New Year’s came and went without a resolution. Ash Wednesday slipped by without me giving anything up. Now we’re almost three months into the 2012 and I’m stagnating. I’m back in school, three years after having dropped out. I’ve got an internship with an awesome press that is the best job I’ve ever had. But, all that is carry over from 2011. The big changes I swore to make are markedly absent.
By big changes I mostly mean my weight. I’m fat. We’re not talking kind of pudgy fat. We’re talking just too slim for “Biggest Loser” fat. I’m also balding. Neither fact makes me jump for joy, but I could deal with either by itself. I can be fat. I can be bald. I will not be bald and fat. A childhood of watching my father’s receding hairline taught me that you can go bald with your dignity or without your dignity, but you will go bald. That means my weight needs to get under control.
So why has something this simple, and this important, taken me so long to get under control? Probably because my weight has always been the touchstone to my state of mind. I’m stagnating, and expanding at the waist, because I’m twiddling my thumbs pretending I don’t have to make big decisions about my future. Here’s the thing: I’ve wanted to be a writer since I realized that people got paid to make stories. As I’ve grown up, I’ve realized that my native talents don’t lie in that direction.
I’m not totally hopeless. I’m a half decent writer and four or five years of dedicated effort away from approaching a professional level of writing. I’m also a father, my family’s primary breadwinner, a full time undergraduate student- with intentions towards graduate school- and a husband. There isn’t room in my life for four years of dedicated effort at something that will fail to feed my daughter. So, I’m maybe twenty years of casual effort away from approaching a professional level of talent.
What I am good at is business and marketing. I could make a damn good run at making a living in a publishing related job. I’d certainly enjoy a job in the industry, hell I’d probably like it a lot more than being a writer. But it isn’t being a writer. Even knowing that I would make more money, and probably be happier, it’s hard to let go of a dream that I’ve held since I was twelve.
So in the next few weeks you’ll be seeing a new series on the blog: The Future of Me. I’ll be talking about my plans for building a career that I can love, do well in, and hopefully support my family.
Aliens that gave you superpowers, turning into animals, secretively defending the world from evil aliens (who happened to include the principal), and a flip-book cartoon in the bottom corner. Animorphs had everything ten year old me could ask for out of a book. The series was so many firsts for me. It was the first book I ever borrowed from a friend because they thought I would enjoy it. It was the first time a story ever sucked me in and didn’t let go until it spit me out on to the back cover. It was the book that introduced me to the agony of waiting for a sequel. Animorphs will always hold a special place in my heart for teaching me that I could read a book simply because I wanted to.
I can’t find link, but I remember reading a piece of an interview by Feist where he said something to the effect “I didn’t know what made a good book when I wrote Magician, so I just told a ripping good yarn.” Well, when I read Magician Apprentice I had no idea what made a good book either, but I knew how to have a good time reading a good yarn. Magician: Apprentice marked the first book I ever read the was written for adults. It was also the first book I ever read that was over two hundred pages.
I lied. This one. Absolute favorite. My grandparents gave me an autographed, trade paper back copy of Eye of The World for Christmas when I was twelve. It was huge and intimidating and way, way bigger but it was a Christmas present,than anything I had ever read. But it was also autographed, and a Christmas present, and according to my grandparents, the author also lived in Charleston. I was intrigued and obligated and started reading. The Eye of the World blew my mind. It drew on Arthurian legends, it played with cultural and literary concepts I’d never thought about, it had a unique and amazing magic system. This is the book that made me realize that I wanted to be a writer. I dust off the library’s copy every year or two (my trade paperback had to be retired when pages started falling out) because you never really forget your first love.
What do you get when you cross Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, The Maltese Falcon and a beat up VW Bug? A quick read, a whole hell of a lot of fun, and a bridge to the realization that grown ups occasionally read books without made up countries.
Baby steps people, baby steps. You don’t go from strict genre nerd to a balanced literary diet without some embarrassing steps in between. Clive Cussler might be the literary equivalent of the Hostess cupcake. He might write from a very strict formula. He might pay less attention than most action movies to details like probability and the laws of physics. But Dirk Pitt doesn’t slay a single dragon or cast the tiniest spell. So, you know, progress…
t book that I got as a present. The Sherlockian is a fun murder mystery, chock full of knowledge about Conan Doyle and Sherlockiana. It is also pleasantly lacking in consulting detectives. Most of all, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, The Sherlockian caused me to go onto reading the Sherlock Holmes canon for the first time.
What’s this you say? A good coming of age story? Set on a clipper ship? In space?! Nathan Lowell managed to push damn near every nerd button I have. To top it all of, he gives the entire series away for free in audiobook form. Quartershare introduced me to podiobooks.com: a magical place where broke, 26 year old fathers can find awesome, free fiction that is conveniently divided into drive to work sized chunks.
