I did some podcasts with some famous comedians. And every single one of them was like, of course, dude. Like every comedian who gets their first special, they're like the year after is like the worst year of their life. I

completely get it. I struggled with understanding why. Am I ungrateful? Yeah. Yeah, right. But that's really fascinating. I don't think it's not something that I knew about you, but it's, of course, if I'd really thought about it, I would have been able to guess that that wouldn't have been.

success. Um, I think if it, if it had happened more gradually, cause like my online business, right? Like my online business basically grew like 10, 20% a year for like eight years straight. So it ended up being a, making a lot of money and being, but it was each year was like 20% better than the last year. So it's like my mind had time to adjust but then this comes along and suddenly suddenly you're like you know 500 xing or 200 xing whatever you were at before and uh and like your brain just can't keep up like it's how did you like

recalibrate and come out the other end? And how did you kind of readjust your thinking to say, okay, we're going to strive for things now. We know that it might not reach the meteoric success of this, but there's another, you know, set of foundations that we're. It's

funny. So the next book, Everything is Fucked, was very much motivated by all this, you know so so it's the core thesis that we just talked about everything is fucked is like what is it about being comfortable and affluent that like fucks with you yeah makes us so like neurotic you know uh and it's because i was going through that so that it's like i've always written the books that I need to read. And so Everything is Fucked was exactly kind of what I needed to read. There's a lot of like just subtle mental adjustments. You know, again, like realizing that I can say no to a lot of this stuff. Like it took me like a year or two to realize like I don't have to accept all these speaking gigs. Like, you know, I'm tired. I'm like I'm exhausted. Like I don't have to say yes. I don't need the money. Like you could start saying no to this stuff. You know, that it took a while for that to sink in and then and then kind of finding another why. You know, like I think for me it was. you know, so much of my identity, and I actually didn't realize this until the pandemic, but like so much of my identity was kind of wrapped up in like being the upstart internet blogger who's kind of like, you know, overcoming, you know, somehow overcomes the odds and becomes this huge bestselling author, like a big part of my identity was wrapped up in that. And I realized that, that holding onto that was not helpful. It was actually kind of, that was a big part of what was making me miserable. And so letting go of that and just kind of accepting like, okay, I'm an author now, but you know, maybe I won't be forever Or yeah, I'm an internet entrepreneur, but maybe I won't be forever. It doesn't- You're

not your label.

Exactly.