My feeling is that you are fairly young, because this just isn’t true.

Particularly when it comes to illness: you see people fight to the end and still lose every day. But I remember decades ago reading about three children in New York City who were trapped in a fire and the oldest one, 11, died with a crowbar in her hand while trying to pry the bars off the window. I groaned when I read it and said, “Kid, you deserved to live.”

I’ve seen people have their careers completely destroyed through no fault of their own, and never be able to recover. In particular, I knew a lot of people in the music and writing businesses, and the decades between 1980 and 2020 were absolutely devastating for these professions.

I knew two Grammy-winning drummers be forced to leave music and work in technology. I knew two versatile, talented and reliable female writers who’d worked successfully for decades ending up temporarily homeless and be reduced to minimum wage work, because the entire market vanished. One of them told me, “I was throwing out my tax records from a decade ago, and every single organization who paid me ten years ago is either out of business, or no longer pays writers.” Both women have been writing since they were early teenagers —they aren’t going to “learn to code”.

There is some correlation between success and effort. There is a lot more correlation with luck — which often means, “Having the right parents”, particularly in America.

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That said, your article was fantastic and very moving. I’m very glad you got clean, and I wish you great success in the future.