The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F_ck

As he sat on the bus back to Los Angeles from New York,
the guitarist kept asking himself: How did this happen? What
did I do wrong? What will I do now? Record contracts didn’t
exactly fall out of the sky, especially for raucous, upstart
metal bands. Had he missed his one and only shot?
But by the time the bus hit L.A., the guitarist had gotten
over his self-pity and had vowed to start a new band. He
decided that this new band would be so successful that his
old band would forever regret their decision. He would
become so famous that they would be subjected to decades
of seeing him on TV, hearing him on the radio, seeing
posters of him in the streets and pictures of him in
magazines. They’d be flipping burgers somewhere, loading
vans from their shitty club gigs, fat and drunk with their ugly
wives, and he’d be rocking out in front of stadium crowds
live on television. He’d bathe in the tears of his betrayers,
each tear wiped dry by a crisp, clean hundred-dollar bill.
And so the guitarist worked as if possessed by a musical
demon. He spent months recruiting the best musicians he
could find—far better musicians than his previous
bandmates. He wrote dozens of songs and practiced
religiously. His seething anger fueled his ambition; revenge
became his muse. Within a couple years, his new band had
signed a record deal of their own, and a year after that, their
first record would go gold.
The guitarist’s name was Dave Mustaine, and the new
band he formed was the legendary heavy-metal band
Megadeth. Megadeth would go on to sell over 25 million
albums and tour the world many times over. Today,
Mustaine is considered one of the most brilliant and
influential musicians in the history of heavy-metal music.
Unfortunately, the band he was kicked out of was
Metallica, which has sold over 180 million albums
worldwide. Metallica is considered by many to be one of the
greatest rock bands of all time.