Stolen Moments

NL Post # 13 — Two Stories Can Be True at the Same Time

**Permission to tell the story behind the creation**

My name is Justin Charles Allman, and I’m the author of Curiosity to Creation.

And I fucking hate my book.

There. I said it.

Not my work. Not my message. Not my philosophy. I believe deeply in all of those things. I’ve watched people read the book, underline passages, share their stories with me, and tell me that something I wrote gave them permission to make a change in their own lives.

I love that.

What I hate is everything that became attached to bringing the book into existence.

How many creators, authors, songwriters, or artists have felt something similar about their own work? Maybe it wasn’t the creation they struggled with at all. Maybe it was the experience that became attached to creating it.

For me, bringing Curiosity to Creation through publishing and into the world became intertwined with broken trust, exhaustion, publishing complications, and eventually litigation involving my intellectual property. Those legal matters are still unfolding, which means there are parts of this story I cannot fully or safely tell today.

Maybe someday.

But not today.

And for someone whose entire philosophy revolves around curiosity, permission, reflection, and authentic expression, being unable to fully express that experience has become an experience of its own.

Stolen Moments

When you imagine publishing your first book, there’s supposed to be this moment.

You finally hold it in your hands. You see your name on the cover. You flip through the pages and realize that something that once existed only inside your mind has somehow become physical.

I imagined that moment.

But when mine finally came, it wasn’t what I thought it would be.

There was joy, absolutely. But underneath that joy was relief, resentment, exhaustion, and bitterness. I remember looking at the book and knowing I should feel happier.

This was my fucking book.

I did it.

So why didn’t it feel the way I thought it was supposed to feel?

I think we sometimes forget that lived experiences, goals, aspirations, and moments of great achievement can carry two stories at once.

Two stories can be true at the same time.

I can be incredibly proud of what I created while grieving parts of what it took to create it. I can love the message while struggling with the experience attached to it. I can feel gratitude and disappointment simultaneously.

Neither truth cancels out the other.

🔹 Curiosity

That realization made me curious about something much larger than my own experience.

How many other creators have gone through something similar? How many authors have watched their work become something they didn’t recognize? How many songwriters have heard someone else reshape their words? How many artists have felt like they were standing onstage performing somebody else’s version of their creation?

Maybe it happened because of a contract. Maybe it happened through a business relationship. Maybe someone convinced them they knew what was best for their work. Or somewhere along the way, the creator simply stopped trusting their own voice.

And then I started wondering why we sometimes feel guilty for talking about the negative parts of something we’re supposedly meant to be grateful for.

Are we only allowed to tell the beautiful parts of our success stories?

I don’t think so.

We can experience something painful and still extract something meaningful from it. We can be grateful for what an experience taught us without pretending we enjoyed what happened.

🔸 Permission

Permission isn’t always about giving yourself permission to do something.

Sometimes it’s simply giving yourself permission to feel what is already there.

For me, that meant allowing myself to acknowledge the hurt, disappointment, anger, grief, and exhaustion that became attached to something I had worked so hard to create. Not holding onto those feelings forever and certainly not allowing them to define the experience, but also not pretending they weren’t there simply because I had accomplished something I was supposed to be grateful for.

There’s a strange expectation around achievement that says once you reach the destination, you’re supposed to forget everything it cost you to get there.

Smile for the picture.

Hold up the book.

Celebrate the accomplishment.

But what if gratitude and grief can exist in the same moment?

What if I can be incredibly grateful that Curiosity to Creation exists while also admitting that parts of bringing it into existence fucking hurt?

And I wonder what would happen if we gave ourselves—and each other—permission to speak that honestly.

Maybe instead of immediately judging someone’s experience as positive or negative, we could become curious about it.

We might discover that most of our lives aren’t one or the other.

They’re both.

Perfectly imperfect.

🔹 Discovery

Recently, I appeared on a podcast talking about Curiosity to Creation.

Looking back on that conversation, I realized something uncomfortable:

I hid.

I talked about curiosity. I talked about the philosophy. I talked about the book. But I held back a lot of what I actually felt about the experience surrounding it.

Some of that restraint was necessary. When legal matters are active, there are boundaries around what I can responsibly discuss.

But some of it was fear.

Fear of saying the wrong thing. Fear that people wouldn’t understand why a newly published author could simultaneously be proud of his work and exhausted by everything surrounding it. Fear that admitting any of this would somehow make me sound ungrateful for something I had worked incredibly hard to accomplish.

So, I gave the safer version of my story.

Nothing I said was false.

It just wasn’t the whole truth.

And afterward, that realization bothered me because somewhere inside that shrinking, I denied part of my own story. I denied part of my identity and, ironically, part of the very message I had written a book about.

I wrote about reclaiming personal power through curiosity and permission, yet there I was asking myself whether I had permission to speak honestly about my own experience.

Sometimes the thing we’re most afraid to say becomes the language somebody else desperately needed for an experience they couldn’t explain themselves.

“Turning off the light within us only dims the world of the true light we are here to express.”
— Justin Charles Allman

🔸 Reflection

So, I started asking myself a different question.

What if I don’t have to choose between gratitude and honesty?

What if I can honor what Curiosity to Creation has become while still acknowledging what bringing it into the world cost me?

Maybe I don’t actually hate my book.

Maybe I hated carrying everything that became attached to it.

There’s a difference.

That distinction has allowed me to look at the book differently.

The work is still mine.

The philosophy is still mine.

The experiences that inspired it are still mine.

And whatever happens next, the way I choose to move forward is mine too.

Reflection doesn’t require me to rewrite the past or convince myself that every part of the journey was beautiful.

It simply asks me to look at what happened honestly, become curious about what it taught me, and decide what I want to carry forward.

🔹 Creation

And maybe this is where my own philosophy comes full circle.

If I give myself permission to act on my curiosity—to be transparent about my fears, my story, this journey, and the man I’ve become through the last several months—then Curiosity to Creation stops being something I simply wrote.

It becomes something I live.

Curiosity gave me the question.

Permission allowed me to admit the answer.

Discovery helped me understand what it was underneath.

Reflection allowed me to sit with it.

And creation gives me the choice of what happens next.

Curiosity → Permission → Discovery → Reflection → Creation.

Maybe living your philosophy doesn’t always look inspirational.

Sometimes it looks like admitting:

“I fucking hate my book.”

And becoming curious enough to ask yourself why.

Because I would rather be a living example of my work than simply be the guy who wrote the book.

Until next time—stay curious, Curiosity Creators.

Justin Charles Allman
Author of Curiosity to Creation
Curiosity Creators

“Remember. Reclaim. Create.”

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