Last week a work crew dug eight deep holes under my home’s foundation. We’re talking coffin-deep holes. The purpose was to solidify the house, which clings to a steep hill, but a series of unexpected setbacks made the project more exciting than planned. At the same time I’ve been reworking a manuscript that needed a little more steel in its structure. 

Here’s what these efforts have been teaching me: fixing a foundation is the hardest work there is; it’s also the most important.

“I have decided to leave the firm,” I said. “To write novels.” 

In John Grisham’s famous book, The Firm, saying something like that could get you killed. I did not quite expect that level of risk when I said it, but I at least braced myself for people to look at me like I was crazy. In fact, the response went like this: a moment of surprise, quickly replaced by an enthusiastic (if bewildered) smile. Most people don’t walk away from a safe and steady career path. I recently did, and everyone was delighted. They wished me the best as I stepped off the beaten path and onto a far riskier one.

After much thought, I’ve identified 10 important reasons why.

Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life is selling like the Gospel. And maybe that’s because it has Good News in it. The news is this: even when others face suffering with nihilistic cynicism (like in the wildly successful YA novel, The Fault In Our Stars), Peterson tells us we can stare cynicism in the face and punch it in the nose. In the fight against cynicism, Peterson wins and so do we. Here’s why this is so important.