Aside from these days, when I'm living my dream, my happiest days of life would probably have been in college. While I liked to have fun, I wasn't much of a drunken party animal. I actually hated beer and hadn't yet discovered the magical elixir which we mortals call "mixed drinks". So, I'd simply swill cans of Coke/Dr. Pepper, mingle, and be weird. In general, John Carroll University (my alma mater) was NOT a party school. Oh they tried. But it just wasn't that kind of place.
What made JCU so awesome for me? I lived on campus. Through crappy cafeteria meals, cramped dorm rooms, broke-assed weekeneds, and funky Ohio weather, I chilled out with tens of thousands of people. And it was awesome! Yes, there were some pricks amonst them. But overall, the students were pretty cool to me. My nerdy, introverted self chilled out with people from different social cliques, ethnicities, and world views. I even met some like-minded weirdos, some of whom became the best of friends. While I wrote a teensy bit back then, I was too busy learning and living.
Then came graduation, two-plus miserable years of grad school, backstabbing "friends", student loans, and temp jobs which paid far too little. That gruelling "survival" thing beat the living shit out of my innocence and left me kind of . . . numb. I looked ahead and realized that all of that "happily ever crap" were just damned lies that societies tell their young. And all I was doing was limping along.
Luckily, I had a computer. It was a gift from my Uncle Nate, just after I picked up my nigh-useless Masters degree. He (and some anonymous family members) sent it my way, thinking I could pursue some kind of IT degree/training. While I looked every part of the techno-geek, I didn't have the chops for it. Instead, in my deepest most miserable stretch of life (since high school, anyway), I booted up that computer and started writing again.
I've gone through . . . four computers, since then. Just used 'em up and spat them out. If I five bucks for every word I typed since '97, I could buy a yacht or two. At first, the words were rough and raw. I hadn't taken it seriously since I was a bored little kid. And while the years to follow didn't get much better, my writing sure as hell did.
It's funny. Somewhere in my mid-thirties, I looked around and realized that I didn't want to do anything else. Grow a career? Not really? Marriage? Hell no! Kids? Maybe after a frontal lobotomy. In essence, I've painted myself into a corner. It's sort of . . . "make it as a writer or bust".
So, those are the two happiest times of my life: college and now. Are there similarities? Yep. I still mingle with all types of different folks. I still live, learn, and have some (shreds of) hope that my life story has a decent ending. And Ohio weather still sucks. Are there differences? Oh yes. I'm older, heavier, and wiser.
But most importantly, collegiate bliss only lasts 4 years. Writing, if you love it, can give you a lifetime of creative triumphs and the thrill of creating something today that was only an idea yesterday.
So if you're snugly in your writing phase, stay there. It's more real than a college phase, a partying 20-something phase, or even a carrot-cake-at-Friday's phase (don't ask). Hone your chops. Devote years to it. Never stop for more than two weeks at a time (seriously). And then, when you're ready, share it with a grateful world . . . and (I suspect) you'll be happy while you're doing it.
And, to bastardize a line from Conan the Barbarian (the good one):
"There's nothing in this world you can trust.
Not men.
Not women.
Not beasts.
But WRITING?
THIS you can trust!"
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