My childhood bedroom at 24

I've read Shoe Dog three times.
At 16, it got me through high school angst.
During national service, it carried me through the long days.
In college, it grounded me to my principles.

Now, at 24, back home helping with the family business, feeling a little lost, I picked it up again, hoping for some guidance.

The prologue hit me like a truck:

"It was strange being home again, stranger still was living again with my parents, sleeping in my childhood bed. Late at night I'd lie on my back, staring at my college textbooks, my high school trophies and blue ribbons, thinking: This is me? Still?

On paper, I thought, I'm an adult. Graduated from a good college—my résumé said I was a learned, accomplished soldier, a twenty-four-year-old man in full . . . So why, I wondered, why do I still feel like a kid?"

At 16, I skimmed those words.
Now they read like a mirror.

The childhood bedroom strips away pretense and forces an honest accounting: where I actually am versus where I thought I’d be.

Then came this excerpt after a year spent at home:

"Are the best moments of my life behind me? Was my trip around the world . . . my peak? This is how I spent 1963. Quizzing pigeons. Polishing my Valiant. Writing letters. 'Dear Carter, Did you ever leave Shangri-La? I'm an accountant now and giving some thought to blowing my brains out.'"

Were my best moments behind me, back in LA?
It's a seductive thought, but ultimately useless.

Knight didn’t know he was building Nike while lying in his childhood bed. He just knew he had to start, and keep going. I guess I just needed a reminder.

"The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us."

— Phil Knight, Shoe Dog