Alright, Alright, Alright. While I haven’t tattooed this quote on my inner thigh or anywhere else on my body, I know you know exactly who this line belongs to.
Yep, he’s handsome, he can act and he definitely can write a book that can keep you engaged from page 1.
And I must say, I had the pleasure of listening to him reading it which made it 10x better. I loved the “Bumper Sticker!” shouts, the odd “greenlight” coming after a good vibe being described and the occassional chuckle.
LOVED IT!
To a point where I went on instagram (where all people stalkers go now that Twitter is dead) and had a look at what he’s been up to. And this man has aged like fine wine.
Let me tell you why I liked the book.
- the man is lovely. I laughed at his time in Australia (kudos for doing the accents right) and the insanity that is an exchange family.
- his family is lovely (in an Irish kind of way). I laughed more than I should have when his bro pee’d over 6ft.
- his rise from underdog to famous actor was also well written. I think he missed out on the drunken benders, the coke parties, the sex themed get-togethers but managed to convey that salt-of-the-earth human-ness that makes him look so approachable.
- I saw him in Magic Mike (but only after seeing the special from Fluffy where he talks about him)
And considering I’m now in my 40’s and looking at my life trying to find a purpose, his book kinda hit differently.
“It is not about win or lose, it is about do you accept the challenge,”
It’s always about a challenge and that makes you better. Belive it or not, even though it’s not designed to be a self-help book, it did feel like one and I felt better for reading it.
I feel better, why?
He is very much a family man and is pretty much living the dream these days. An admirable, straight talking, adventureos and mindful guy who likes to keep going on the go. The word stagnation is not in his vocabulary. And the book makes you want to go out and do things. Explore. Buy a mini-van. Travel the States from side to side. Get a postbox. Do not live in the same spot. And weirdly, have the ability and the determination to follow your dreams (literally).
From the author’s mouth:
I’ve been in this life for fifty years,
been trying to work out its riddle for forty-two, and been keeping diaries of clues to that riddle for the last thirty-five. Notes about successes and failures, joys and sorrows, things that made me marvel, and things that made me laugh out loud. How to be fair. How to have less stress. How to have fun. How to hurt people less. How to get hurt less. How to be a good man. How to have meaning in life. How to be more me.
Recently, I worked up the courage to sit down with those diaries. I found stories I experienced, lessons I learned and forgot, poems, prayers, prescriptions, beliefs about what matters, some great photographs, and a whole bunch of bumper stickers. I found a reliable theme, an approach to living that gave me more satisfaction, at the time, and still: If you know how, and when, to deal with life’s challenges—how to get relative with the inevitable—you can enjoy a state of success I call “catching greenlights.”
So I took a one-way ticket to the desert and wrote this book: an album, a record, a story of my life so far. This is fifty years of my sights and seens, felts and figured-outs, cools and shamefuls. Graces, truths, and beauties of brutality. Getting away withs, getting caughts, and getting wets while trying to dance between the raindrops.
Hopefully, it’s medicine that tastes good, a couple of aspirin instead of the infirmary, a spaceship to Mars without needing your pilot’s license, going to church without having to be born again, and laughing through the tears.
It’s a love letter. To life.
It’s also a guide to catching more greenlights—and to realizing that the yellows and reds eventually turn green too.
One Book a Week (Julia Reads Books) 