I’m Obsessed With James Altucher And I Just Figured Out Why

I discovered the writing of James Altucher in 2013. My recently self-published book is dedicated to him.

Why?

Like many people, I found James’ writing at the precise time I needed it: when I was lying on the floor, in a miserable heap of dead dreams, addictions, negative bank accounts, emotional squalor and with one screaming newborn who scared the living crap out of me because I knew I was in deep shit if I didn’t figure out a way to buy her diapers, groceries and a future.

During the beginning of my discovery of Altucher, I treated his writings like a lot of my other interests, only spending little bits of time here and there reading and thinking about the ideas contained within his blog and books.

Then, this year, something happened inside my brain which I am still trying to understand. I moved from casual interest in his writing to full-blown obsession with both his writing and his person.

I feel like my cells have been invaded by Altucher viruses, and they are now self-replicating inside my neural matter, spawning new forms of miniature chers and alts in particles and waves. I have certainly lost control.

This stuff has all happened to me before. It’s my pathological pattern and each time it happens, the obsession represents something different in my life.

I was listening to Cheryl Strayed’s Dear Sugar podcast today and I finally fucking figured out what’s behind my Altucher obsession. I was glad to discover this self-knowledge because I have been greatly bothered by how much mental energy I have been expending on trying to understand what’s going on inside my brain. In fact, I had to delete the Facebook app from my iPhone because the psychological triggers of possibly seeing notifications from James Altucher were creating such a havoc in my brain, I needed to find a way to just make it stop. It actually worked for a number of days, and I did find relief to a certain extent. You see, I consider James Altucher my writing mentor and role model. It’s only recently that I began to feel that my emotions have turned into a volcano that I’m unable to control or understand. That is until today.

As I listened to the Dear Sugar podcast it became apparent that James Altucher represents three things in my life right now:

1. I’ve been denying my personal happiness and shutting myself off from finding a fulfilling relationship with an available man. My reason for doing so: my last boyfriend was an abusive person and I’m still suffering from the intense fear of getting involved again. I’m gun shy 100%. I’m scared but now I’m entertaining the idea of it occurring again in reality. He sort of represents the kind of person I’d want. (I don’t feel good about admitting this but it is the truth).
2. James Altucher reminds me a little of my best friend from my college days who is possibly the most brilliant person I’ve ever known. She is a brilliant writer and was the person responsible for introducing me to Charles Bukowski and other great authors. In college we were unseparable and spent most of our time together creating entire worlds of film, stories, intellectually-charged adventures and intricate psycho-social-sexual maps of STD transmission patterns of our classmates. To give you an idea of her brilliance: she took a screenplay writing course and finished writing the entire play in one night. She edited in her mind before committing it to the page. She then handed-in one chapter to each class and pretended that she had just written it. Her play was so good, the college theater department ended up performing it. She was smarter and more talented than the professors and they knew it. I knew it, too. I was the one who would listen intently to her genius ideas and then exclaim, “LET’S DO IT!”. She liked that I always wanted to take charge and act. We fed off each other’s creativity. It was the closest I’ve ever become to being like a kid again, with my imagination dictating the course of each day. It was magnificent. It was the best. And we never had to take drugs to get to our magical lands. I miss that kind of connection. I miss living that way (I lived that way again in 2007–09, too, before I ran out of money). But this is not going to be a sad, boo-hoo post. It’s full of relief and knowledge about what lies in store for the future, if I can just release the darkness that seems to follow me wherever I go.
3. I think I want to be James Altucher. I’ve said this privately to some of my friends, and I think it might be true. What I’ve discovered lately, is that James’ flaws are different from my own flaws. In following him so closely online over the last few years, I’ve come to understand that he is a person, a human being who is continually evolving, making mistakes, finding new loves, experiencing the fallout that comes with spilling his guts publicly and revealing himself in the way he wants, not in the transparent way his fans want. He gives out relationship advice even though his own personal life crumbles, and he attempts to hide the details of his personal nuclear winter. He shares his ever-expanding knowledge with the world and at his core, he is an explorer and experimenter of the human condition and so much more. I’m not sure what my life would look like if I hadn’t found his writing. I’m not even sure I’d be writing this post if I’d never found him. My own darkness is what pulled me to his work. And, so I’m not surprised that it is my own darkness that wants to trash any scary advancements I’m about to embark upon. But now I’m able to release my obsession because I fully understand what it represents. I feel a little happier now, much lighter and the only thing I want to destroy this year is my own maladjusted pattern of obsessed disillusionment.