Failure is NOT the END | Steven Pressfield on Patience, Purpose, and Living Unconventionally

Mr. Steven Pressfield, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are we feeling?

Well, thanks, Nick. Thanks for having me here. Thanks for coming up here, making this long schlep out from Boston.

Yeah, you live in a beautiful area, I'll tell you what. And we were joking around, you've been here since 1993, which is coincidentally the year that I was born. Yeah, you've really made it your own. So we're here to talk a little bit about Government Cheese, your brand new memoir. So tell us a little bit about the name Government Cheese. It's pretty unique.

Um, back in the days before food stamps and voucher-type programs, the way governments helped poor people put food on the table was they gave them food. They gave them surplus food, you know, powdered milk and cheese and pinto beans and canned peaches and stuff like that. And I was driving trucks at the time in North Carolina, and this was one of the loads that I would deliver to poor communities out on, on the coastal of North Carolina. And it just was a metaphor in the end, I thought, for writing, even though I wasn't thinking about it at that time, in the sense that to me, a writer delivers a load.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you pull in, you deliver something, and in this case, government cheese and stuff like that was stuff that went on people's tables. It wasn't like you were delivering color TVs or anything like that. It was something that was keeping people alive. And I just loved the idea, or you could just see what a difference it made. So anyway, government cheese is a metaphor in my mind for the writer's contribution, we hope. to readers.

Yeah, I found all of the subjects around trucking and transportation and delivery very interesting because I actually worked for a transportation management technology company. And I would go to these trucking companies and help them get better communication with their drivers and sell a software to the dispatch team. And so just like you, I have a little bit of a relationship to transportation. In that part of the book, I thought it was really interesting how you talked about delivering this government surplus food and none of the lots were ever paved. So you'd be pulling into church parking lots that were dirt or seashells. I mean, what was that experience like?

Well, that's just the way it is, or at least the way it was there in, you know, in rural communities anywhere. You know, paving is not, you know, who can afford to pave something? You know, so it's dirt lots or along the coast, a lot of them are paved with seashells. You know, that's just the way it was. Yeah.

Yeah, it's interesting. You said at one point in the book that you love this country. And when you think about those dirt lots and you think about delivering government surplus food, you're reminded that, yeah, there are some ugly parts of the United States, but at the end of the day, you really love this country. So could you talk about that?

Well, actually, I didn't even think of those towns as ugly at all. I thought they were really beautiful, and I think they still are beautiful. Um, these coastal towns in North Carolina, it's the same in South Carolina, a lot of other— everywhere, you know, Colorado, everywhere. There's so many. Once you get out from the cities, the place— this country is an amazing place, and it certainly is beautiful. Like, these little towns were on sounds, Pamlico Sound, place like that, that was fishing grounds, you know. And a lot of these— so you'd have the roads would be right on the water. And you could see, watch shrimp boats going by and stuff like that. And the trees were, you know, live oaks with, you know, what do you call that stuff? Spanish lace that comes down from it. Spanish moss, is that what it is? Spanish moss coming down. So it's beautiful. It's beautiful.

Yeah. Do you encourage listeners today who haven't left their home states to get behind the wheel of a car and take a little bit of a road trip?

Definitely. I mean, you're a traveler, Nick, right? You've been all kinds of countries. Definitely. You know, I was probably everywhere in this country, you know, many times.

Yeah, you lived in your van for a while.

Yeah, that was— I lived for quite a while.

With a cat. With your cat.

Yeah, with my cat.

Yeah, my fiancée loves cats, and so every time an audio chapter would come up where you would dedicate something to your cat, I would grab her and she would listen to it.

Ah, yeah.

Which is funny. So you don't have any— you don't have any cats anymore?

No, out here there's coyotes, you know, so I don't want to have an indoor cat. I don't want to keep a cat indoors. I want it to roam around, but it's, it's dangerous, too dangerous outside in these hills.

Do you think you could ever write a novel or screenplay through the eyes of a cat?

It's been done before. I don't think I'd try that. Yeah.

All right, so back to, back to the subject of this memoir. What I found really interesting, because I've read a lot of memoirs, you wrote a book about yourself, but you dedicated it to to other people. You dedicated it to the mentors that you've had along this journey. And so I thought that was really interesting. Did you set out to do that from the very beginning?

No, it sort of evolved. You know, I wasn't really sure how I was going to attack this subject, and it turned out there's like 7 books in this one book, and they're all— each one is named after a person, and they're all mentors that, that kind of evolved along the way. And, um, I'm a big believer in mentors. I'm a big believer that that's where you really learn from, you know, rather than from books and stuff like that. And, uh, so, um, like 2 or 3 of these mentors, only 2 or 3 I think, were actually writing mentors. Others were like my boss at the trucking company and a guy that I picked fruit with up in Washington State that I never even knew his last name, but, uh, that were people that made deep impressions on me in learning sort of the skills that are not necessarily writing-related or literary-related, but are about sticking something out when the going gets tough, or starting something, or finishing something, or just, you know, just, you know, life skills. So the book just sort of evolved into a thank-you note to the various people that have, you know, guided me along my Still a journey.

One of the mentor experiences that sticks out to me was your boss at the trucking company, and he sits you down for the first time and tells you, hey, listen, you have potential, but you continue to mess up, so you've got to clean your act up. And was that the first time that somebody actually sat you down and looked you in the eyes and said, hey, you have opportunity, you got to clean yourself up?

