A few things happened this week that have me pondering my mortality—no I’m not wondering if I’m a divine being, that’s been settled long ago: Work, Kindergarten, and Writing. An odd group to be sure, but then I’ve never laid claim to being entire normal.
At work, I was reviewing a medical report and the doctor or nurse referred to a 54 year old woman as elderly. 54. Elderly? ELDERLY! I’m within spitting distance of 54 and I’m decidedly not elderly. And I said as much to my colleagues. Then one of them said I looked like Mr. Rogers. Now, apart from Fred Rogers being dead—not helping my elderly complex—I wasn’t feeling particularly neighborly at that moment. But it did somewhat pull into focus one hard truth; I might not be old, but I’m certainly not young anymore. I think, as most of us get older we look back and wonder, wonder and think. A plethora of ‘what ifs’ go through your mind and you consider how different things would be if you just did “X.” That of course leads the mind into doing a 180 and it starts to calculate how much time is left, what you still want to do with the short time remaining, And while I’m not fatalistic or morbid, being realistic, my time left is decidedly shorter than it was when I was thirty and thought it would be forever until I could retire.
So there I was, thinking that most wonderful word—retire—and all the things I’d do, when my alert went off on my phone reminding me I had to go to an interview at the school we’re trying to get ’lil q into for Kindergarten. O_o Most of you know that I’m a prosecutor in my ‘other’ life. So that means I went to college and law school. No one made me sit down for an interview. They had me fill out a raft of papers, get a few references and take a few standardized tests. But an interview? Fuhgeddaboudit
I’m reasonably sure my parents love me, and pretty sure they loved me back then (before college, it was touch and ago, I was surely no angel), but I’m absolutely sure, if the school had made them come in and be interviewed, they’d have told me to go work at Burger King. Funny enough the school we interviewed for never checked to see if we could afford the tuition. Nope, they wanted to sit us down and talk about us. Money—specifically did we have enough to pay for the school—never came up. And while it’s entirely possibly they have some way to check our net worth like Forbes does it with its annual list of billionaires (oddly, I was left off that list this year—again.) you’d think that would be somewhat important.
But, even thought they never mentioned my bank account or paycheck, it did put in focus one reason I’ve not retired; kids cost money. Lots of money. And it has barely started.
The week, however, barreled on, not giving me a whole lot of time to ponder the great mysteries of life and why I’m here and not there, doing this and not that. I dutifully sat down each night to work on cleaning up the manuscript to book four of Champion of the Gods to meet the deadlines I agreed to. (well not Friday, cause I fell asleep. ’lil q asked me to lay down with her to help her sleep and I went to sleep with her for a bit.) During those short bits of time I had to write, I realized, I want to retire to give me more time to write. Note, I didn’t say quit and write. With a kid, a house and a spouse, I need to be able to afford to retire if I want to write full time. I can’t rely on the money from writing to pay the bills.
But those darn little voices, the ones that if not controlled become big voices that people end up talking to and then wind up involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital, keep saying, “Listen up, Andrew, You’re elderly. You don’t have much time left. Why not quit and make a go of it?” My terribly tidy mind started to plot out ways to do that. The lottery was high enough that I could win enough. There were plenty of yards sales where I could go and find that diamond in the rough to sell for millions. We could sell the house and move to a cabin in the woods (I had to rule that out because state rules require we be able to home school ‘lil q if we didn’t send her to school and that would be too time consuming.)
The obvious answer—write more books, sell more books, live off that income—nudged its way forward and started to yell louder than the other voices. It sounded so reasonable. Made so much sense. I started to listen intently thinking it might be possible. Yes, what if.
Then we got the sad news from Samhain and I sent the voices back to their closet—for a while. It took me a few minutes to reconcile things, but as we all know, life is about choices. Some very lucky few—those who have billions of dollars, pounds, euros whatever—can avoid this situation, but for most of us, we need to prioritize our wants against our basic needs. Taking chances involves risks. If it doesn’t work out, what then?
Risk taking was easy when I was thirty. Mike and I lived in different cities. I wanted to be with him. I saved my money, packed up my life and moved, trusting I’d eventually find a job before my savings ran out. That worked out better than fine. So why not now? Because it’s easy to take risks if you’ve nothing to lose. If someone says, hey, “Call heads or tails and if you win I’ll give you ten bucks. If you lose, I keep it,” you take that ‘risk.’ But the dynamic changes if you have to pay a hundred bucks if you lose.
When I moved, I had something to lose, but nothing I couldn’t live without. And therein lies the rub. Now that I’m elderly, I have something to lose, that I’m not so sure I can live without. It’s not a possession or a thing, or even a place.
The need to take care of someone, especially a ’lil someone, is a powerful thing. It’s really hard for those little (or even big) voices to overcome the fear of losing that. So for now, those voices can stay where they are and I’ll pretend I’m not listening. If you hear them talking to me, tell them to give it a rest.
And now for a bit of promo:
Kings of Lore and Legend, Book three is my Champion of the Gods fantasy series, is being released March 15th 2016.
In the run up to the release, you can get book one, The Last Grand Master for free. Yep, that’s right, DSP Publications is giving away book one free.
To get a free eCopy of the Last Grand Master you can sign up for my monthly updates:
GET YOUR FREE COPY OF THE LAST GRAND MASTER
Or you can down load it directly from DSP Publications:
Book two, The Eye and the Arm, is now just .99 cents. The sale is only until May 1, 2016.
Andrew Q. Gordon wrote his first story back when yellow legal pads, ball point pens were common and a Smith Corona correctable typewriter was considered high tech. Adapting with technology, he now takes his MacBook somewhere quiet when he wants to write.
He currently lives in the Washington, D.C. area with his partner of twenty years, their young daughter and dog. In addition to dodging some very self-important D.C. ‘insiders’, Andrew uses his commute to catch up on his reading. When not working or writing, he enjoys soccer, high fantasy, baseball and seeing how much coffee he can drink in a day.
Follow Andrew:
On his website: www.andrewqgordon.com,
On Facebook: www.facebook.com/andrewqugordon,
On Twitter: @andrewqgordon,
Or just email him: andrewqgordon@gmail.com
Books:
The Last Grand Master: (Champion of the Gods – Book 1)
The Eye and the Arm: (Champion of the Gods – Book 2)
Kings of Lore and Legend: (Champion of the Gods – Book 3)
Self published: