those conversations that didn’t turn into lasting friendships ended up generally being profoundly impactful experiences that stayed with me for years. It’s just awesome to meet and converse with such amazing people and have a very sensible excuse to do so.
After 22 episodes I took a break from the pod.
A year or so later I accepted that enough time and life had passed that I was itching to get back into podcasting again, and I started making a wish list of guests. Of course, I was too shy to make the asks I really wanted to and started exploring what would be more ‘realistic’ ambitions.
Ugh. F***k realistic ambitions.
One of those realistic ambitions for guests was an emerging blogger I was a huge fan of - and had been for a while - who I reached out to cold via Facebook message. We exchanged a couple of nice messages and he was very polite and gracious and accepted to come on my tiny little podcast for a chat and asked me for next steps.
Then life happened.
I won’t go into specifics because they are boring and - to be perfectly honest - barely more than excuses. I may be being harsh on myself but when you read the rest of this little story you might want to smack me across the back of my head yourself.
I can’t even believe I’m publicly confessing to this!
Anyway, as you can probably guess, I practically ghosted this poor guy and eventually sent a lame apology and let him know I needed to put my plans on hold for a bit. I had some fires I needed to deal with first and - as far as I can remember - he was very compassionate and understanding too.
What I did not know is that this emerging, somewhat niche blogger in the self-help space was just about to release his first book. A book that would go on to become a world-wide bestseller and international phenomena and thrust him into the mainstream (or at least almost-mainstream) spotlight for several years!
That book is called The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F**ck! and that very cool would-be guest and could-have-been friend is Mark Manson, who has sold well over 20 million copies of his first book, has almost 2.7 million YouTube subscribers of his own, and is still doing excellent work to this day.
Please let me be clear, I’m not jealous or even envious of Mark. And it’s not because I’m not a jealous or envious type (I may be a tiny bit). It’s because I genuinely respect and admire what Mark has put out into the world, how he’s reacted to his explosive fame, and what he’s done with it since.
So let me tell you why I decided to write this today.
It’s been about a year now that I’ve been telling a few friends, clients and - most importantly - myself, that I’m working on writing and producing a deep dive on values. I’m not talking about a book or anything extensively long-form. This is just a simple piece of content amongst various other things in my ideas lab. And it’s not something I’m expecting especially will go viral and get me featured in magazines like my end of year ritual post.
But still. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do but I haven’t done it yet.
Why?
Because f***ck why!
The bottom line is I just haven’t.
Okay okay, I write this partly in jest. Of course I’ve done other things, had other experiences, other circumstances, and am not actually beating myself up about it, but…
Guess what Mark Manson (yeah, the same Mark Manson!) just released less than 24 hours ago?
A 4-hour deep dive podcast on How to Find and Live by Your Values
I haven’t watched/listened to it yet, but I will and I’m sure it’s fantastic.
I still intend to write my own post on the topic, for all 7 people that might read half of it. And I still intend to do a bunch of other things on my ambitious backlog of personal projects and creative ideas.
Maybe some of them will actually happen, and maybe I’ll make some really cool friends along the way.
But here’s the thing.
This cosmic sign, which prompted me to write this, wasn’t asking me to just vomit a somewhat-funny and totally self-deprecating confession of my own distractedness or deviations. And it is not a call for sympathy by any means.
I believe it’s simply a poignant reminder to myself and hopefully a useful one for you.
A reminder that no matter how in-the-spotlight or in-the-shadows you might be, if you have any kind of itch to scratch (particularly a creative one), scratch it quickly and fearlessly!
Not for the sake of becoming internet famous or befriending celebrities. Not even for the sake of accomplishing anything in particular, actually.
Do it so that when a few years pass, and you realise that you’ve been stuck in analysis paralysis or afraid of taking action because of whatever shyness or insecurities hold you back - whilst someone else has just been ignoring realistic-ness and getting on with it - you don’t look back and cringe at a series of sliding door moments.
And look, if you do happen to miss a bunch of sliding doors, don’t worry. Nobody catches every train and there’s only one final destination anyway. So all we can do is be kind to ourself and others, have as much fun as possible along the way, and try to learn the subtle art of not… well… you know.
P.S. Mark, if you happen to be reading this because someone wants to hilariously sprinkle some salt on my wounds, I’m sorry. I know you missed out on making such an amazing friend and having the greatest conversation of your life, and I’ll gladly try to make it up to you if I ever have the chance.
P.P.S. If this resonated with you but you want to read something a little more serious and practical, here are some suggestions:
