I have read the first half of one book over and over. I have never finished it. I keep going back over what I already read. A friend of mine picked it up after I did and is further into it now than I am, which I am not embarrassed by, because the going back is the point. In the last post I told you about the hole: what it looks like when you quit something and put nothing in its place. This is what I put there the second time. It is not a clean story. It was not the first thing, either. I checked. I bought it nine months in, and I have not opened it in about a year. But it is the thing that filled the hole when the hole needed filling, and I can tell you how.
The book is Areté by Brian Johnson. The practice is the app built on it. Areté means excellence. The second time held because there was something to do. This was the something.
The replacement did not stay a book. It turned into other things. The bike. The blog. The build.
Nine Months In
First copy ordered February 8, 2024, nine months after the sobriety date.
Johnson has a chapter early in the book that fits this, titled “451° Activation Energy.” Activation energy is the chemistry idea that a reaction needs a minimum threshold. He writes that paper does nothing at 400, 449, or 450 degrees and catches at 451. That is why the book has 451 chapters.
That is the order it happened. The first nine months were 400 and 449 and 450. The plasma chair, before there was a book in it. None of it looked like ignition. The book was the last degree.
I bought three more copies over seven months and gave them away.
The Chair Twice a Week
There was no schedule of my own. I read as much as I could, whenever I had the opportunity.
Each chapter in Areté is a page or two. I never had a set number of pages. I read a couple of chapters, then went back and re-read them. I wanted the book to land as deeply as possible before I got the app and started its lessons. The app came some months after the book. These days, when I want the lessons, I open the app and listen to Stoicism 101.
I was already donating plasma twice a week, and once the book showed up I read it in the chair while I donated. The center supplied the fixed appointment. The book came along.
What I saved from the donations helped fund my trips to Peru and Colombia. At least that is what I told myself. The trips gave the money somewhere to go, which pulled me forward.
When I drifted away from the reading or the plasma, I felt off. There was a tension to it, and I did not like the drift.
Borrow One
If you have stopped something and you are standing in the hole, do not build a routine. I did not have the discipline to build one. That is why I was down there. Borrow one.
Put things in it that come with their own time and place already attached. A standing appointment. A gym with hours. A chair you have to sit in twice a week anyway, with a book in your bag and the money pointed at a trip.
Whatever you put in it this week is a degree. None of mine looked like ignition either.
At the end of the last post I asked what you quit. This is the first thing I have to hand back. If you try it, send me an email and tell me what you borrowed.