Chapter 1-3: Glitter bomb
I finally started the 5 AM Club. And it went off like a glitter bomb in my face, by which I mean I was immediately intrigued and … frankly surprised. My first impression of the author on Dr. Chatterjee’s podcast was negative. I was looking forward to getting into the book so I could start making fun of it a bit, like I did with “The Rules.”
I arrived home last night (day 8), went up to say good night to my kids, and my ten-year-old daughter (let’s call her “N”) said to me “why are you so happy?” And I laughed, and said “Oh no… that’s sad that every time I’m in a half decent mood you wonder why!” She swore that this was more than a half-decent mood. Maybe it was, though it’s also true that my mood has been so strung-out lately that it is noticeable when I’m not exuding that.
The truth was that I was “so happy” because I finally felt I was on the road to resolving things with A, that I had talked to another friend who has ADHD like me and felt seen on the problems with A, and that maybe the worst of the hell getting ready for the High Holidays was over. The Yom Kippur service order felt close to final; a kind soul offered to help me with the choir admin after last rehearsal when I essentially had a meltdown; I’m getting to the finish line.
I was in bed shortly after 10, but didn’t really feel ready for the sleep hypnosis app. Normally I’d whip out my candy crush-type game… but I remembered downstairs that my copy of 5 AM Club had arrived. (I had ordered it a while ago but sent it to my friend’s house by mistake, along with her birthday presents.)
Three (short) chapters in, the book has introduced a narrative that is both engaging and, when I zoom out from it, kind of dumb. It has identified a problem. It’s the same problem every other self-help book identifies, of course—modern society—but I kinda dig this take:
“Society has sold us a series of mistruths, that pleasure is preferable to the terrifying yet majestic fact that all possibility requires hard work, regular reinvention and a dedication as deep as the sea to leaving our harbors of safety, daily.”
(double quoted because this is a character speaking in the book.)
There is no hint of the solve yet. More to the point, I have no idea what 5 AM has to do with anything.
And there are whiffs of the toxic “BE EXTRAORDINARY” rhetoric that one of my all-time favorite self-help books, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, calls out as the “modern society” problem. I think Mark Manson gets it right, and I’m not doing this 5 AM club thing to be extraordinary. I’m doing it to be ordinary, if anything. I am sick of reacting to things.
Even so, my brain is buzzing with the excitement of a New Thing to try, though I’m not naive enough to think it (or anything else) is The Answer. I get bored. I’ve never had a healthy habit stick for more than a year, though I like to think I’ve made incremental progress on some aspects of my character I’d like to improve.
I describe the book chapter-by-chapter below in enough detail that if you want a “cold read” you should probably stop here. Otherwise feel free to
Chapter 1 is only one page front and back and it involves an unnamed character who wants to kill herself. BOOM!
It felt like the opening of a novel, not a self-help book called “The 5 AM Club.”
I think this would have grabbed me even if I had not struggled with suicidal ideation in the past, but as someone who has, I was hooked. And feel a little bad for blogging this book because I don’t want to spoil a fictionlike book. I’m really glad I didn’t read any reviews of this first!
Anyway, the character decides to go to a self-help conference before ending it all.
In Chapter 2, we readers attend the self-help conference with the suicidal character from Chapter 1. This chapter consists mostly of descriptions of and quotes by the conference leader, referred to as “Spellbinder.”
Part of my law practice is executive coaching… I feel like I’ve read a lot of self-help books and not much impresses me anymore. But this “Spellbinder” dude has got my attention. The book introduces him thus:
The man’s work was unique…[he] showed ordinary individuals how to … return to the sense of awe we once knew before a hard and cold world placed our natural genius into bondage by an orgy of complexity, superficiality, and technological distractions.
(emphasis mine). An orgy of distractions. I’m listening. What say you, Spellbinder? In addition to the “harbor” quote above the line:
“Please don’t let the pain of an imperfect past hinder the glory of your fabulous future.”
“Only those devoted enough to go to the fiery edges of their highest limits will expand them.”
“The moment when you most feel like giving up is the instant when you must find it in you to press ahead.”
The last Spellbinder quote above is from Chapter 3, when we’re back in the head of the suicidal character who remembers that quote from the conference and latches onto it.
At the end of Chapter 2, Spellbinder collapses on stage at the end of his speech and other than visible blood from the fall, it’s not clear what happens to him. I assume we’ll circle back to that at some point. Otherwise, what?!! This drama seems random and unnecessary.
But I’m still in. So.