Who would you be if you dropped all your identities?

I’ve always hated the question, “What do you do?” It reduces people to labels—writer, speaker, entrepreneur, whatever—and every label becomes a limitation. When you define yourself too tightly, you stop growing.

These days, I try not to see myself as anything. I’m less interested in being known as a writer and more interested in writing. When people ask what I do, I tell them I own a bookstore. That usually ends the conversation, and I like that. It leaves room to just do the work, not talk about it.

Looking back, especially at my twenties, I can see all the times I was living by someone else’s standards. I used to go to this annual advertising conference—suits and ties everywhere—and it wasn’t me. I remember thinking, How many years can I keep showing up before I eventually become one of them? It’s hard to swim upstream forever.

Eventually, I left. I wrote my first book, moved to New York, and found myself surrounded by a different scene—people with a different uniform and their own priorities. Over time, I learned to care less about fitting in and more about doing the work itself. Be busy doing the verb, not obsessed with the noun. When you’re in it, you’re solving problems. When you’re outside of it, you’re comparing, imitating, and overthinking. Focusing on the work keeps you both grounded and sane.

People sometimes ask where my ego has taken a hit that ultimately helped me. The truth is, ego never serves us. Anything that humbles you is usually for the best. I have it tattooed on my arm: Ego is the enemy.

We all tell ourselves flattering stories about who we are—how we got here, how deserving we are—and that story inflates the ego. When your books start selling, when you build an audience or a platform, all of that can feed the illusion. It feels good, but it also distances you from reality. That’s why I welcome the humbling moments, the ones that puncture the ego and bring you back down to earth.

During the pandemic, while we were opening the bookstore, we’d invested everything—our savings, our time—and suddenly the world shut down. I remember sitting there thinking, What have we done? I wrote a note to myself that said, “2020 will make you a better person or a worse person.”

When difficult things happen, the mind wants to look for someone to blame. It wants to dwell on how unfair it is, what it’s going to cost, or how it could’ve been avoided. None of that changes what happened, and it definitely doesn’t move you forward.

The better approach is to redirect your energy: Okay, the wheels are spinning—how can I send power to where there’s traction? You can’t control what happens, but you can control what you take from it. Sometimes the blessing isn’t that something good comes from it—it’s simply that you weren’t destroyed by it. You realize, I can go through things and survive. That realization is the real gift.

As for hope—what do I hope for most? Like most parents, I just hope my kids turn out okay. Not that they make a lot of money or achieve traditional success. I hope they’re happy. I hope they grow into themselves and that I was what they needed along the way.

Because in the end, none of the other things matter. Not the wins, not the losses, not the noise of the world. If they’re okay—if they make it—that’s enough.