AI Turned 9 Years of My Journals Into a Book Outline—and Wrote the First Draft

Business
Written By Chad Tabary

Based on your journals (2016–2025), here’s what rises to the surface as a book you should write—because it’s the one only you can write, and it integrates your faith, business acumen, emotional growth, leadership trials, and spiritual awakening.

📘 Book Premise

Title: The Middle Is the Mountain: Building a Life of Leadership, Faith, and Discipline When Nobody's Watching

Subtitle: How One Man’s Journals Through Divorce, Debt, Duty, and Discipline Became a Map for Christian Leadership in a Chaotic World

Premise:
The modern Christian man doesn’t fail from lack of ambition—but from drowning in ambiguity, isolation, and half-finished starts. This book follows the raw, personal transformation of a man moving from scattered striving to aligned, integrated leadership—across fatherhood, business, calling, and faith.

✍️ Who This Book Is For

  • Men in their 30s–50s who have tasted success but feel spiritually dry and emotionally unanchored

  • Christian entrepreneurs seeking clarity of calling, structure, and deeper integrity

  • Men secretly journaling, self-reflecting, or asking, “Is this all there is?”

🧱 STRUCTURE / OUTLINE

PART I: COLLAPSE & CLARITY
What You Lose When You’re Not Aligned—and What You Learn When You Hit Bottom

  1. The Divorce, the Debt, and the Couch

  2. All the Wrong Hustles

  3. False Starts and Hollow Wins

  4. The Voice Beneath the Worry

PART II: ORDER & CHAOS
Living Between Discipline and Drift
5. Getting Fit Again, Then Not
6. Women, Fatherhood, and the Cost of Being Distracted
7. Serving Two Masters: The Corporate Job and the Calling
8. One Hundred Days of Doing the Thing

PART III: THE LONG OBEDIENCE
What Happens When You Don’t Quit
9. Finding Your Mission in the Mundane
10. Building a Brand While Raising a Family
11. Saying No to Good Things
12. Finding God in Business, Discipline, and Podcast Mics

PART IV: THE MAN WHO LEADS
Becoming the Man You Were Trying to Find
13. Leadership Is Not What You Thought
14. Anchored in Christ, Not Algorithms
15. You Don’t Need Permission
16. Finish What You Started—Because They’re Watching

Epilogue: What I Know Now That I Didn’t Know Then

📝 FIRST DRAFT — INTRODUCTION

Introduction: The Middle Is the Mountain

I didn’t set out to write this book. I set out to survive.

Somewhere between my second divorce and my seventh attempt to build a business that would “finally give me freedom,” I realized I had become the very thing I used to hate: a man with potential—but no peace.

I had a daughter I rarely saw. I was living in borrowed bedrooms, typing journal entries on old laptops about what I’d do once things settled down. I chased commission checks, chased girls, chased clarity. And I kept writing, because something in me hoped that one day I’d look back and it would all make sense.

This book is that look back.

Over nine years of journaling, I recorded everything:

  • The desperation of trying to get back on my feet

  • The ache of wanting to be a better man, but not knowing how

  • The love and chaos of raising kids, making money, and not losing yourself

  • The slow, unsexy grind of transformation

There is no “overnight success” in these pages. There is no step-by-step framework for instant peace.

But there is a pattern.
And that pattern is this: when you don’t quit, God starts to work.

In the journals you’ll read excerpts from, I said “I love you” to myself nearly every day. Not because I always meant it—but because I needed to mean it. I needed to hear it from someone. And if no one else was going to say it, I would.

This book is written for the men still in the middle.
Still journaling.
Still trying.
Still asking if they’re crazy for believing life can be richer than this.

You’re not crazy. You’re just climbing.

The middle is not a holding pattern.
The middle is the mountain.

And if you keep hiking, you will summit.

I love you.

—Chad

Initial Reactions

  • Dang man. Some of this stuff hits freaking home!

  • Also, dang man. Some of this stuff is specific, and it [clap] hits [clap] home [clap]

  • Finally, I think I’m going to write this book.

I asked ChatGPT how I could save this progress and continue writing this book with it. You can see those instructions here.

Chad Tabary
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