Though I am now past the midway point of my 30s, I continue to learn major lessons about the course my life will take.
You would think someone my age could make enough sense of the world and of himself to have more direction and certainty, but that has not been the case.
Prior to law school, I had dreams of becoming a Hollywood screenwriter. I wrote a number of screenplays, and even moved west to Las Vegas in the effort to be close the entertainment business. I should have gone all the way to Los Angeles, but the cost of living in that city scared me, and looking back it was probably a wise choice not to go out there with no job and no family or friends, the way that I did it in Vegas.
I never really came close to a break in the movie business. And I understand now that even with a break, that arena is so competitive and cut-throat that it would an unpleasant challenge to survive and thrive in L.A., no matter what stage of life I am at.
So I gave up on writing and ultimately ended up in law school.
In my early 30s, in law school, I thought that I could graduate and become a corporate lawyer, making over $100,000 a year. I learned through the experiences of law school and summer clerkships, though, that even if I was smart enough to be hired by the big firms in the big cities, that would be a miserable career for me.
I actually turned away from the practice of law a bit and focused on the idea of becoming a businessman. In law school, I worked as a student representative for a company that sold courses to students to help them pass the bar exam in various states. I worked hard and did well at this job as a student rep, with the idea that it could be an employment opportunity after law school.
In fact, this opportunity did arise. I became the Regional Director for the company in South Florida. I was in charge of all the law schools in the Miami area. It was like running my own business, and I supervised well over 100 people.
I thought that running a business would be fun, and the game of making money would be something that I could learn and continually get better at. I was a great salesman in law school, after all.
The job of regional director was very different than what I anticipated, though. The company was great and provided a vital service to law school students. For a guy with the right sort of extroverted personality, working with this company could be a great career. I learned, though, that I did not need to be a salesman to be successful- I needed to be a sales manager, delegating to others and motivating them to work for me. None of this came naturally to me, unfortunately, and it was one of the most stressful chapters in my life trying to figure out how to turn one dollar into two in that business.
It cured me of any desire to own a business or hang out my own shingle as an attorney.
So what next?
As I wrote in my last blog entry, I am pretty good at trial law. I am not passionate about it, but I am good at it.
I was lucky enough to land a government job as a trial lawyer in North Florida, where the cost of living is good compared with the salary that I receive.
So now, trial law on a government salary is how I pay the bills. I do not mind the job, and I work hard for my clients. At this point in my life, I have learned that if I find a job that I do not mind doing, then I better try to hang onto it and not go looking for greener pastures elsewhere. The percentages are that the grass is not greener on the other side.
Instead my passion, if you could call it that, is once again creative writing. Now, I am focused on finishing a novel, as opposed to a screenplay. My goal is to write a page per day during the work week, or about 20 pages per month. Often, I am exhausted from my day job and do not feel like churning out a page when I get home. But I also feel like if my life has any purpose at all in the grand scheme, writing that page, working creatively, is an important thing.
What is different this time about writing is that I do not expect to make money from it. Lawyers turned novelists are a dime a dozen. Even if the book is good enough to publish when I finish, I do not have hopes that I will be anything other than a trial lawyer for the next 30 years. And if I am able to keep this job that I have for the next 30 years, then I think they will be a happy 30 years, regardless of what happens with my writing.
I can remember in high school and college, my female English teachers swooning over the poetry of John Donne or the works of Milton and Shakespeare. My college English professor, especially, was an attractive woman.
I thought, “Wow, if I can be a good writer, then I can get women, too.”
Hah.
Nothing I have ever written has gotten me so much as a date, much less that other thing that, even now, means it all when it comes to women.
At one point in my late 20s, I thought that girls just did not go for writing. Letters or creative writing was just not a way to connect with them. It was all about the face to face interaction and being smooth and cool.
One of my friends, who is a real ladies’ man, makes good use of texting and Facebook messages when communicating with girls. I saw a text that he sent to a beautiful girl that he got to show up at the bar.
It read: “Yo where u at?”
But I also have to accept the fact that I am just not that great of a writer. I do not produce things that females want to read. It is highly unlikely that I would ever be able to pull off a series as charming for them as say, The Harry Potter stories.
But I will keep writing that page per day, no matter if anyone eventually reads it. As I have said before, I have discovered by trial and error that there are precious few things in life that I am good at.
Now that I have reached a happy medium in life here in Live Oak, I am wary of major changes. I work hard Monday through Friday, and often on Sunday. Friday nights I go out and try to have a good time. It is a relatively pleasant existence, compared with what other people have to go through.
Marriage and raising kids are not goals of mine. I have no confidence that I would be good at them. And once I head down that road of starting a family, unlike a job, it is not so easy to switch gears and leave if things are not going as planned. I could not leave if there were kids. My life would no longer be my own. It would have to be all about them.
I like living alone, the peace and quiet. It makes writing easier. I like trying to get into adventures on Friday night and then leaving those adventures there to resume the work week until the next Friday night.
The pattern that I have settled into- work, play, writing the page, is a good existence. I hope it lasts a long time.
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