The Next Hemingway Is Flipping Burgers by Iain S. Thomas

Follow on Twitter as @IWroteThisForU

"I have a clear memory of my father's thesis which earned him his PhD in accounting. The big red leather book sat on a table in our entrance hall and it was one of the first things you saw when you walked in. I also, just as clearly, remember my older brother's bedroom wall covered with certificates and awards for his ridiculously high academic grades in math, science, geography, biology, computer science and so on.  according to Iain S. Thomas, South African born #1 bestselling poet behind the I Wrote This For You project and blog, under the pseudonym 'pleasefindthis.'

And me? Well, I was pretty good with words and pictures but in the context of my older brother and father that didn't seem to count for much. Not that they were ever mean to me or purposefully made me feel inadequate. On the contrary, my father was the kindest, gentlest person I've ever met. And I love my brother, as much now as I did then.

But regardless of the loving environment I grew up in, I was sure that it didn't actually matter how good I was with words or pictures because of how bad I was at math and science, the things they were good at. Because what I was good at was so different from the examples I had of successful behavior and skills, I was sure I was destined for failure. And to be clear, by failure I mean destitution: Living in a cardboard box on the street without a penny to my name. I still wake up at night, absolutely sure that everything I've done will be taken away, that someone will tap someone else on the shoulder and say, "We really shouldn't be buying this guy's books, clearly he's an idiot." More than 100 000 books sold later, I still need to talk to my therapist about it often...

I don't have a PhD in accounting, but I know that there are pilot programs and researchers working out how we can do better, by all of us. Those programs, ideas and the people testing them, who are much smarter than me and my pretty words and pictures, need our support because there are writers, artists, humanitarians and philosophers on par with Aristotle, Picasso and Hemingway flipping burgers somewhere next to a highway because that's what they have to do to survive.

What if the question "What would you do if you could do anything?" wasn't a question we asked once as a thought experiment but an everyday expectation for all of us?

A robot can flip burgers. Let's let Hemingway write books.
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Additional resources

How to be Happy: Not a Self-Help Book. Seriously

Central Avenue Publishing is proud to publish another book by the widely acclaimed poet Iain S. Thomas. As many have noted on various social media platforms, there have been some issues that have led to the delayed release of this book.

I Wrote This For You (blog)

Source: Huffington Post