I'm not sure if it was the first one, Nick, but it certainly was the one that put the You know, the fear of God into me. This is the longer version of the story was I was like a beginning driver and I dropped a load, you know, of $300,000 worth of textile equipment. And I was— and which was part of a whole process of self-sabotage that I was really fighting there. I would just screw myself up over and over and over. And the boss didn't fire me. His name was Hugh Reeves, wonderful guy. He took me out to have some hot dogs for lunch, and he just sort of, you know, gave me one of those come-to-Jesus talks where he said— and I put this out there because it may be of use to— he said to me, son, I can tell that you're going through some kind of process in your mind here. I can tell you're working something out. He says, I don't know what it is, and I don't want to know what it is, But just remember, you work for me and your job is to deliver loads. And when you get out on that road, that's all you're about. So I thought, you know, wow, you're right, you're right, you're right. So, but that's a great— was a great lesson for anybody in being a professional and doing the shit that you got to do, you know, and not letting other stuff get in the way. So that was a big— made a big impression on me.

Do you spend much time mentoring people individually now that you've had so much success in different areas of your life?

You know, it's a great question, Nick, because I certainly don't go out of my way to do it, but it has evolved that there are a few people that I do sort of do Zoom calls with, you know, and they're all— I was just thinking about it this morning— very accomplished people. It's not like they're kids. They're all in their 40s, and, you know, if they were here right now, you would be, wow, really interesting people. And sometimes I say to myself, I don't know why they're listening to me, but because mainly what I do is just encourage somebody. I never get into— I never do anything negative. And mainly all I do is just sort of encourage those— these guys, they're all men, to just kind of keep doing what they're doing, you know, and believe in themselves, which is basically what a mentor should do for anybody, I think.

So you said the Hugh Reeves talk at the hot dog place was your first come-to-Jesus moment, like, okay, I really need to clean myself up. With hindsight, I know it'll be a little colored here, but with hindsight, like, what did that feel like for you? Do you remember reflecting and saying, wow, I actually have potential, thankfully somebody sees something in me? Or did it go over your head and you only realized how much impact it had?

No, it was really clear in the moment, you know. And I had been telling myself that same thing in my head, but it didn't make a dent when I said it. But when he said it and I felt like I was letting him down and not just letting myself down, that, that really sunk in.

Yeah. The next question I had from your book, it was one of your early chapters. You said you were on a bridge ready to throw your typewriter off of the bridge. So could you tell that story to everybody? We all have our own version of that.

Well, You know, it's, uh, when I was— this, this book is really about a, uh, like a 27-year odyssey from the time I first tried to write something, quit a job to try to write a novel, till the time my first novel got published. Um, and it's sort of about— so it's a kind of a writer's journey. And at the very start of this journey, I tried to write a book. I was married at the time. I was a young married guy. And I got right to the end of the book after two years of work, and I just choked. I couldn't finish it. I didn't have the guts. Resistance sabotaged me, and I and I blew up my marriage. Blah blah blah blah blah. And that sort of set me on this long 27-year odyssey, and and a lot of which was spent living in my van. And I kept the typewriter that I had with me. the whole time, and I never used it once until maybe halfway through when I really started writing. And so it was kind of a symbol to me of my own shame at having failed at that thing. So I, I kept it, and many times I thought, why don't I just throw this fucking thing into a river somewhere? You know, we can swear on this podcast, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And I thought, uh, but I, but I never did. I never could quite throw it away. So it just was a sort of living symbol of what I should be doing, but I didn't have the guts to do.

Is it sort of like the replica cannon that you told me about during our first interview? You said you keep it on the desk and you would turn it towards yourself when you need to be fired up with inspiration.

It's a little bit like that. It's a symbol of something. I do have this little cannon that a friend gave me, and I keep it on my desk as a little bit of a ritual or whatever, you know, to keep me going.

I actually bought, I bought a replica cannon as well. Oh, really?

Yeah. We actually have a few replica cannons. I'll give them to you guys when this is over.

Oh, that'd be amazing. No, I like to call that concept play bigger triggers. It's something I learned from an author named Evan Carmichael. And he says, if you can keep motivational artifacts in your office space, you'll pick up that energy subconsciously and you'll motivate yourself. So, he tries to keep inspirational messages around him. That's how I interpreted what he said.

Oh, I like the way, because I thought it's, to me, it's just superstitious. You know, but I do believe that, you know, like, uh, I'm a big guy for picking up pennies off the street, you know.

Yeah.

And I sort of consider that they're like luck for the day, writing luck for today. So if I have a day, if I find like 3 pennies, like, oh, today I really gotta work hard. There's no excuse. So, but I do think that stuff helps.

Mm-hmm.

You know, you need all— any trick you can come up with to To keep yourself motivated.

Yeah. Wow. Well, admittedly, when I was reading this book, I was waiting to hear about your inspiration for The War of Art. So we'll get to that a little bit later. Do you think you'll write another book from 53 on? Because 53 is when The Legend of Bagger Vance gets picked up, right?

Yeah, I, you know, I— it's a very good question. I don't think so, just because in a way I I suppose The War of Art and those other books that are follow-ups to that are that book because they're addressing from '53 on when my first novel got published.

Mm-hmm.

Then I'm on the artist's journey rather than the hero's journey. Then I'm on an internal journey of what's my gift, what do I wanna write, how can I, how can I write it, what, how can I organize my life so I can do it? So I, maybe those other books are really about that rather, 'cause I think The real external events post that first publication are pretty boring. It's just you write one book, you write another, you write another, you write— it's like if you were— if you're Bruce Springsteen, you're in the studio, you're in the studio, you're in the studio, you know? Yeah. So I'm not sure how interesting that is, but, um, anyway, I'm not sure I will or not.

Yeah, the juice comes from the struggle before you— yeah, before you become successful.

Yeah.

