Long-winded Introspection
Feeling the need to ramble long form tonight, so this is as good a place as any.It's difficult at the moment to not think about having kids. I've got a few friends who have them already, one who is expecting a son, a couple others who are discussing having. I've known for an extremely long time that I am a person who wants to have kids, and Portia and I have been talking about having kids in much the same way we discussed getting married in the months leading up to us deciding it was time and so I know the decision is coming. I wrote here just about a year ago that I'd decided in 2011 that I wasn't going to wait on things anymore, that I was going to decide the things I want and work towards them. So the decision to have kids is easy for me, but at the same time, terrifying (as I assume it must be to everyone who actually gets the chance to decide).
I don't think I can attain the picture of parenthood I've always wanted to attain. I imagined that by the time I had kids, I'd be writing for a living. Publishing books that sold well and therefore able to sit at home with my child(ren) with only minimal disruption to work. I waited too long to stop dicking around and write seriously, though. Perhaps that's too harsh and unrealistic. Not everyone is the authors I've read who managed to become wildly successful while still in college. I know that most professional writers struggle to get their first book published and often that they don't find monetary success until they've pushed and pushed for years.
When I was younger, I used to do calculations in my head about success. I understood very young that not everyone can reach the level of success many of us believe we'll reach when we're young. I know that in my junior high, when I first really considered this, that maybe 6 people would reach the pinnacle of their various dreams. I was sure it was a zero sum sort of thing. If they made it, I couldn't. I couldn't decide what mine was, pro sports or writing. I think I still really thought I was a world class athlete in the making. Obviously chance/fate, whatever you'll call it, knew better. It's taken a long time for the pain of that to die.
I wagered that 5-10 people in my high school would reach the pinnacle of their success. As I was in jr high, I was determined to be one of them. But I couldn't put my heart into writing. Not completely. I could sit and write a page a day, but I couldn't finish anything. I was scared to finish. I was so used to episodic writing, from comics and from TV, that I thought a finished story was a dead story. Something had to be left unresolved or how could the story live? It was my weakness, I could draw endings for the villains, but not the heroes. And so I just floated. I didn't devote to my writing. I still thought I'd make it, that it was zero sum and I could succeed and that would be revenge against everyone who gave me shit and they'd be stuck failing.
I read an article earlier about how Michael Jordan has this rage inside him that drives him to be the best, but also turns him into an asshole that spits on all the food brought to him so no one can steal it. The kind of person who'll damage other people just to prove himself better. I decided in high school that revenge was worth it. I could trust a few people, because they'd shown they wouldn't tear me down, but everyone else was an enemy. They'd hurt me whether they knew it or not, just like my body had betrayed me, and they'd pay.
In college that changed, though. At least, it started to. I stopped worrying about who would succeed. In some ways, I'd succeeded by reaching college, I felt. I got to take classes just on writing and I realized that I could write copiously and with skill. I'll never forget the white hot fury I felt at someone accusing me of plagiarizing a story I'd written because I'd gotten praise from a professor (who, ironically, I didn't even respect) about the quality of what I'd written and how it sounded like actual mythology. I didn't need to take success from him. I just needed to know the truth myself. I don't know why that finally shifted in my head but it did. What's more, I decided it was my responsibility to help people who were like I had been. And then, somewhere, I decided I could just try to help.
That's not always easy. I don't always see the way. But it's carried me fairly far. I'm a manager of a group home, now. I had a long talk with my boss about how my writer's perspective, always looking for the story that brought someone to a certain point, has helped me find the ways to help people. Honestly... It's harder the more I've lived alongside someone else's story. I may understand it better, but I feel less that I have the right to intervene, if that makes any sense. I'm happy to give advice if asked, but I feel like I have to respect the experiences I've had with people and not try to change/control them with my help. People outside my direct friendship, they haven't earned that. Weird, probably, but it seems clear to me.
