When I was in my 20s and 30s, I fell in love with Zen Buddhism, which, in retrospect, was a perfectly Scandinavian thing to do, and one of the Zen meditations I learned was: Imagine a future, where all your dreams come true. Especially at times when things aren’t going well in your life, spending ten minutes each morning focusing on a tomorrow where every hope is realized can be nourishing and energizing, a powerful salve for wounded souls. So this is a focus meme I’ve used pretty regularly over the past twenty-five years, meaning thousands of times closing my eyes, and imagining a perfect world.
Now that Rocket Men hit the New York Times’ bestseller list the first week it went on sale, and is getting acclaim beyond what anyone ever could have ever guessed, nearly all of my professional dreams have in fact come true … and I can’t believe, after all those times of imagining what it would be like, how absolutely wrong I was in those meditative states.
It turns out that, when almost all your dreams come true, you only get to sleep about four hours a night, but on tour you have to be up and energetic and charming and focused and ready to deliver the right material in the right form on a moment’s notice for hour after hour to nonstop all day. This means you flit back and forth, drunk with exhaustion and ferociously alert, on a personality seesaw, at the same time that you keep forgetting what time zone you’re in. The hotel phone rings, and a voice says, “We’re calling to make sure you’ll be ready for the show,” and you say, “What time is this show?” and the voice says, “It’s a 7:22 show” and you say, “But, what time is it now?” and the voice says, “It’s 7:12, your time,” and you say, “Oh no problem, I’ll be ready.”
Continue reading ‘When Almost All Your Dreams Come True’
There was a time when heroes walked the earth, and stories of their adventures have been told again and again. There is one story of astounding bravery and sacrifice from that time, however, that has all but vanished from our national memory.
“Intriguing … fascinating … Enlightenment thinker Thomas Paine would be pleased with this brisk, intellectually sophisticated study of his life.”— Publisher’s Weekly 
“What a phenomenal trip Craig Nelson takes us on. I don’t know which made me laugh harder, the outrageous people and places Craig describes, or his hilarious travel antics. Let’s Get Lost is a gem.” –Lily Tomlin