But there's also— well, we'll get to it in a little bit. My next question comes with a little bit of a comment. So our audience is primarily young professionals, ages 18 to 34. It's about 80% of our audience, 2/3 men, 1/3 women. And I think a lot of people can look at you and say, wow, there's something to be learned about the fact that you persisted until 53.

Yeah.

I mean, you wrote for how many years? 30 years?

Yeah, 30 years.

Yeah, 30 years before you become a published author in the way that you wanted to be, right? And the book gets picked up and you get paid for it that way, screenplays aside. And so, we live in a world today, I grew up in it, with social media and hustle culture and entrepreneurship. And these social media platforms, they show us the best version of everybody else's lives. And so I just— I'm wondering, do you have any advice for young professionals that feel like they want it tomorrow? I mean, not many of us can really envision ourselves working for 30 years before we reap what we sow.

Yeah, it's a great question, Nick. I mean, it's such a different world today, you know, like you've read On the Road by Jack Kerouac, am I right?

I actually—

If you're gonna tell me no, I'm gonna be really sorry to hear that.

Yeah, I actually have not.

Well, have you heard of it?

Yes. No, of course.

I mean, in the days when, you know, I'm 79, you know? So when I was coming up, there was a whole different ethic of how you would live your life. Obviously, there was no such thing as social media. And one of the parts of that ethic, and it came out of the Beat Generation, came out of Jack Kerouac's On the Road, it came out of everything sort of pre-hippies, pre-counterculture, and then in the counterculture where the ethic was sort of to get—

if—

to get out on the road, get out in the real world, work numbers of jobs, expose yourself to all kinds of stuff like that. And that was even a writer's kind of ethic, right? Rather than do some hack that would quickly get you somewhere, expose yourself to sort of things. So, For me, I never intended to really get on the road in this fucked up way that I was, but while I was doing it, um, it felt like the right thing to do.

Mm-hmm.

Whereas it's not today. I would— I don't know, I couldn't give anybody advice to say to do that sort of thing, but I don't know what advice I would give. I think it's dangerous, this social media Quick, quick, quick thing that people are trying to do these days. And I mean, it scares me a little bit for the future of this country, but there's something that doesn't jibe with real life about succeeding quick. It takes a long time. If you're going to be a brain surgeon or a concert pianist— this is the example I already— I always use— you figure at the start you're going to have to put in 13, 15 years of study, right? You're not going to be able to play at Carnegie Hall. So why is anything else any different than that? And why is writing any different than that? It really pisses me off when people think— and of course I thought the same thing. I thought, well, shit, let me just write a book. How hard can it be? But it is hard. And, you know, it takes a lot to learn it. And anyway, I'll stop ranting on this subject.

Oh no, this is the gold stuff right here. I remember in the book you highlighted a boss at an ad agency who just decided to write a book. Yeah, it did really well. And so you said, hey, I'll do the same.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you heard of the— I think it's the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment about delayed gratification?

Oh, yeah, right. Delayed gratification. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And that's, that's totally missing in today's generation. And I consume a lot of social media content. I'm in my late 20s. It's just par for the course when you work in this space.

Yeah, you have to, right? So you're part of it all the time. Yeah.

Yeah, it's tough. We were talking in the car ride over here about the fact that you persisted for 30 years. You had this identity as a writer. You had this dream of being a writer. Do you think everybody has a dream like that?

I, again, I don't know because I can't, but I think maybe the problem that a lot of people are dealing with today, young people, is that they don't have that passion or they haven't identified it. And they maybe they feel pressure because a lot of social media, including my stuff, puts pressure on people to sort of find your calling, find your passion. I imagine that certainly, you know, I didn't really— during this whole 30-year period, I really didn't have like a passion to become a writer. I was just trying to sort of write my way out of a sort of hellish situation that I was in, and I felt like that was the only way I could do it. And it took years before I actually sort of began to like it. So I don't know, finding one's passion seems to be the cross a lot of people have to bear today. And I don't know how to— I don't have any wisdom on that subject either, other than I think we all have it. We all have 1, 2, 3, or 4. But how you find it in today's world, I don't know, unless it's obvious.

I don't think it's obvious for most people. I think most people struggle with it. That's why so many books write about the subject of defining your purpose.

Yeah.

You know, you just said 3 or 4. Do you have others outside of writing?

Um, I don't.

You don't?

But I know a lot of people that might be, uh, um, you know, have a calling as a writer, let's say, and also love photography, or also into some kind of, uh, Heal the planet type of stuff, you know, and, and those are real passions. In a way, I'm lucky that I only have one. I really don't give a shit about anything else. So that, that helps me.

Yeah, I think in my life I, I have 2. Number one is I love helping people make progress in their lives by connecting them to the books that can solve the problems they're dealing with. And that's because I've heard a few people say your purpose comes from your pain. And books healed a lot of pain in my life. And so, if I can help other people make progress through books, that's one. But the other is travel. We talked a little bit about it. If the book thing disappeared today, I would find a way to become a travel influencer who gets paid by hotels and experiences to go live there because I can't get enough of it.

So, there's 2 for you, Nick. There's probably more.

Yeah, yeah. Well, those are the 2 that I've had. I hope I don't have more. On the subject of travel a little bit, you've, you've been to every US state, you've traveled internationally quite a bit. What are the places that when you think about, oh, this is travel for me, it's romantic, I feel good here, what are those places for you?

