It's vaguely embarrassing to be hit with the writing bug so late in life. My family, my friends were quite used to me being just like them, muddling through with no more than the next day's to-do list on my mind. Which is plenty, believe me, for anyone in our complicated world, but they can't quite believe my defection. Am I expecting--gasp!--to be famous? Or rich? Or what, exactly? They don't get it. And why am I not watching TV and reading the newspaper like normal people do?
Isn't this something I should have gotten out of my system back in my adolescence, or at the latest, in my twenties? It's almost shameful at my age, to be thinking that I could start such a big project and expect to be able to finish it. It's too late to do things like go back to college, or start a whole new career--isn't it? I should act my age.
And then of course, because I have a teenaged son, why am I not focusing more of my efforts on his behalf? Why not live vicariously through him? All this naked striving on my own behalf, impossibly ambitious and unseemly. What can I be thinking? Isn't it time to rest on my laurels (what laurels?) and think about retiring or my 401K plan or my living will?
All I can answer is I paid attention, maybe too much attention, to what everyone else wanted me to do for too long already. Right after college, I was urged to be practical, get a job, start supporting myself. I did. Then when I had a baby, of course the baby came first. Now that he's in high school, I have more time to pursue my own plans and I'm going to. If not now, when?
Up next: what I hope to accomplish at this late date.
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