PROSPER LIFE 365
Plain spoken books for real life. Walk in wherever you standing.
Lift Me Up
Word for Today
The Room You Standing In
Here go the one thing don't nobody want to hear. Most of what is eating you got a door on it.
Not everything. I ain't finna sit here and tell you a man can walk out of a diagnosis or walk out of a graveside. Some things you carry, and carrying is the job. But that room where you keep getting talked to sideways? That group chat that leave you feeling like a wet coat? The people who only call you when they hand out? That's a room. Rooms got doors. Doors swing both ways.
I lost a whole lot one time behind asking a man to speak to me like a man. Cost me more money than I want to say out loud. And I would do it the exact same way tomorrow, cause I walked out of there with less in my pocket and everything else still mine.
Check the room you standing in tonight. If it ain't feeding you, it's eating you. Ain't no third option.
One Step Is The Whole Engine
People be waiting on a big day. A moment. Some kind of lightning that come pick them up and set them down somewhere better.
That day ain't coming. And that's good news, cause you can't schedule lightning but you can schedule a Tuesday.
What actually move you is boring. One yard. One page. One phone call you been ducking for a month. It look like nothing while you doing it. It look like a man sweeping the same little piece of sidewalk. But sweep that same spot every morning for a year and you will have built something can't nobody take from you, and you won't even remember starting.
I started my whole business with a truck, a trailer and some flyers. Forty dollars a yard. That's it. That's the whole secret and it's a disappointment, I know.
Small don't mean slow. Small mean it's running quiet.
Go do the one thing. Today. Not Monday.
If you need more than a word today, the books are right here.
Help Me Through
The list nobody warns you about
They warn you about the grief. Everybody warns you about the grief.
Nobody warns you about the list.
You lose somebody, and within about a day and a half the world hands you a stack of things that have to get done. They do not wait for you to be ready. They do not care that you have not slept. And the worst part is nobody sits you down and tells you what they are, so you find them one at a time, usually at the wrong hour, usually alone.
So here is the list, plain, so you at least know what is coming.
- The calls. The people who need to hear it from you, not from a post. Write the names down before you start, because you will forget somebody and it will bother you for years. You are allowed to hand this list to somebody else and let them make the calls.
- The certificates. Order more copies of the death certificate than feels reasonable. Ten is not too many. Almost every institution below will want an original, and getting more later is slower than getting them now.
- The arrangements. Funeral home, service, burial or cremation, the obituary. Take somebody with you who is not as close to it as you are. Bring a notebook. Ask for the price list in writing.
- The accounts. Bank, insurance, Social Security, pension or benefits, utilities, phone, subscriptions, the car, the mortgage or the lease. Credit bureaus, so nobody can use the name.
- The papers. Will, deed, titles, safe deposit box, tax records.
You do not have to do it in order. You do not have to do it well. You just have to do the next one.
If you want it all in one place, with room to write, that is what Let This Help You is.
Inside the book: The Exchange
The prompt, printed
Written back, in her hand
If you are standing in the middle of the list right now, Let This Help You holds both halves, the grief and the getting-through. Come find a hand to hold.
Door Three
Make Me Laugh
Door number three does not come locked, and it does not come quiet. West Hyrtle's own council already had a word about it before you got here, and the man who wired this whole thing together heard about it too, whether he asked or not.
Miss Claudette read every word twice before she said a thing about it, and she did say a thing, just not to us. She also had an opinion on the newsletter, delivered with love, the way she delivers everything.
Even Ike had something to say about the door itself, broom in hand, same as always. He had more to say about the choosing than the door. Down at the funeral home, Ray Ray found the grief section before he found anything else, and he had a card ready just in case. And the Judge, well, the court reviewed the whole page and had thoughts about how many doors one website needs. He also ruled on his own name being on it, and denied his own motion.
Hear it the way it was meant to be told
Who's Who in West Hyrtle
Words to keep
Free to read, free to save, free to send to somebody who needs it.
You did not come here just to breathe the air and clock out. Bring something back to the world before you go.
The laugh they laughing now got a short battery. Your work don't.
You choose the room you standing in. If the room ain't feeding you, the door still work.
An obstacle ain't a wall, it's a weight. Weights don't stop you, they build you.
Some losses you take with your head down. This one you take with your head up and your name still clean.
Dignity don't come with a receipt. That's how you know it was worth what it cost.
One step is not slow. One step is the whole engine, just running quiet. Save the card
Find the thing that empties your head. Cutting grass, washing a car, walking a fence line. That's medicine, and it's cheap.
Don't let a man with a bigger title tell you he a bigger man. A chart ain't a scale.
Know what you worth. If it ain't where it need to be, go get some more and come back.
Your children learning ambition off you the same way they learned how to walk. Quiet. By watching.
You do not have to be strong today. Strong is a season, not a rent payment. Save the card
Somebody put a price on you one time and you been walking around wearing it like it's yours. Go look at the tag. That ain't your handwriting. Save the card
You can't shop with what somebody else think you worth. That money don't spend nowhere.
They can take the truck, the account, the keys to the building. Dignity don't fit in the truck. That's how come it's still yours in the morning.
Being respectful ain't the same as being available. You can say yes sir and still say no.