Well, Greece, we were talking about Greece, is an amazing place. You know, I've written a few books about that. And now that why that is great for me has to come from previous lives or something. I'm, I'm somehow drawn to that place in some crazy way that I can't define. Um, um, but any— anywhere in this country, this— I mean, this country has gone downhill a lot in the 50 years since I've been traveling. Not so much gone downhill as it's been homogenized, you know, so that you can't tell when you're in Lexington, Kentucky, or, you know, someplace, you know, in Colorado or something like that. But you still can't beat the United States anyplace, you know, for— and I'm a big believer in driving. You know, and being on the road and, and, uh, you know, being really on the ground.

Yeah, I am too. Some of my most romantic travel memories in the United States come from being on the road. So I've done Boston to Florida 1,000 times. I've done Boston to Texas and I've taken different routes back and forth. And, uh, I love pulling over on the side of the road in South Carolina to a peach stand and Buying some unlabeled products.

Yeah, it's great. I love that stuff, you know? You know, like, you know John Madden, who, the football Madden game and all that sort of stuff, how he had the bus, the Madden Cruiser, 'cause he was afraid to fly. And so to go from Oakland to the East Coast, he'd drive. And he always would stop at diners and dives and hang out with the people, you know? You know, you see in the— this is, this is, well, on the news what a polarized country this supposedly is. But when you actually are out there with people, I don't care where they are, you know, that doesn't enter the picture. You know, it's still a great place.

Yeah, 1,000%. I heard somebody on Rogan say that people on opposite sides of the political spectrum, the average person, we have more in common with each other than we do with the politicians that we support.

Yeah, it's true.

Yeah. Yeah, I think so too.

Yeah.

Speaking of little dive bars, you talk about the Eatery Experience in Louisiana, was it? In New Orleans? Mm-hmm. And you said you would go there every day, but you never worked up the courage, or maybe that's not the right way to say it, but you never interacted with anybody. So what was that crowd like?

That was a whole other world. That was Buster Holmes' place I'm talking about that I think is still there in New Orleans now. And it was a, it was a weird sort of— this was in the days of when the counterculture and the whole hippie thing was starting to come on. And Buster Holmes— Buster Holmes was a Black guy, and this place had been there forever, and it was divided in a— like partitioned into 2. One side was for Black people, like locals that knew Buster and that came from the Quarter, and the other side was for hippies. And definitely the hippies were the lower class of the, of the, of the thing. And I was just, uh, It's hard to describe now because it sounds silly, but like a meal of beans and rice with a huge hunk of bread and butter was 27 cents or 25 cents, and a Coke was 27 cents. And the people in there were, you know, sitting here as we're talking about it, it's almost impossible to bring it back, were so— I mean, to To describe it in a way that makes sense to people. If you could see the faces, not just of the Black people who are amazingly, you know, real, and, and, but of the hippie freaks that were in there at that time, you know, it was, it was, you know, I can't really describe it, but it was, um, I thought these guys have crossed some threshold, and these women and the babies even, you know, they're They've left behind the regular bullshit of American life and are into some other thing. It's too bad that it didn't last, but I don't know if that makes sense, Nick, but—

Yeah, no, it does. I loved, I listened to the book, Government Cheese, and I loved listening to you explain these stories and trying to visualize myself in that room, seeing what it was like. I mean, it's unique, and you're right, it doesn't exist today, so when I think back to those times and your experiences. I don't know, it's a blast from the past, sort of.

Yeah, I mean, me— for me too, it's like I'll sometimes go back to the places where a certain time was vivid, and of course that time is gone, and it's really sad, you know. Like, you read about a place like here in LA, like Laurel Canyon, when Joni Mitchell and Neil Young and All that great music was being done, Crosby, Stills, and Nash, and it's a time like Hemingway in Paris, you know, and Fitzgerald in Paris, that's there, and if, if you're there at that moment, it's amazing, and then it goes, you know. It's, it's heartbreaking, you know, when you, when you go back and try to find something like that. But this place, Buster Holmes, was that. For a moment.

Being around unique people reminds me of the time in your book where you lived in a halfway house, but it wasn't a normal halfway house. It was a halfway house for people who had just been let go from psychiatric facilities.

Yeah.

And what was so interesting to me about that section of the book was you said you felt like you belonged there.

Yeah, I did. Yeah.

What do you mean by that?

That's a good— That's another really good question. I mean, I felt, I felt like I had just come out of a mental hospital, you know. I felt like, like the same crazy stuff that, that these guys were dealing with of trying to reintegrate into society. It was men and women. And also, we used to, in this halfway house, we used to spend— we'd hang around the kitchen in the evenings, you know, just drinking coffee and talking. There was no such thing as You know, social media or anything like that. And I completely related to everybody there. It was like nobody— it wasn't like, oh, I'm with a bunch of crazy people. I mean, it was funny. We talk about politics, we talk about all kinds of stuff. And I thought, I fit in completely, you know, here. And, uh, you know, my sort of theory about a lot of times, I think, why people get branded as Mentally troubled or crazy or even get hospitalized is because they see through the bullshit of American society that the rest of us buy into. They say to themselves, I can't work this fucking job as a barista. You know, I can't do— you know, I can't buy this stuff that, that we're, you know. And so people say to them, well, what's wrong with you, man? Why can't you get a job and hold it? And the next thing you know, they're hospitalized, you know, or something like that. So when— it was an interesting experience to hang out, you know, for a couple of months with these guys because like everything that they said resonated with me. I thought, that's exactly right, you know, I feel exactly the same way. So in any event, that's, that's what that halfway house was about for me. And I got the job at the trucking company after that, and I felt— Although I knew I had to move on, I felt a little twinge, you know, that I was entering a whole other world. I now was going to enter a real blue-collar, hardcore world.

