You're going to ask if I've earned the right to say any of this — whether I've fixed myself before turning around to fix you. I haven't. I'm not well enough to go around curing anyone. What I'm doing is talking through something we're both sick with, like two people in the same hospital room comparing notes. Listen the way you'd listen if I were talking to myself, because I am. You're just my excuse for saying it out loud.
Here's what I keep telling myself: count the years. Notice that you're still chasing the same things you wanted as a kid, and let that embarrass you a little. Before you die, get your faults to die first. The pleasures that cost you afterward — the ones you regret even when nobody ever found out — those weren't free just because you didn't get caught. Nothing fleeting is trustworthy, even the good parts.
Chase something that doesn't run out. The only thing like that is what you build inside yourself — everything else is weather.
There's no shortcut here, and no assistant you can hire for this particular job. I think of a guy I used to know — money without end, and a memory like a sieve. He'd blank on the most obvious names in conversation, so instead of learning anything himself, he bought people who knew things. One who'd memorized this book, one who'd memorized that one — a whole staff of borrowed knowledge standing behind his chair so he could sound smart at dinner and still forget his lines halfway through the sentence. Someone finally told him, gently, that he could've just bought the books instead of the people. He didn't get it. He genuinely believed that whatever his staff knew, he knew — as if understanding could sit in someone else's head on your behalf.
Nobody has ever managed to buy themselves a working mind. If it were for sale, half the people with money would still walk past it.
This is the part of you nobody can do the work of but you. Not me, not anyone you pay, not anyone you love. So I'll leave you with the one line I keep going back to, in whatever form it takes: real wealth isn't more — it's wanting exactly what you need, no more, no less. You've heard some version of it from me before. Doesn't matter. Some things you don't get to hear only once.
Take care of yourself.