Life as a “Civilian”: Day 1
Well, today was my first day after taking myself out of the “public” eye, and I must admit it’s been quite relaxing. I cleared out my Facebook and MySpace friend lists to just those people I know personally and the handful of people I met through those sites that I consider actual “friends” — instead of just a name on a list — and for some reason, it feels a lot nicer now. I can’t explain it, but for some reason only having 24 people see what I’m doing is a lot more relaxing than 1K+.
Today was great though. Took a nap, did some hobby-ish programming, played Guitar Hero II and got my ass kicked hard core by Beast and the Harlot. I think this whole “just me” instead of “Matthew Cory, Author” thing is going to be great.
I need to start getting ready for dinner; we’re going to see Twilight afterwards. Don’t tell the missus, but I kinda wish we weren’t :\ Much rather stay home, but what can ya do? She’s been wanting to see it for a while, in spite of the fact it’s going to be nothing but teeny-boppers at the theater. Oh well.
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The 27 Club
Not long ago, I was wandering around on Wikipedia and I stumbled across an article about the 27 Club. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s quite fascinating — especially if, like me, you happen to be in the age range of, say 25-30 (I’m actually 27 at the time of this writing, so it hits a little closer to home). If you haven’t heard of the club itself, I’m sure you’ve heard of the main members: Brian Jones, founding member of the Rolling Stones; Jimi Hendrix; Janis Joplin; Jim Morrison; and Kurt Cobain.
There’s two things these people have in common. First and most obvious, they’re all musicians. Second, they’re all dead. More specifically, they all died at the age of 27, and through “non-natural” causes. Primarily drug overdose and suicide, with Brian Jones’ death officially accidental but disputed as a possible suicide as well.
If you review the Wikipedia article linked to above, you’ll find a list of other, lesser-known musicians who could also be considered part of the “club” (the most recent being an Australian Idol contestant, Levi Karema, who died just last week), and another list of musicians who just barely missed it — they died at either 26 or 28. The vast majority of these deaths are suicide and drug overdose.
So, what is it about being 27 that brings these people to an untimely demise? Or is it just a coincidence? Hard to say, but as a 27-year-old myself, I can vouch that it’s not an easy time. I know, a lot of people who’ve long since passed their twenties may disagree and say it was a wonderful time, but hear me out.
I was talking with a friend of mine about this yesterday, and we came to two possibilities that both could work, depending on the person’s situation. The first is what probably happened — to some degree, at least — with a lot of the people in the club. You’re almost thirty, and you’ve reached what you feel is your peak. You’re famous, you’re popular, you’re rich, everyone likes you. Where do you go from there? The quick answer is down — you’re at the top, there’s no where else to go.
It’s a depressing thought, that you probably have about forty years left in your life and you’re already pretty much done with everything. You’ll just be going through the motions, and who wants to do that? It may not be a conscious decision, but you’ll want a bigger high so you shoot a bigger dose. You’ll want to see how much faster your motorcycle can go. Then again, it may well be a thought you can’t get rid of, and the only way out you can see is to take that jump off a bridge, or to briefly enjoy the business end of a noose.
Then there’s the flip side, which I’m guessing happens to “normal” people — and probably some of those in the lists as well. You’re almost thirty, you’ve been busting your ass for almost three decades, and it just ain’t happening. You don’t have the house on the hill, you don’t have the lifestyle that Hollywood promised you. And you can’t see it getting any better: you’re trapped. You’re stuck in a dead end job, maybe a dead end relationship, you can’t see any other way out.
This much I know from experience is true — not the relationship, but the dead end job and the lack of a better future in the distance. It’s depressing as hell, and you really don’t want to keep going. You’re told from day one that, once you’re done with school, you’ll have a great career, 1.2 kids, a house with a picket fence, so on and so forth ad nauseum. Then the real world smacks you in the face and you realize that isn’t necessarily true. That you’ll need to bust your ass for another ten or twenty years to get the stuff you thought you were supposed to get after already busting your ass for twenty years.
Welcome to the “normal people’s” 27 club. You expect to have the life of the adults you grew up watching on television, because you’re “technically” an adult, and you don’t have it. You may have the education, but you don’t have the experience to get that $90K-per-year job everyone told you was waiting for you on the other end of college.