Ain't nothing grow good in all that shade. Move the pot before you go blaming the plant. Save the card
You can't season a pot everybody keep spitting in. Some kitchens you just got to leave.
Wasn't no path there. Somebody just walked the same line through the grass til the grass gave up.
Slow is still north. Sitting still is the only direction that ain't one.
Ground got to get broke before it feed anybody. That's all that's happening to you right now. Save the card
Hard don't mean wrong. Cold water wake you up too.
Your children learning how to be grown off how you answer the phone when you tired. They ain't listening. They taking notes. Save the card
You the first book they ever read. They read it every day, and they don't skip nothing.
You allowed to set it down. Ain't nobody handing out a trophy for carrying it til your back go out. Save the card
Crying don't cost you nothing. Holding it cost you sleep, and sleep been expensive lately.
Let em talk. Talking is free and it's about all they got in the budget.
Fear be loud and broke at the same time. It ain't never one time paid a bill for you.
You been pouring out of a cup you ain't filled since who knows when. Go fill the cup. That ain't selfish, that's plumbing. Save the card
Whatever you build, build it where somebody coming up behind you can see the blueprint.
The Bookcase
Read Me
Read Me
"A Shadow Work Journal for Hard Times & Healing"
Most journals hand you a pile of questions and let you pick. This one walks the road the way you actually walked it: childhood, the growing years, the becoming years, the hard times, and this moment. At the end, a thread map shows you what kept repeating, the part nobody sees while they are still writing.
Paperback, $9.99.
Look inside
West Hyrtle, Book One
Behind Closed Doors
"Saints, Scandals, and Honesty"
West Hyrtle has eleven thousand people and twenty-two thousand secrets. When Jion Homes runs for mayor, he publishes every sin he ever committed on his own campaign website, under a tab called MY DIRT.
You cannot blackmail a man who went first.
A Southern comedy told the whole way in the voice of a man telling you the story off his own porch. Funny on the surface, with a knife under the laugh. Illustrated throughout.
Included with Kindle Unlimited. Contains strong language and adult humour.
Look inside
Let This Help You
Special Edition. A companion for grief and remembrance.
They warn you about the grief. Nobody warns you about the list.
One keepsake that holds both: a soft place to grieve, and a calm place for everything that has to get done. Written after loss came to my own family and I could not find a single book that held both halves.
Available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle.
Look inside
Inside the Pages
Behind Closed Doors is not laid out like other novels
The town does not stay quiet while Jion tells his story. The people of West Hyrtle talk back in the margins, each in their own hand and their own ink, like a live comments section running down the pages. Pooch brags in blue marker. Miss Claudette judges in red script. Ike drops dry one-liners in pencil. The rest of the town chimes in right beside the lines they are reacting to.
You also get:
- Illustrations throughout, placed where the story calls for them
- A Who's Who of West Hyrtle so you always know whose porch you are standing on
- Real town artifacts reproduced on the page, including a certain misspelled flyer and a church group chat that got out of hand
- A closing collage, because the messages kept coming in
Let This Help You holds two jobs at once
Half of it is a soft place for the grief. The other half is a calm place for the list nobody warns you about: the calls, the accounts, the arrangements, the paperwork that does not wait for you to be ready.
It also carries something I have not seen in another book: The Exchange. Paired keepsake pages where one person writes and a loved one writes back on the facing page, so both voices are kept together forever. And a Pass It On page, so if the writer is gone, whoever finds the answered words can carry them to the person still living.
About J. Ballen
My name is Jeremey Ballen. Folks call me Jay, and J. Ballen is the name on the covers. I write plain spoken books for real life. My fiction and my nonfiction come from the same place: ordinary people carrying hard seasons, told without polish.
I started writing through a season of loss. I finished my first book before my mother passed and never got to put it in her hands. If I had never started writing, I do not think I would still be here. Those pages held me up on the days nothing else could.
Somewhere in the middle of it I found an idea from Carl Jung: that most of us wear a face for the world, and then turn right around and judge the next person for wearing one too. That walked me straight into Behind Closed Doors.
Everything I publish comes out under the Prosper Life 365 banner, with one promise behind every page. Real help, in plain words, from somebody who has been there.
Questions people ask
Where can I get the books?
Both are on Amazon. Behind Closed Doors comes in Kindle and paperback, and it is included with Kindle Unlimited. Let This Help You comes in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle.
Is Behind Closed Doors clean?
No. It is honest. It carries strong language and adult humour, the way a story told off a porch actually sounds. If that is not for you, Let This Help You is written gentle the whole way through.
Which one should I start with?
If you want to laugh, start with Behind Closed Doors. If you are carrying a loss, or you love somebody who is, start with Let This Help You. They come from the same place either way.
Is there a Book Two?
West Hyrtle is a series and Book Two is on the way. The newsletter below is the first place I will say so.
How do I reach you?
Email support@prosperlife365.com. It gets read.
Talk to me
West Hyrtle is a series, and Book Two is coming. Leave your email and I will tell you when it is out. No noise, no spam, just the books.
Or follow J. Ballen on Amazon from either book page to get new release alerts.
Prefer email? Reach me at support@prosperlife365.com. It gets read.