The Man You Used to Be
Is Not Gone.
From the retirement math that didn't work, to a restaurant bathroom at 62, to building something of his own. This is the whole story, not the highlight reel.
Read the Letter Below ↓
A Letter to the Man Reading This
This was not easy to write.
Not because the facts were hard to remember. Because some of them were hard to admit. And because the man I am writing about, the man in this story, spent a very long time not wanting to look at himself too closely.
I wrote it anyway. Because I believe you need to read it.
Not my story specifically. Your story. The one you have been carrying quietly, maybe for years, maybe for decades. The one you rarely say out loud, because men our age were not raised to talk about the weight of regret, or the slow disappearance of ambition, or the private suspicion that the best of what you were capable of might already be behind you.
I want to tell you something before you read a single word of what follows.
The man you used to be is not gone.
He got tired. He got discouraged. He got buried under the weight of responsibility and loss and years of grinding through things that didn't fit. But he did not leave. He went quiet. There is a significant difference between the two.
This is a story about getting loud again.
You will find my whole story here, not the version I would choose if I were only trying to look good. The career I had at 24 that I walked away from, and have been trying to find my way back to ever since. The losses that followed it, one after another, in a pattern I didn't understand until I was much older. The faith I wrestle with, and the faith I hold onto anyway, even when it feels like holding onto something I can't fully see. What it cost my wife to stay married to a man who kept starting over. And a bathroom floor at 62 that I am going to ask you to sit inside with me for longer than is comfortable.
I should tell you upfront that I am a man of faith. You will encounter that in this story. I am not going to pretend it isn't there, because it is woven into everything I am about to tell you. But I am also not going to require you to share that faith to receive what this story has to offer. Whatever you believe, whatever you carry, whatever version of the quiet disappearance you have lived, I believe there is something here for you.
I wrote this because I needed someone to write it for me twenty years ago. I needed a man to sit across from me and say, I know exactly what that feels like, and here is what happened to me, and here is what I did not understand until it was almost too late to use it.
Nobody did that for me. So this is me doing it for you.
Read it slowly. There is no rush. And if something in it feels like it was written about you rather than about me, that is exactly what I intended.
If any of this sounds familiar
- If you've spent years carrying something quietly, because men our age weren't raised to say it out loud.
- If ambition feels like something that happened to you once, a long time ago, rather than something you still have.
- If you've ever done the math on your own life and come up short, not just financially.
- If some version of a bathroom floor, literal or otherwise, is somewhere in your story too.
This book was written for you.
“Nobody can fire me from this moment.
I chose to show up today.
Whatever comes next, I am choosing it.”
The thought that changed everything that came after.
Eight chapters. One long season.
The career at 24 he walked away from, and the question that followed him for decades after: why didn't somebody say, hey Glenn, stay? Nobody did. So he left Nashville.
The door that closed at Disney three years later, while he was still waiting for it to open.
Twenty years building something meaningful, and what happened when it ended.
The long list of everything else he tried, and what none of it had in common.
“It is not one bad year that does it. It is twenty ordinary ones.”
“I wrote this because I needed someone to write it for me twenty years ago. Nobody did. So this is me doing it for you.”
This isn't a business book, and it isn't a highlight reel. It's the whole story, the version he wouldn't choose if he were only trying to look good.
The Long Season of Trying
One Man's Journey Back to Himself, and What It Might Mean for Yours- The full memoir, letter to the reader through closing thought
- Delivered instantly as a PDF after checkout
- Read on any device, keep it, come back to it whenever you need to
You were made for more than watching and waiting.
The man you used to be didn't leave. He got tired. He's still in there.