by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
It took me going to South Korea for about five years for me to realize I wasn’t a journalist but rather the more nebulous “creative type.”As such, I wasted at least a decade of my life thinking I might work for, say, The Richmond Times-Dispatch.
In highsight, that dream was both delusional and laughable.
Age, while as immutable as sex or race, is not a metric you really think about as something you have to contend with as something that might stand in the way of your dreams.
And, yet, here I am, nearly 50, realizing that even if I get what I want — to write a breakout pop novel — I won’t get what I REALLY want, which is to be a young successful writer living in New York City chasing hot chicks. Even if I stick the landing with this first novel, I’m still going to be so old that it would be extremely creepy for me to attempt to hang out with 24 year olds. And, what’s worse, all my female peers are now too old have children.
AND, if I DID manage to be a father, I’m so old that the whole thing would be weird.
I spent way, way, way too much time grieving over a failed magazine in South Korea to the point that even if I become successful at last, it will be considered “later in life.” My age, unto itself, will be the hook that everyone mentions when talking about my career.
And that’s if I stick the landing with this first novel. It could be that a combination of me being bonkers and being extremely conspicuous online with my drunken bonkerness combined with my age will make any literary agent worth their salt turn up their nose at me. I already can’t get literary types to help me with my manuscript — even if I offer to pay them!
It’s a very disheartening.
There’s just not anything I can do about it. No matter how successful I might ultimately become, the issue of what I did for about 15 years after leaving South Korea — nothing — will be a topic of conversation.
I hate that. I want to be judged on the merits of my talent, not how old I am. But that window of opportunity is gone. If I was 20 years younger, everything would be different. I would be normal.
I don’t know — am I having a midlife crisis?
