Comparison is a con

I read Ryan Holiday’s post about turning almost 40 the other night. He writes well about this stuff - about most things really - about the long arc of a career, the books stacked up behind him, the discipline that put them there.It’s an excellent post. But somewhere in the middle of reading it, I started subconsciously doing the math.Holiday’s only a few years older than I am - a handful of years.That realisation was enough to send me into a small-scale spiral. It didn’t bother me that he’s accomplished. Everyone knows he’s accomplished. It was more the proximity. If he’d been twenty years ahead I could have filed him under “different generation, different game” and gone to bed.But a few years…A few years is close enough to feel akin to a verdict.A few years is close enough that I can’t pretend we started in different worlds. We’re almost the same age, and look at the gap.He’s published - what, half a dozen books? More? He has a back catalogue, a machine of a career. He successfully…