by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
Now that it’s 2023 and I’m just about to turn 50, I feel like I’m in a new era in my life. I don’t know exactly what this means just yet, but I do feel that I definitely have a different approach to life. I simply can’t continue to drift through life the way I have been for way too long now.
In a sense, of course, it’s too late. When you’re 24, people will give you a chance. When you’re 50, people want to know what you have — or haven’t — done with your life and if haven’t done much with your life for a long time…why? There just no way to change how old you are. So, in a sense, age is an even stricter social construct than gender.
It’s not like you can have an operation to change your age. Even if there was, that wouldn’t change the memories you have rolling around in your mind. Part of youth’s excitement is learning new things and not knowing what you don’t know. Being an Old is about hard won wisdom and grappling with regret — sometimes a lot of it.
So, as I keep saying, I could write a break out first novel, it be a success…and still not get what I want. What I want is to be 24 years old, running around New York City doing all kind of fun cool kid shit with young people my age who are all learning about life for the first time.
That, sadly, is never going to happen to me again. I had something like that in my mid-30s when I was in Seoul….but that era of my life is over forever. I’m an adult now and no matter what success I might ultimately obtain at this late date in my life….I’m still old and jaded.
And if I were to hang out with young people — say, people in their early 20s — it would be extremely, extremely fucking creepy. My best bet at this point is if I become some sort of huge success is I find a hot woman around 40 who can still have kids and somehow, magically, get married to her before she hits menopause.
At this point, I just want to live up to my potential before I’m so old that I don’t even realize what’s happened. So, the clock is ticking. I need to knock out a novel of some sort ASAP. It could still be a few years — even if I stick the landing — before I get any sort of success. It’s all very sad.
Though, given my skillset, I sometimes idly muse that if some sort of Fourth Turning did happen around late 2024, early 2025….that maybe something rather astonishing and unexpected could happen to me then. But that’s really stretching it. I have to start sitting up straight and actually put in some hard work to get this first novel done as soon as fucking possible.
I’m not going to live forever.
