This, then, is what I have to do. What I must do. It’s all that is left for me to do. Write. Like there is no tomorrow, because maybe there is not. People have asked me, or commented to others, how I can put such personal stuff about myself out there. I don’t have an answer at the moment but it might evolve if I let these two hands find it.
By the way, since procuring a mechanical keyboard my every textual utterance sounds like a stampede.
But back to the personal stuff, the stuff of a personal nature, the confessional open-sourcing of my inner anxieties and salutations… I can’t hide it, can I? In the same soup of wanting to put everything out there short of cockshots I forget that such behavior closes doors that would otherwise be open to me. The word “corporate” keeps coming back into play, as if I still have a future in that environment I formerly inhabited. I did enough of a job search over the last couple of months to reach the wise but somehow disheartening conclusions that I have nothing to offer, and that no one would hire the likes of me. Age bias is a factor, without doubt. But so is the arc of the gratuitous life I’ve laid out for myself. I am lazy, to be sure, but I work every single day to try and bring something new to the world, something that was never there here before. (I almost said “there” as if I did not inhabit this world.)
I had something of a eureka moment. I don’t believe in eureka moments but it’s a concept anyone can understand. I don’t believe in eureka moments because all insights emerge organically, from measured debate either internal or in concert with others. But never mind that. I decided to pursue writing for a reason I borrowed from a stage actor whose name I do not remember. This might be a concocted memory of mine, as certain things have proven to be. This actor said that she was drawn to being on the stage because it was a way to let people know she was OK, that she was alive and out there. She didn’t have to report in or make phone calls to let people know she was alright. That’s how I feel about writing, or any kind of public life. If I keep writing people will know I am well, or they can at least see I am live.
I think I always knew this was coming, this shift away from hacking computer code and regurgitating public domain content for fun and profit. But is it too late? Am I too old to still be hungry?