All right, we have to go a little deeper on this subject because that, that theme of these people might seem a little quirky, but they might be on to something that we should pay attention to. So, so many of us subscribe to this 9-to-5 work a corporate white-collar job, go to a 4-year college, take on a ton of debt, you know, the 2.5 kids, that whole thing, right? Uh, and Tim Ferriss's book, The 4-Hour Workweek, was my first time realizing that reality is negotiable. You can design a life that fulfills you uniquely.

Yeah.

And so it seems like you've lived a life that's uniquely fulfilling in a Maybe fulfilling is not the right word, but it's unique to you, and you didn't subscribe to that entire thing. I mean, was it as strong back then as it is now?

You know, I tried numerous times to live a straight life, you know. I worked in advertising agencies like 3 or 4 different times in New York, you know, and could have theoretically gone down that road, but I would always come home from work so depressed, even with really good people who are still friends of mine, you know, and working on supposedly challenging stuff, that I just had to keep trying to write something in the evening. But I do think that the whole idea, like, there's a part in the book where it's talking about picking fruit in Washington State and the guys who were like fruit tramps who really basically lived like riding the rails. Their attitude was they the same thing towards a who says a straight job is supposed is happiness? Is that the answer to it? To work for the man and do all this kind of you know, and the whole thing of what are we selling? Tide detergent and and you know Preparation H. What what is is that life? This this world this you know commercial U.S. world, is that life? You know, we're born into it and we think, oh, that's the way it's supposed to be. But is it? What's so great about that?

Yeah, well, the people that never get to leave New York City, they never get to experience so much of what you did— different versions of reality.

Yeah.

People living so many different lives.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, look at you carving out what you've carved out for yourself, you know, which is, which is great. You really have. Reality is negotiable. You know, and I take my hat off to you, Nick, that you've, you know, carved out a niche that's working. Ah, there we go. Yeah. Reality isn't negotiable.

I have to remind myself of that all the time.

Yeah, me too.

I feel the pressure. I think I feel the pressure to— I know I could go succeed in a corporate sales job if I dedicated myself to that. But at the end of the day, would I look back on my life and regret not having tried to live something more unique to me?

Yeah, you would.

Do you think about that?

You would.

When you think back on your life, Is there anything that you regret, you know?

It's weird because I, I don't, even though so much of it at the time I thought, I'm just wasting my life, you know, I'm, I'm in this hellish situation. But it's weird when you look at your life from the finish, go looking back, it all seems to fall into place and, and make sense. At the time it certainly didn't, but I, I, you know, I don't regret anything.

Yeah, there's other versions of of your reality where we're not sitting here having this conversation and you didn't write this book. And that— those are sad realities compared to this one. This one's pretty nice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There are— there, you know, there are many casualties in this culture, and any of us can become one of them at any time. And if you're not, you're, you're lucky. You know, I feel luck had a lot to do with me not going into a lot of potholes that were out there for sure.

Luck's an interesting subject though, because you know that preparation meets opportunity. Yeah, I mean, you worked hard at your craft, you know, 30 years in one direction before you get lucky. I mean, I don't—

Well, that's, that's true too. Yeah.

You might have, you might have stacked the tables in your direction.

But along the way, there were many forks in the road where you could have taken the wrong one, you know. And if— and the decision you made was made basically roll the dice, you know. So luck has a lot to do with anybody that survives.

Yeah, I suppose that's happened to me a bit. There's a— there's a book that you mentioned a couple of times inside of here, Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. And that's a book that I love. And so I wanted to ask you about it. Does it have any unique meaning to you, or was it just something that you were reading at the time of the Dr. Jeff thing and then you were reading it later again?

I mean, I've always been kind of a reader of, uh, Eastern culture and Eastern religion, you know, in a kind of dumb way of like, well, maybe there's an answer here, you know, never really understanding what it was. But, you know, I've read that book a few times. I even read it in German, believe it or not.

Oh, wow.

Um, And, you know, I don't know if it's like a seminal book for me, but it certainly is floating in my head.

What are the seminal books for you?

Well, 2 that I always cite as like, you know, although I don't know if this would relate to anybody else, is Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises and a book called The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. Have you ever read that one, Nick?

No.

Put it on your list. Too bad Walker Percy died a few years ago, but those are just great, you know. I think for the style of writing of both of those things, so that I've tried to copy. So vivid, so simple, so cinematic, both of them. And so those are two that really stand out for me as touchstones. I read them once a year. You know, just— and then they never get old.

Do you have people tell you that they read your books once a year?

Yeah, a few people have said that. A few seriously demented people have said that. Yeah.

Well, Conan over here behind the camera has read Gates of Fire a few times.

Ah.

Yeah.

Well, I like that. I like that.

He also feels that in a past life he was Greek.

So that's probably why. Maybe we were. Yeah.

So, Stephen, going back to a conversation that we had before the cameras were rolling a little bit, and I guess a little bit during this podcast, 306T, you know, your love for starting up a truck, is that something that you still think about? Could you ever get behind the wheel and do it again?

I haven't done it again. 306T was, was my truck at this particular company. And there is something, you know, I go into great as a detail about how you prep a truck and how you start it and how— before you even shift into first gear. And for me, I don't know why, I loved every aspect of that, crawling under the truck and adjusting the brake arms and making sure that— all that sort of stuff. It was— I think for me, I grew up in a kind of a sheltered middle-class life. So that I really didn't know how to do stuff that people do, fix car engines, do that sort of thing. So driving trucks was the first time that I ever kind of actually got a handle on something mechanical or actually knew what it meant. And that was sort of, that was a great thing for me. It really fed some sort of manly thing. I don't know what it, what it was, but the smell of a diesel engine, the sound when a diesel kicks in, The thing, just for while we're just talking here, one of the things you have to do, at least in, I don't know how diesel engines even work these days, but on a cold morning, since a diesel engine has no spark plugs and it only fires by compression, you had to crawl under the truck into the engine compartment with an aerosol can of starter fluid, you know, that was heptane and some other, I don't know, like nitroglycerin. And lift the COVID and spray it into the cylinders.

