good movie "The Town" (read my review here) it got me wondering. Can there be do-overs in life? And if not--at least second chances? Novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald depressingly said "There are no second acts in American lives." But what if that wasn't true? As you know (because you've been reading my blogs), I have recently been wrestling with this very notion of trying to reinvent myself after years of toiling in worker bee pods in cubicle-covered fields of Mister Charlie's Corporate America. Each day I enter that giant glass phallus of greed, I feel globs of my soul ooze away, right there in the four-story marble 
lobby next to the company's $10,000,000 giant mural. I disguise my disgust at this gilded cage by doing my work well and collecting a paycheck. But my creative side that has yearned to be free since my first attempted manuscript at age 8—the story of a dinosaur who lost its way, which was my first foray into existential narration—feels as shriveled and as vulnerable as Korob and Sylvia's true stick bug-like forms that die without the use of their powerful transmuter at the end of Catspaw--one of my favorite Star Trek: TOS episodes. I remember being struck by their ultimate loneliness and smallness. It still makes me sad. I don't want to end up smoldering away into oblivion with the world's eyes averted.
When I released my first book I sent out an email blast to hundreds of people to build interest in Solstice. I received many well wishes and congratulations, but curiously, an author friend sent me an interesting reply. He offered his input on my thirst for success: "...Here is a telling statistic: there are only about 300 full time authors in America." He went on to say that even by selling 10,000 books I would only stave off poverty and reality for about a year. "The present set-up of the book market is not really conducive to success for the first-time author." Of course it wasn't all discouraging. He ended the email with: "However, hopefully you will be the exception."
My writing is not a vanity project (well, to a certain extent at least). I think all creative people have an inner desire to be praised for their
work. But like Affleck and his gang of toughs learned in the movie "The Town," life has a way of drawing you back in. During the last several years I sometimes felt like Kali, the massive asteroid from Arthur C. Clarke's Hammer of God, was threatening to fall upon me. Looming in my horizon were the issues of dementia with my aging mother and financial calamity. I eloquently bellyached about it here. But this predicament almost seemed premeditated; an entrapment of sorts. With every joy and elation came a damnation. I was beginning to think I was cursed. I had been writing about witchcraft for almost 5 years afterall. I heard friends and celebrities toss around words like "passion" and "calling" which were abstract concepts to be sure. If God could be so straightforward with Jada Pinkett-Smith and JK Rowling it seemed my calling was printed on an index card at the bottom of a tree in a dense wood behind a giant prehistoric fern that I was supposed to find in the midst of a downpour. Over the past several years I've seen friends start successful career-changing endeavors on nothing more that whimsy, and even though I am ecstatic for their good fortune, I oftentimes feel like Celie dogging that mailbox while asking Mister "Anything come for me?" Twice this past week I've heard two young men tell me that they want to do something different in their lives although they habitually procrastinate. I said to them, "Do it before it gets too late; Look at me." But then later I thought: Why is it too late for me? Now, I don't want to keep ladling on the complaints so I must recognize my part of the equation. I feel that I am in a renaissance of my life where I recently have reached a proliferation of work. I've written and created more in the last 6 years than I have in the previous 40. Maybe I'm a late bloomer. A second "careerer." Famed French director Robert Bresson, who was called the patron saint of film, didn't start filming until his mid 40s. Rodney Dangerfield sold aluminum siding for 15 years before getting back into show business at 45. Colonel Sanders didn't franchise his 11 herbs and spices until he was 65 after many years of failed ventures. And my personal favorite (and yes because he's a writer and, yes, because he's the author of one of my all-time favorite books), Richard Adams, didn't publish Watership Down until he was almost 53. So maybe I should shake the detritus of dispair from my shoes and forge ahead like a good rabbit should.
But one thing I've learned in this ordeal of life is to pray. Pray not for the material but the circumstance to better myself and the world I live in. Now, when I say prayer I don't mean the "Lord gonna bless me with a man and some money 'cause I sure done worked hard" kinda prayer. What I mean is a prayer for an inner peace that would lead you in the direction you must go, remembering along the way to stop and remember what you're working for. To pray and be thankful that you can work and work hard toward your goal. To say that you are grateful to get this second chance in a infamously unforgiving world. My hardships and trials will only serve as more coal for the engine of my creativity. I must learn to savor these times because many people only have mediocrity ahead of them and no clue how to end it. Maybe that's the point: To get out into your own life. Maybe it's not one index card but many index cards. Bad romantic comedies have taught us that there is ONLY ONE true love of your life. My ex said it best: "What are the odds that there is only one soulmate for you. With 6 billion people you probably have hundreds maybe thousands of soulmates. You've just got to find at least ONE of them."
And just like my old buddy Doug MacRay in "The Town" may not have found his soulmate, he did, however, find a way to try to get a second chance. And so can we all.
