Life is What Happens To You While You're Busy Making Other Plans
Yes, that subject line refers to Adia. Among other things.
It shouldn't be hard to let go of the crazy ideas you had when you were younger, but it is like pulling teeth out of my bellybutton for me.
See, when I was thirteen or so, I decided I would concentrate on writing. I liked music, acting and art, but I decided, of course, to do the most pretentious one.
And I decided that, of course, me being brilliant and not ashamed to admit it, I would be a famous published writer to rival Stephen King by the time I was twenty. A generous estimate gave me twenty-five, though by then I kind of figured I would be getting read to retire.
Around twenty-five I revised the estimate up to thirty. I'm twenty-nine now, and though I'm closer than I was--and I also got the sense to send out everything I have instead of sitting on it--but it's actually causing a little bit of a midlife crisis for me to admit that I'm actually normal. Hell, I write less than a lot of people I know, and I have dry spells, which was never in the plan. It's been easier to be prolific lately because I don't have a job.
This is sort of weird to admit. And painful. And I feel the need to broadcast it to the Internet so that I can get it out of the way.
Old dreams die hard, I guess, even when they're kind of silly (twenty, young self? TWENTY?)
It shouldn't be hard to let go of the crazy ideas you had when you were younger, but it is like pulling teeth out of my bellybutton for me.
See, when I was thirteen or so, I decided I would concentrate on writing. I liked music, acting and art, but I decided, of course, to do the most pretentious one.
And I decided that, of course, me being brilliant and not ashamed to admit it, I would be a famous published writer to rival Stephen King by the time I was twenty. A generous estimate gave me twenty-five, though by then I kind of figured I would be getting read to retire.
Around twenty-five I revised the estimate up to thirty. I'm twenty-nine now, and though I'm closer than I was--and I also got the sense to send out everything I have instead of sitting on it--but it's actually causing a little bit of a midlife crisis for me to admit that I'm actually normal. Hell, I write less than a lot of people I know, and I have dry spells, which was never in the plan. It's been easier to be prolific lately because I don't have a job.
This is sort of weird to admit. And painful. And I feel the need to broadcast it to the Internet so that I can get it out of the way.
Old dreams die hard, I guess, even when they're kind of silly (twenty, young self? TWENTY?)
posted by Spencer Ellsworth at 10:51 PM
1 Comments:
Your young self is insufferable. If you were still like that you would never have gotten laid. Anyway, aren't you pretentious types supposed to suffer for your art? Getting rich famous as a writer at 20 isn't suffering.
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