Mm-hmm.

And then the thing would start. And that to me, I don't know why that was so much fun, but I felt like, I don't know what, like somebody working with an elephant, you know, in the circus to get the elephant to move. But in any event, I'm glad you picked that up, Nick, 'cause that was really meaningful to me, really, in some crazy way.

You know, if somebody was reading this book from a third-party perspective, and they didn't know much about what happened after '53, they would probably say you did have 2 passions. You had writing and you had trucking. And I think you had a passion around trucking. I mean, I guess right now you—

I would say that.

Warm up to it. And I can see how much it meant to you. I, for me, I also grew up in a sheltered middle-class family and didn't use my hands very much. And I ran a house painting business when I was in college for 2 summers, and I had to learn everything about the exterior of a house. And so not as manly as trucking, but that was my version of getting my hands dirty.

No, it's important, isn't it? It really is.

Yeah, it's, uh, it's like an evolution almost. Yeah, you know, a step into adulthood.

It's an apprenticeship in some kind of crazy way, you know, and particularly using your hands. to do something, you know?

Yeah. There's a moment, uh, since we're in the trucking vein in the book where, uh, your lights go out and it's raining and it's at night and you can't fix it. And I think you said you were crying.

Definitely.

Definitely crying. And you felt helpless. And I think you said shame, you felt a lot of shame. So what was it about that moment that triggered those feelings and why were they so prevalent in your life at that time?

It's a great question. It's really sort of a— what happened was, um, the power to the lights in a truck comes from the cab and goes back through a plug into the trailer. And somehow that plug had gotten mangled. It had fallen onto the ground. And so I had no lights. I'm driving at night, and I knew that I'd get— you know, I couldn't fake it. I'd get pulled over by the first cop and I'd get fired. And, uh, so I had to figure out this plug that had like 6 or 7 different wires, had to go to 6 or 7 different little holes, and it's raining and it's cold and I have no idea what I'm doing. And this sort of went back to sort of the sheltered middle-class life, you know, where I'd never really had to, um, solve problems like that in the moment where you just have no— you know, and it seems like a silly thing, it's just some lights on a truck, it's not like you're— under fire in combat or anything like that. But it really broke me down. I mean, I was in tears because I just knew that this was my weakness, that I just couldn't— I couldn't solve something in the moment. And I finally got it figured out after like hours, and I just hoped and in some way that went into my DNA and got me a little bit over some of that. But that was a real— another kind of seminal moment that I think It— those are the skills you don't learn in school, you know. You have to learn them under fire in the moment, and that's why it's great to, to put yourself through that if you, if you can.

Yeah, I think everybody reading your book or listening to your book has their own version of that story. At least I hope they do, because you're right, it is a seminal moment. And for me, I don't think I've ever shared this story on the podcast before. I was running my house painting business. I had a bunch of my college friends working for me. And I underestimated the price for a house to get done.

Oh.

And so we move forward because revenue is revenue, and I'm competing against some other people running house painting businesses. So we do the job anyway. And it's not done very well. And I had, I had had some homeowners when I do the final walkthrough, and I asked for the check, point out a few things. But this house was terrible. I mean, and this guy really let me know it. I mean, it was his home, it was his family's home, and it was, it was done very poorly. And I remember I went home and I got in the shower and I cried.

Ah.

Because I didn't know how to deal with it. I, I said, okay, let me call my boss who's mentoring me. Let me figure out how we're going to do this. I'm way under. I don't have the budget for these guys to come back and work on this. I'm going to have to do it myself, I think, but there's probably 50 hours of work left to do. And there were only a couple of weeks in the summer left. I had to go back to school and I had no clue how to handle it. But I'm so happy that I went through that experience.

And what did you do? Did you do it yourself, Nick?

I paid these guys to do it out of my own pocket and I went back to school with less money in my pocket than I wanted to. Way less money, but I paid these guys to come back and help me do it, and, and I worked on it as well. Yeah, there were a few jobs that I had to go back and touch up.

But what a great lesson, right? A thing that sinks into your bones and you never forget that.

It does sink into your bones. Yeah, it really does. We've mentioned a few times that you're 79, which blew all of our minds because you—

Blows my mind too.

You seem a lot younger than that, so What are some of the routines that you have in place to keep your energy up?

Well, I go to— like we were talking, I go to the gym really early in the morning, 6 days a week, and because I'm definitely a believer in physical activity like that. And other than that, my main mechanism is denial. I just refuse to believe that I am the age that I am. But also, I think writing keeps you, you know, or any artistic pursuit keeps you going, music or anything like that, because it's like the goddess is always giving you another assignment, you know. You're always going to go forward to the next one and the next one after that, and you're always looking forward to that. So that's, that's a huge help.

Yeah.

You know, I'm looking, I've got, you know, I can see 18 months from now and I got to do this and that kind of thing, and so it keeps me going. And it gives you hope too, because each one, each time you hope, well, maybe this one will break through in a way that I hope they all will break through.

Yeah, I've heard somebody call that the art of anticipation.

Yeah.

If you have anticipation in place, you'll always—

That's a great one. I've never heard that before, but it's really true. Yeah, it's great to have something to anticipate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the art of anticipation.

