Please Don’t Do This To Yourself

It wasn’t exactly a nervous breakdown, but it was something close.

Around the time I was finishing Ego is the Enemy, I ran into a wall.

I had just watched American Apparel implode. I had lost a mentor and friend I had looked up to and cared about (who had let me know the feeling was not mutual). The talent agency I started at went bust, too.

These people who said they “saw themselves in me” turned out to be people they didn’t want to be. I myself was becoming someone I did not want to be. I was working all the time. I was splitting my time between Austin and Los Angeles. I was angry and stressed all the time. I worked late, taking and making phone calls well past midnight, as I had seen Dov Charney do for years (something I wrote about recently). To say I was burned out was an understatement.

I remember a panic attack because the wifi wasn’t connecting. I remember being too tired to think. I remember being glued to my phone. I remember juggling way too many balls at the same time. I remember coming across a quote from Bertrand Russell that the first sign of losing your mind was the belief that your work was terribly, terribly important.

I ended up telling this story at the beginning of Ego is the Enemy, but it’s something I had to work out in my actual life, too. Therapy. Some…