I’ve had a few people say to me lately some variant of, “I wish I had your life.”

No. I have a great life, no doubt. Wonderful partner. Enough money to travel, to buy the things I want. I generally do what I want to do when I feel like doing it. But the thing is to get where I am and to be who I am, they would’ve had to endure the experiences I had to withstand prior to all this. All of those days of dread and fighting that made me the person I am, that gave me my ambition, my smarts, my outrageous stubbornness and perseverance in the face of vicious detractors.

You have to walk that path to make it here; there is not another way. Most people who say they want my life would have no interest at all in any of that. Sure, a lot of life is luck and circumstance. But another part is how you deal with those two vicissitudes as they arise.

I am capable of the things I am because I was forged in the fire of neglect and implacable bullying and hatred over many years, followed by five hard years as a paratrooper. I can be so carefree and bold and brave because of all that, not in spite of it.

Walk that path, you can be me. Trust me, you don’t want it that bad.