After twenty years of thinking about it, I’m finally writing my first book.

And this time, I’m serious. I’ve secured a professional coach/editor and outlined the strategy and even the chapters. The first chapter is nearing completion.

So, hopefully by the end of this year, I’ll have completed all three of Hemingway’s instructions for all men: “Plant a tree, father a son and write a book”.

The book and all its proceeds will go to furthering the mission we embarked on in 1997: to serve those who serve the poor.

The point of the book will be that by pursuing this noble cause, I have been blessed with an abundance that seemed so elusive when I was younger.

The abundant American is wealthier than we have ever been. Our average net worth has doubled since 1990, even after the great recession. Though distributed unequally, Americans households possess over $60 trillion in net worth.

We have more houses, more cars, more leisure time, more clothes, jewelry and technological devices of every kind. And yet, melancholy and depression have increased at even higher rates among Americans than our wealth.

The book’s theory is the only avenue to finding more meaning in our lives, therefore more peace, less depression, is by helping those less fortunate materially, spiritually or psychologically than we are.

The “helper’s high”, as it is called in psychological circles, was documented by among others, a 3,000 person study done by Allan Luks. His research concluded that regular helpers are 10 times more likely to be in good health than people who don’t volunteer. And that there’s an actual biochemical explanation: volunteering reduces the body's stress and also releases endorphins, the brain’s natural painkillers.

The book will follow my own journey – from small town Ashtabula, Ohio, to the national advertising business, through building a functional business and selling it for a fortune. It ends with my current work in non-profits as I arrive back again to Ashtabula.

I will endeavor most of all to motivate other Tim McCarthys whom I think number in the hundreds of thousands just in the USA.

That is, those people who enjoy and appreciate their abundance but seek much more than cars and food and houses and recreations that leave us wanting.

If you are reading this blog, you are already on the journey with me.

Peace,
Tim McCarthy