by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
So, this is 50. It’s a time of reflection and a moment to figure out what the fuck is going to happen next in my life. I’m having a very, very uneventful 50th. I had all these grand plans of going to New York City…but I just wasn’t able to save up the money.
Instead, here I am getting drunk, listening to sexxxy music and writing.
But I still have a dream of somehow, someway finding myself doing something interesting soon (by the summer of 2024) involving maybe going to New York City, LA or even Asia for an extended amount of time.
And, yet, I’ve reached an age — and have done so little with my life in real terms — that I beginning to fear that the window of opportunity has finally, at last closed. Even if I magically became some sort of success at some point in the future, the context will be totally different than I imagined.
Instead of starting a career, settling down and having kids I’m going to be so old that that, unto itself, will be the only thing anyone will want to talk about.
“What’s it like finding success later in life,” everyone will say.
I suppose it’s better to find SOME success later in life than NO success, EVER. But I think the key issue is all of this snuck up on me. I just did not really expect this to happen to me. It’s not like I can fix this particular situation, even if, in a sense, fix it.
I just can’t change how old I am.
Everything from here on out will be done in the context of me being 20 to 30 years older than the way it’s “supposed” to be done. It’s kind of tearing me up inside, I have to day.
Because, even if I somehow magically found myself in LA for an extended amount of time….I’m old. All the personality in the world isn’t going to help me change how fucking old I am or what I look like as An Old.
There’s just no fixing how old I am, no matter what else I may do with my life. It’s all very deep and disheartening. But, I suppose, it is also incentive to double down and try — try — to finish my first novel. My writing and storytelling ability has gotten much, much, much better since I started working on my first novel, to the point that I feel pretty comfortable spending some of my time working on a second, backup novel.
Anyway.
