Date posted: May 1, 2007 - Tuesday
Title: Mid-Life Crisis
Current mood: scared and contemplative
OK, I know.
At my age I should have had a mid-life crisis 20 years ago. I should have been the harried businessman wondering where his life had gone and what was left for him. That is what would be considered normal. But I have always been behind the curve in my life. A lot of the milestones you reach in life have come later to me than they have to other people. I didn't have my first date until much later than others, first real girlfriend until later, my first kiss, my first … Well, you get the idea.
And I know there are things in life, those milestone markers, that I will never see. The time for them has passed and they will not be available to me.
It makes me sad sometimes, but it is just the way things happen and I try not to dwell on it more than occasionally.
But the weight of events and my place in life have been weighing more than usual upon my shoulders in the last month or so. I know what has sparked this period of rumination and melancholy. It was the loss of my job and the uncertain future path ahead of me.
I am playing the game the best I can for the moment, but there are many hours available to me that are filled with thought and worry and images of what the future might hold. I have sent out feelers to the people I worked with over the last nine years and received only a few responses even acknowledging my correspondence. I wonder if what I have done over the last nine years has made any difference at all; had any value at all.
I read the Sunday paper for job opportunities, I get my daily report from Monster.com with possibilities and all of it seems so futile. The skills I have to list from my last job seem only to be applicable to jobs that pay so much less than I was making; and definitely not enough to support myself.
There are long hours each day where I am left alone with my thoughts. Too many hours. Too many thoughts.
I have looked at what I have done. I have looked at what appears to be ahead of me. And I have come to a conclusion.
I don't want to work for anyone else again.
No, I can't afford to retire. I would last about a minute on what I have saved and what little I would get under early retirement from Social Security. But the prospect of spending hours of every day for years to come doing mindless, bullshit clerical work just makes me want to run screaming down the street; or climb a tower and start shooting (just kidding there, but you get the idea). I don't want to get up each morning and punch a clock and know the work I do won't mean squat to anyone in the long run.
I know what I want to do. I have told people for years. And I have meant it, but now it is time to put my money where my mouth is. And it scares me to death.
So this is my mid-life crisis. I want to write.
For years I have said this to people. I have repeated it so many times it has become like a mantra. But now I am scared it is a meaningless mantra. And I am scared for serious reasons. Because I know what the odds are I could actually get anywhere with writing. And they are long, long odds.
When I was in college (a couple of eons ago) I heard a factoid from a writing professor. He said there were probably only ten people in the whole United States that made one hundred percent of their income from writing. I would imagine that number would be higher this many years later, but it probably still isn't high.
And then there is the matter of talent. Do I really have the talent? I did have some minor success a long time ago. I was in college when I sold my first short story. Now, I will admit I was not in college straight out of high school. This was while I was in graduate school after being in the Army. I was 31 at the time. It wasn't until ten years later I sold my second story. (And the bad part about this is the second story was actually written at about the same time as the first one.)
And so it occurs to me, what if this was a fluke? Since both stories were written about the same time, what if that was it for me? What if that was the peak of whatever talent I have and I can't actually produce anything today that can sell?
Of course my ego wants to believe I am a good writer. Hell, it wants to believe I am a great writer. But that is ego -- and actually selling something is reality.
Funny thing is on the day I got laid off I actually sent out a manuscript to a publisher for the first time in years. I mailed it off at mid day and by the afternoon I was unemployed.
Well, it was out about a month and came back rejected. It hasn't discouraged me like it would have in the past, but it does put things into perspective. Even if it has sold it would have only brought me a few hundred dollars. And you can't live on a few hundred dollars now and then.
To make a living at writing you would have to produce a lot of stuff that sold. And it takes time -- time where nothing else is coming in and you have to be able to survive.
And while my ego wants me to pursue the literary course, my mind is saying, "What, are you an idiot?"