That should be a book. But seriously, like, if you were an Ironman, you're gonna run, do the I guess they don't do it at Kona anymore. They're phasing that out. But if you've got that on your calendar, you know, for 18 months from now, that's a hell of a thing, you know?

Yeah, it really is. Well, and I asked about it because I'm fascinated actually by longevity and anti-aging subjects like this. And on my flight here yesterday, Dr. David Sinclair, who runs 2 anti-aging labs at Harvard, he wrote a book called Lifespan. And we've had him on the show. He was on my plane.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So, he was flying out here yesterday and it just— he reminds me that there's so much human potential as far as energy and mental faculties go. So, that's why I was curious what was unique about your routine, but maybe it's just denial.

Well, I think there's something to that. It's like society tells you that at a certain age, you're supposed to feel a certain way, right? Like, right, Joe Biden is gonna— is he gonna run? Is he not gonna run? Everybody puts up the number, whatever he's gonna be, 80 years old, and they say, well, 80 equals X, you know? But who says that's true? You know, my dad was an old man at 60, I'm sorry to say. And, but that was just, I think, what society tells you, you know? So a big— so being in denial, I think, is actually a positive thing. Of saying, who's going to define? You know, like, I was, uh, I just sort of, uh, came to this thing a few, you know, maybe a week ago. I said, you know, okay, I'm 79 years old. I figure I've got one lifetime left. You know, there's no reason why I can't live for another 20 years and why I can't do whatever, how many books or whatever there is. So that's a form of denial. Everybody would say, hey, you're crazy. But who's to say that, you know? Like you say, reality is negotiable, you know, and our own reality is negotiable.

Yeah, it truly is, and the mind can do amazing things. And in, in the book, you talk about this, this period in your life where you were writing every day and you'd wake up early in the morning and you would eat liver and eggs because bacon and sausage weren't up to the task, essentially. And, you know, I think, I think liver now, funny enough, as a subject is becoming more and more popular because it's, it's a natural multivitamin. Is it something that you still eat frequently today?

No. In fact, I've sort of— I, you know, I'm not sure it's up on the science, but isn't— because there's so much poison and stuff out there and it all collects in the liver, I'm not so sure that's a good thing.

Stephen, the next subject that I wanted to talk with you about, and you covered this on your recent Rogan podcast, is the invocation of the muse. Could you talk about discovering that for the first time?

I had a, uh, a mentor named Paul Rink, who's one of the, one of the books in this book. And, um, this was when I, I had first, uh, I had never finished a book, and I had saved up $2,700 that I thought I could live for a year on. And I moved to a little house in Carmel Valley, California. And, uh, and Paul lived down the road from me, and every morning I would have breakfast with him. And he was a writer, and he would kind of school me on— he'd tell me what books to read, and he'd give me all kinds of stuff like that. And one of the things that he showed me was the invocation of the muse from The Odyssey, from Homer's Odyssey, the T.E. Lawrence translation, Lawrence of Arabia. And, uh, and it— this is the seg— the segment of the— it's the very first 26 lines, I think, of the Odyssey where Homer is invoking the goddess for inspiration, you know. And it, and it goes— it starts out, oh divine Poesy, goddess daughter of Zeus, sustain for me this song, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. And, uh, he gave me this really seriously, and I had never even really thought about the muse or another element of another level of consciousness or another level of reality, the gods and goddesses that live above us. And the Greeks, you know, as we know, believe that, you know, believe in gods and goddesses and that they interacted with the world. So that— I've kept that ever since. I even have it in my office now, the, the page that he typed out for me. It's broken into 4 pieces now, falling apart with age, but it's absolutely the ground reality that I believe in as far as writing or any kind of creative art, that it comes from somewhere else and that The— you can't command that somewhere else. You can only invoke it. That's why they call it the invocation of the muse, which is basically a prayer, and it's basically asking for help. And it's, it's an expression of humility on the artist's side. It's sort of saying to the goddess, you know, I know I'm not doing this. I know it's coming from you. Please help me. And, uh, you know, Elizabeth Gilbert of Eat, Pray, Love and Big Magic. Big Magic, yeah. She's a big believer in that in her own way, where she'll actually speak out loud to the corner of the room and say, I'm stuck, you know, help me, that kind of thing. And, and it— I absolutely believe in that, you know. So I— Paul, my mentor, he taught me to kind of say this as a prayer out loud every morning. And I still do, and it's real.

So to paint a visual for everybody that's, that's listening, you're essentially like a vessel for some external message that's flowing through you onto paper so that it can bless other people.

Yes, that's it. Yeah.

When did you first—

Now you participate too. You, the writer, participate too, but The whole process is coming from some other place.

I find it fascinating, and I've read Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert where she talks about this too, and then obviously you, you touch on it in your books. I think it's a fascinating subject. And so, you know, do you stumble across a lot of people who, who read that invocation on a daily basis now?

No, I don't. But, but people, if they did, wouldn't Wouldn't tell me necessarily, but I certainly think that any artist, filmmaker, whatever, that's been doing this for a while and beating their head against the wall knows that this is true, that it's coming from— and in some way, I think, you know, the little artifacts and the rituals that people do, that's kind of a form of it too. I think one does acquire a certain humility. Over time on this kind of thing.

Yeah, I know in your conversation with Rogan, he was so— the, the recent one, he was so interested in this subject. And I think it's because he's really into psychedelics. And yeah, that's another way.

Yeah.

To access this different level of consciousness and become familiar with it.

Yes.

Yeah.

And certainly to impress upon yourself in vivid, uh, form that there is something beyond just the conscious mind.

Have you, uh, participated in any psychedelic experiences?

I did in the, in the '60s.

