Although I have a blog, am on twitter (but don’t tweet and follow very few people just because I haven’t been on since I first set it up – but am too technically incompetent to take the twitter button off my blog) and have a personal facebook account that I haven’t gone on for a year – I acknowledge that I am far too introverted to deal with a lot of the new social media. Like Steve, I’ve even thought about disabling the comments on my blog because it just feels very overwhelming to “talk” to so many people and it’s frightening to think that you’re on a stage and other people can read what you’ve written. It’s like talking in public – very hard to do for someone like me.

Social media really does feel like bombardment to an introvert. So I understand Steve’s going off of those methods of communication, I just don’t think he has the self awareness to know WHY he’s doing it or why it’s distasteful to him.

And of course there’s that narcissism… but that’s another problem.

How is your life not, in some form at least, a story? Indeed, it is multiple stories since people have different views and opinions and “stories” about you that may or may not be true. We all end up being stories in some sense.

What I read from this post is some people have an axe to grind against this guy who wrote the article, read his article, decided they knew what it meant and then started complaining about it. Basically having arguments with themselves about stuff they came up with in their own heads. Claiming that your life is not a story whilst also making up stories about an article and an author’s meaning. Contradictions in the house.

Of course you can forget the life you are living now. It may not be the best thing to do but of course you can do it. One form of it would be amnesia. Yes you can change roles and yes you can leave the theatre. Or did people suddenly lose the power to end their own lives or make fundamental changes to themselves and change roles by becoming more open versions of themselves, more confident, happier etc?

You are not always the same person. That’s scientifically proven. You don’t have the same cells or molecules you had seven or so years ago so how on earth are you always the same person?

So, yes, we and our lives can be said to be stories. It holds as a metaphorical interpretation of things and in some ways a literal interpretation of things. And it’s not a harmful thing either. Somewhere along the line people have mixed this message up with the notion of doing things in your life for purely for the entertainment and validation of others. That’s mixed up thinking. A life or a person being a story in some contexts does not automatically mean that that person does things for the validation or entertainment of others nor does it mean that they are prompted to do so by accepting the understanding of them or their lives being seen as stories.

I know it’s late now to say that I knew he will dump Erin back then, even though at that time he was speaking in superlatives about their relationship. Here is the theory I thought to myself that seems to have shown to be true:

He was a nerd. He never was popular in school, or with girls. He wasn’t much tough either. You can see how he overcompensates with the story of him being badass and ending up in jail. First he says how he is so embarrassed to share this, and then he can’t stop writing about his cool thefts, a.k.a. Robin Hood chocolate giving actions and eventually grand theft. Like, they screwed in court, so he wasn’t convicted for grand theft. This story is carefully constructed, so that he sounds cool and there is no proof that this actually ever happened. But you can’t have a self-help blog without a cool story about hard beginnings followed with fantastic transformation because of personal development. Brian Tracy, Tony Robbins, you name it. Every guru has it.

So he met Erin and he hooked up with her. She was cool and safe for not so skillful and attractive Steve. She wasn’t attractive either, but he couldn’t find anything better anyway. They started a family, he was puzzle game developer, she also worked, they got kids… And it all would probably have stayed that way forever, if one crucial thing didn’t happened.

He started a right project at the right time – his blog. It became huge financial success. But also it became huge social success. He became guru with huge readership. His fantastic articles make emotional impact. A lot of women read his blog. When they come to his blog, they don’t see nerdy Steve. They see alpha male Steve, where people praise him, flatter him, interview him…plus he likes to share how much money he earns. Suddenly he starts getting attention from lots of girls, many of them attractive.

His self-confidence skyrocketed. You can see the difference between his earlier writings and later ones. His complexes came to surface. Now he is finally someone, and he will squeeze the maximum from it. He went overboard with this – hence the narcissism.

But now there is a problem. On one side he is married to not so attractive women plus they’ve been together for years. On the other side, there are offers from fresh, attractive “new age” chicks he never would have access to if it weren’t for his blog.

The other problem is that he already wrote about relationships and his fantabulous marriage with his even more fantastic wife. Anthony Robbins done the same thing, when he was on Larry King saying how he and his wife are meant to be together, for the rest of their lives, yada, yada, yada…while promoting his relationship program. .. Yup, he got divorced also…

So Steve can’t say now: “Screw all that, I want to fuck other chicks!” can he? So he’s done what he do the best. He gradually rationalized his way till he’s got what he wanted to. Polyamory, openness, exploration, he has too much love in him to give, yada, yada, yada…divorce!

The bottom line – he presented himself as some spiritual and moral superior being – but he followed his biological urges and human nature like the rest of us, he only wrote the shitload to justify his actions. He is nothing different than the next guy who dumps his “boring” wife for something fresh.

Important lesson:
We idealize too much some people, trying to live-up to often unrealistic morals they display in public – yet they actually are not much different than we are, it’s all marketing and PR.

Ps- sorry if there is some confusion and bad grammar in my sentences, English is not my native language…