So I'm not waiting. In the last year I've lost just under 60 pounds. I've transformed my diet almost completely. I'm having vegetables at almost every meal, and I just went a month without eating any fast food, if that's believable. I try hard to balance what I eat. I still probably eat too much, but I find that I can survive on smaller portions now, or supplement with calorie-minimal things. I've cut down significantly on my sugar intake, as well. I'm ready to start exercising more regularly. My plan is to start with swimming because it causes my body the least amount of pain and I can do it for hours without much boredom. The pain of knowing that I was born with a sort of ticking timebomb, waiting to manifest and shove me off one path and onto another, is still there. But it's not so important anymore. Not enough to outweigh the idea that I want to be healthy. I want to be able to run when I want, I want to be able to play with my kids or shoot baskets or hike without pain and loss of breath. And I want to live, to be quite honest. I don't want a heart attack or diabetes, or to be dying in a hospital in twenty or thirty years. I plan on living as long as I can steal from whatever decides how long we've got.
I've been writing consistently. I don't do what I did in college, sitting down and trying to write a page a day. Instead, I write when I get the urge, then sit back and think about it or let my subconscious ramble on it for a while. I'd love to take a shortcut, win the lotto, inherit a fortune, something, to be able to skip to the part where I can have my image. Where I can sit and write during the day while taking care of the kids I know are coming. But I can't. So I get it in where I can, because I worry that it may end when the kids come. The same is true of all the time I spend with friends. I try and grasp every minute of it now, because I live far away and I know that the clock hands may be winding down on the days where I can drive an hour, play a game for 5 or 6 hours, then drive an hour back with minimal impact on home life. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I know I'll miss the interaction. So I don't wait.
I'm proud of where I am. I'm also grateful for things like twitter. It's made me realize I don't have to be like Michael Jordan; don't have to be an asshole to be successful. I see Neil Gaiman, Brandon Sanderson, Wil Wheaton, Nathan Fillion, countless others... They act with kindness and generosity. They do things to brighten the lives of their fans. When I started writing best it was because I realized that when I write for myself, I selfishly never want the story to end. When I write for others, I want them to feel satisfied. And satisfaction doesn't come from the story continuing forever. Satisfaction comes from knowing the whole story. So now I can finish. I want to be able to say to someone "you know, you're who I write for. Because it makes your life better, even if we never really meet." I think that's what I've always been supposed to be doing.
And I write for my kids. Because they'll need stories. And I can tell stories. I may not be able to give them my fantasy idea of a stay-at-home-author-dad, but I can give them stories nonetheless. They deserve stories from me.
I don't think I can attain the picture of parenthood I've always wanted to attain. I imagined that by the time I had kids, I'd be writing for a living. Publishing books that sold well and therefore able to sit at home with my child(ren) with only minimal disruption to work. I waited too long to stop dicking around and write seriously, though. Perhaps that's too harsh and unrealistic. Not everyone is the authors I've read who managed to become wildly successful while still in college. I know that most professional writers struggle to get their first book published and often that they don't find monetary success until they've pushed and pushed for years.
When I was younger, I used to do calculations in my head about success. I understood very young that not everyone can reach the level of success many of us believe we'll reach when we're young. I know that in my junior high, when I first really considered this, that maybe 6 people would reach the pinnacle of their various dreams. I was sure it was a zero sum sort of thing. If they made it, I couldn't. I couldn't decide what mine was, pro sports or writing. I think I still really thought I was a world class athlete in the making. Obviously chance/fate, whatever you'll call it, knew better. It's taken a long time for the pain of that to die.
I wagered that 5-10 people in my high school would reach the pinnacle of their success. As I was in jr high, I was determined to be one of them. But I couldn't put my heart into writing. Not completely. I could sit and write a page a day, but I couldn't finish anything. I was scared to finish. I was so used to episodic writing, from comics and from TV, that I thought a finished story was a dead story. Something had to be left unresolved or how could the story live? It was my weakness, I could draw endings for the villains, but not the heroes. And so I just floated. I didn't devote to my writing. I still thought I'd make it, that it was zero sum and I could succeed and that would be revenge against everyone who gave me shit and they'd be stuck failing.
