I Didn’t Write This Book to Fix You. I Wrote It to Remind You.
On healing, letting go, and listening to the voice you’ve been silencing for years.
It started at 3am like most honest things do.
Not with a meltdown. Not some cinematic epiphany.
Just a whisper.
You can’t keep living like this.
I was alone in Chiang Mai, Thailand — half a world away from everything I used to be. No inbox. No deadlines. Just the kind of silence that doesn’t lie.
But even there, in all that quiet, the old machinery kept grinding: Be better. Go faster. Fix it. Heal it. Don’t stop moving or it might all catch up.
That night, something cracked.
I wasn’t looking for a reinvention. I was looking for something real.
What came next was this book.
The Listener’s Book of Life
57 Lessons for the Brave, the Lost, and the Willing to Begin Again.
Not in a burst of brilliance but in the stillness that followed, letting the mask drop. The kind of stillness that asks better questions than it answers.
This Isn’t a Self-Help Book
It doesn’t have a morning routine or a list of hacks. There’s no promise of transformation, and thank goodness for that.
This book is a mirror. A lantern. A shoulder.
The Listener’s Book of Life is 157 pages of hard-earned truths and confessions disguised as lessons.
Fifty-seven of them. One more at the end, for the ones who stay.
These aren’t steps. They’re pauses.
Wounds I wrote my way through. Breath I caught. Things I had to learn the long, hard, unsexy way.
Who It’s For
If you’ve outgrown your own life but don’t know what comes next, it’s for you.
If you’ve been stuck in the middle — between heartbreak and healing, between one version of yourself and another — it’s for you.
If you’re not interested in pretending everything’s okay anymore, and you’re tired of hustling your way into worthiness, this book might just meet you where you are.
What’s Inside
This isn’t a book you read front to back. It’s a book you feel your way through.
Each lesson is paired with a painting — yes, artwork. Not decoration. Atmosphere. Mood. Metaphor.
I created each piece to echo the words — sometimes stormy, sometimes luminous, sometimes both.
The lessons?
- Let Go or Be Dragged
- You Don’t Owe Anyone Your Exhaustion
- Sometimes Closure Is Just You
- Growth Feels Like Grief
- Be Someone You Would’ve Needed
57 lessons. And for the ones who stay: Lesson 58.
Each one comes with a reflection. Not to test you — but to walk beside you.
Why the Art Matters
This book lives in both image and word.
Because healing doesn’t just happen through language. Sometimes, it starts with a color. A shadow. A feeling you can’t name.
The paintings aren’t illustrations. They’re meditations.
They speak where words can’t.
What This Book Offers (But Won’t Promise)
Permission. To stop performing.
Hope. For the days that feel heavy.
Truth. Not the loud kind — the listening kind.
Clarity. The kind that arrives after the storm, not during.
Freedom. To change without waiting for permission.
What I Hope You’ll Do
Read one lesson. Or all of them.
Cry if it hits.
Skip what doesn’t.
Underline — Dog-ear (virtually, of course).
Come back when life breaks open again.
And when it gives you what you needed?
Pass it on to someone close.
Not because it’s finished.
But because someone else is just beginning.
Final Word
This book isn’t about fixing your life.
It’s about remembering who you were before the world asked you to forget.
The Listener’s Book of Life: 57 Lessons for the Brave, the Lost, and the Willing to Begin Again.
Now available as a 157-page digital edition.
Read it. Keep it. Gift it with a note that says,
“I thought you might need this.”
Because sometimes, that’s all it takes.
Erik Blair walked away from the American Dream and into something far less predictable. Former soldier, ex-cop, occasional philosopher — he now writes from the back alleys and quiet cafes of Chiang Mai, Thailand.
His stories aren’t about luxury escapes or filtered fantasies. They’re about reinvention, solitude, karaoke bars that don’t close, and the strange beauty of starting over at 59 with nothing but curiosity and a one-way ticket. He’s not an influencer. He’s a man who traded certainty for freedom — and lived to write about it.