Okay.

You know, but I haven't done any of that, you know, ayahuasca or anything since. I wouldn't do it again.

Why not?

Um, I'm scared to do it again. It blows your mind, you know. I think in those days, you know, I was crazy enough to— or, you know, dumb enough to be open to it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't do it today. But I think, uh, I'm really glad I did it, and it certainly Did, you know, open my eyes to realities that I hadn't been aware existed.

Yeah, do you encourage— well, not encourage, that's probably the wrong word. We're not giving medical advice. But do you think broadly speaking people would be better off if they had at least one experience like that in their lifetime?

I do. I do. Yeah.

Yeah, I had, I had a very strong experience like that one time, and you can't go back. Like, once you see things from a different perspective—

No, you can't go back.

You can't go back. And I think that's a good thing. And just like you, I'm not looking to repeat those experiences because I don't want to break what's not broken.

I feel like I have a good grasp of things now.

Yeah.

I mean, one of the things that, that I've learned or took away from that was— and see if you agree with this, Nick.

Okay.

You suddenly see beauty on a sky. Like, I remember one of the things that friends of mine, we used to go down to The, uh, to beaches in Big Sur. We'd climb down the cliffs and go down there, and just the watching the waves come in was so incredibly beautiful that you said to it, you know, for hours, that you said to yourself, you couldn't help but come away and say to yourself, this that I'm seeing now, this is reality. You know, maybe this is the way Jesus would see it or God would see it. But the world that I'm going to go back to once I come down off this chemical, my normal world, that's not reality. That's a diminished reality. And if I see— if I accept that world at face value, I'm not in the real world. There's a world beyond that. So that was a huge life-changing thing. conception.

I think this is the Life-Changing Books podcast. So, you know, I would agree. I think, I think maybe the people in that halfway house that you reference, they might— their dials might be turned up a little bit more than ours, and they might experience slightly more of that on a more regular basis than we do. And yeah, I agree with it 100%. I think it would be a very overwhelming life to live constantly in the present moment 100% of the time and have all these additional inputs into our brains, it'd be hard to make decisions and delay gratification.

Yeah, you know, it's incapacitating. You really can't. It's too much. It's an overload. Yeah, so, so to function, we do have to sort of shrink the aperture, but, but the aperture can be opened too.

Yeah, yeah, no, it definitely can be. It's such a fascinating subject. All right, to wrap up the podcast, there's something you didn't cover in this book that I want to ask about a little bit, which is your articulation of resistance, the war of art. Where, where did this idea come from to put it on paper, to battle it? It's what you're most famous for in the nonfiction space. And so I'm curious, where did that come from?

Well, resistance, as I define it, capital R resistance, is basically self-sabotage. And this whole book is about nothing but self-sabotage. It's really about my struggles against my own demons that were trying to sabotage me constantly. You know, when I dropped the trailer, when I screwed up the plug with the, with the wires, all of those things were my demons of resistance. And, and What was it resistance to? It was resistance to answering my calling as a writer. It was resistance to that typewriter that I carried with me for 20 years and never touched. So that's, that's where— and I'm convinced that, because I've gotten so many emails from people over the years, that it's universal.

It is.

And everybody deals with it. So So this, this book and this story, these 27 years were sort of where I, I became aware of this force called resistance that I call resistance that nobody ever taught. Nobody teaches you about it. Nobody identifies it. And, and so this is sort of really kind of the story of how I, how it became so vivid to me and, and various And the various strategies that I've used to try to overcome it. So, that's where it comes from.

Was there a moment where you identified it as resistance and it became clear to you?

You know, that's a really good question. I don't think there ever was. It just sort of evolved. I just, you know, I don't know. There wasn't any moment when I sort of said, oh, this is the word. But it was just this force that to me sort of radiates off a keyboard, a repellent force to stop me from sitting down and doing my work. That was just— for years I thought I must be the only one feeling this, nobody else must feel this. And then I kind of realized, no, other people feel this too. But yeah, so no, no, there wasn't any real actual moment, no. Or if there was, I missed it.

Yeah, yeah. You say painters that that can't get themselves to paint, writers that can't get themselves to write. I mean, business owners that can't get themselves to go out and grow their business. I mean, everybody has their own version of resistance, and I find it fascinating. The first time that I read The War of Art, I was mind-blown because it makes so much sense. It's, it's as real as gravity.

Yes, that's what it is. It's a force of nature, an objective force of nature, just like gravity. It doesn't seem like it. It seems very personal. It seems like it's saying to you, Nick, you don't have what it takes to do this. Who do you think you are trying? But it's not personal. It's completely objective, just like gravity.

And it's self-created.

Yes.

Right? It doesn't exist outside of your own mind.

Yes.

Which is also—

Or it's self-credited. I'm not sure where it's coming from, but we give it meaning by By believing it.

Yeah. All right, we'll wrap up. I know we're coming to the end here. So thank you so much for this conversation. I hope we gave everybody in the audience today a brief glimpse of what they can read about in Government Cheese, your memoir. And, and I found it fascinating. I really enjoyed the book. And so again, thank you so much. Is there any message you'd like to leave our audience with today?

Um, only that, uh, if you are struggling along a sort of a journey like my government cheese journey, that, uh, cut yourself some slack. It's a long process. That's the way God planned it. And, you know, it really can't be rushed. So don't add that layer of judgment. of self-judgment or self-condemnation to what's really difficult already. And just have faith, believe the— in the process, and keep on going.

All right, thank you, Nick.

Thanks for coming up here and making this schlep, and thanks for the great questions. Thanks for having me on, uh, on Book Thinkers. I appreciate it.