I read an article earlier about how Michael Jordan has this rage inside him that drives him to be the best, but also turns him into an asshole that spits on all the food brought to him so no one can steal it. The kind of person who'll damage other people just to prove himself better. I decided in high school that revenge was worth it. I could trust a few people, because they'd shown they wouldn't tear me down, but everyone else was an enemy. They'd hurt me whether they knew it or not, just like my body had betrayed me, and they'd pay.
In college that changed, though. At least, it started to. I stopped worrying about who would succeed. In some ways, I'd succeeded by reaching college, I felt. I got to take classes just on writing and I realized that I could write copiously and with skill. I'll never forget the white hot fury I felt at someone accusing me of plagiarizing a story I'd written because I'd gotten praise from a professor (who, ironically, I didn't even respect) about the quality of what I'd written and how it sounded like actual mythology. I didn't need to take success from him. I just needed to know the truth myself. I don't know why that finally shifted in my head but it did. What's more, I decided it was my responsibility to help people who were like I had been. And then, somewhere, I decided I could just try to help.
That's not always easy. I don't always see the way. But it's carried me fairly far. I'm a manager of a group home, now. I had a long talk with my boss about how my writer's perspective, always looking for the story that brought someone to a certain point, has helped me find the ways to help people. Honestly... It's harder the more I've lived alongside someone else's story. I may understand it better, but I feel less that I have the right to intervene, if that makes any sense. I'm happy to give advice if asked, but I feel like I have to respect the experiences I've had with people and not try to change/control them with my help. People outside my direct friendship, they haven't earned that. Weird, probably, but it seems clear to me.
So I'm not waiting. In the last year I've lost just under 60 pounds. I've transformed my diet almost completely. I'm having vegetables at almost every meal, and I just went a month without eating any fast food, if that's believable. I try hard to balance what I eat. I still probably eat too much, but I find that I can survive on smaller portions now, or supplement with calorie-minimal things. I've cut down significantly on my sugar intake, as well. I'm ready to start exercising more regularly. My plan is to start with swimming because it causes my body the least amount of pain and I can do it for hours without much boredom. The pain of knowing that I was born with a sort of ticking timebomb, waiting to manifest and shove me off one path and onto another, is still there. But it's not so important anymore. Not enough to outweigh the idea that I want to be healthy. I want to be able to run when I want, I want to be able to play with my kids or shoot baskets or hike without pain and loss of breath. And I want to live, to be quite honest. I don't want a heart attack or diabetes, or to be dying in a hospital in twenty or thirty years. I plan on living as long as I can steal from whatever decides how long we've got.
I've been writing consistently. I don't do what I did in college, sitting down and trying to write a page a day. Instead, I write when I get the urge, then sit back and think about it or let my subconscious ramble on it for a while. I'd love to take a shortcut, win the lotto, inherit a fortune, something, to be able to skip to the part where I can have my image. Where I can sit and write during the day while taking care of the kids I know are coming. But I can't. So I get it in where I can, because I worry that it may end when the kids come. The same is true of all the time I spend with friends. I try and grasp every minute of it now, because I live far away and I know that the clock hands may be winding down on the days where I can drive an hour, play a game for 5 or 6 hours, then drive an hour back with minimal impact on home life. I'm not sure how I feel about that. I know I'll miss the interaction. So I don't wait.
I'm proud of where I am. I'm also grateful for things like twitter. It's made me realize I don't have to be like Michael Jordan; don't have to be an asshole to be successful. I see Neil Gaiman, Brandon Sanderson, Wil Wheaton, Nathan Fillion, countless others... They act with kindness and generosity. They do things to brighten the lives of their fans. When I started writing best it was because I realized that when I write for myself, I selfishly never want the story to end. When I write for others, I want them to feel satisfied. And satisfaction doesn't come from the story continuing forever. Satisfaction comes from knowing the whole story. So now I can finish. I want to be able to say to someone "you know, you're who I write for. Because it makes your life better, even if we never really meet." I think that's what I've always been supposed to be doing.
And I write for my kids. Because they'll need stories. And I can tell stories. I may not be able to give them my fantasy idea of a stay-at-home-author-dad, but I can give them stories nonetheless. They deserve stories from me.