by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
There was a moment, in the summer of 2001, when I lived entirely off of freelancing. I’m not saying I was very *good* at it, but I was able to eek out a living for a few months until 9/11 happened and everything collapsed — including my personal life.
As I’ve keep saying, I have been living a very idyllic life the last few years when it comes to working on a novel. You could not design a better life for an aspiring novelist. I’m very, very poor — I live in literal poverty — but for the most part the basics of my life have been provided for to my satisfaction.
But these days, I’m feeling a bit…nervous. I’m afraid this particular era of my life is about to end and I’m going to have to return to the working world in some capacity. Now, they say “chaos is a ladder” so it’s at least POSSIBLE that after a bit of a bumpy ride that things will sort themselves out and I will be better off.
And yet, that doesn’t stop me from being rather…unsettled.
I am well aware that due diligence on the part of any prospective employer would leave me lacking — they would take one look at my online content output and blanch.
But, I can’t help who the fuck I am.
I am who I am and I long ago gave up on having any sort of “normal” professional life. In real terms, all I want is just enough money to feed myself and maybe be able to save up some money for improvements to my novel.
And, it’s possible I’m just being paranoid.
It’s possible everything will sort itself out and the thing I’m afraid will happen, won’t happen and I will continue this idyllic creative situation for at least another year until the “perfect storm” of the Fourth Turning and a Petite Singularity cause my life — and the lives of everyone else in the fucking world — to be totally upended.
Good times!