It’s just like being 17 — you think you know everything, and that you’re ready to take on the world because you’ve been around long enough to “know” how the real world works. But you really aren’t. You’re just barely finding out how the real world works, since you’ve been out of school long enough to get past the honeymoon period of adulthood. You’re done with the novelty of being able to stay up as late as you want, of getting your own apartment or house, of having to pay your own bills and worry about your own job. Maybe you have a kid to worry about too. Everything starts to sink in, and you finally realize that it’s a tougher gig than that 17-year-old you expected.
I’m sure the same could be said — to some degree, at least — about any age. And maybe it’s just coincidence that so many famous musicians died at the same age. But it’s definitely something worth thinking about…
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The Good Stuff
I was listening to this song — “The Good Stuff,” by Kenny Chesney — on a CD in the parking lot before I came into work this morning. Good song; if you haven’t already heard it, check it out if you can find it somewhere. At the very least, read the lyrics at the link I gave or check out the Wikipedia entry; of course it’s better with the music behind it, but you should be able to get the gist of the song.
I don’t cry much — not that I try to be macho, I just spent a lot of time in my past trying to be macho, and now it’s kinda “learned” out of me. (There’s times I wish I could, but that’s for another post.) This song is one of the rare ones that chokes me up though. It came out a little before my wife and I started seeing each other, and a little bit of it rings true — I think there were very few dates she and I went on that did not end with either her mother and/or father waiting up, worried to death. I didn’t drop the engagement ring, but my hands were shaking terribly when I proposed. I know, pretty generic stuff that most people have probably been through before they got married, but still…
I just wanted to post this because, even though the song’s faded from the lime light, I think it’s probably one of the most important messages I’ve ever heard sung by anyone. We get so caught up in work, our careers, in politics and elections, in trying to be right, in trying to be the best, that we forget what’s really important. It’s very difficult to find someone we hold special to our hearts, and often when we do, we forget how important they are. We forget how much they really mean to us, because the Cowboys just lost by a field goal or because so-and-so-nominee has this skeleton in their closet. We don’t necessarily do something to show that we think they’re unimportant, but after time we forget how to go out of our way to show them how important they are.
I’m guilty of this. I won’t even bother denying it. These past few weeks I’ve been so caught up in trying to get my writing career of the ground, and worrying about my programming career, that I haven’t given my wife hardly the time of day. That’s not to say I’ve ignored her; in my mind, I’ve been trying very hard to show her how much she means to me. But not in the right ways, and what’s the use of saying something if whomever you say it to doesn’t understand you? Tell someone they’re a millionaire in Portugese (assuming they only speak English), and they just give you a blank stare and a smile.
By a show of hands, how many people here can seriously picture themselves laying on their deathbed saying “You know, I probably should’ve worried a little more about making my wife/husband happy when I could, but it’s okay: I voted for McCain! I can die happily now.” I use politics as an example because it’s an election year, so a lot of people are focused on it. And maybe it’s just me — I’ve never been able to get too fired up to stand in line and decide which person was going to let me down next. But you can substitute anything in it’s place: news, sports, jobs, etc. Anything that might get in the way without you even knowing it, and we’re not just talking about stuff that causes fights or other obvious conflict.
I’ll get off the soap box now, but I’ll steal the words from another country song before I do: “Tell that someone that you love/just what you’re thinking of/if tomorrow never comes.”
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Incommunicado or … Something.
Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve posted last. I have a semi-legitimate excuse: for some reason, my laptop decided it didn’t want to pick up the wireless signal from my router any more (and for a while it seemed it didn’t want to connect via a wire either). It’s not fixed, but I’ve stolen my wife’s ethernet cable for a while. Shh — don’t tell her 
Anyways, I just wanted to drop a quick post to let anyone who may have been interested know that yes, we’re still amongst the living, and no, I won’t be posting regularly for a while. We’re still trying to get situated — still looking for a place of our own somewhere in the Sun City — and pretty much the only guaranteed internet access I have is at work.
Quickie updates: work is work, and it’s pretty fun (though exhausting) working with both Java and C#; nothing to talk about on the writing front lines, just one short story I started one night when I was bored and never did anything with; Patti’s got a new job (goodbye badges, finally!); the animals are miserable with the heat but otherwise everything’s pretty run-of-the-mill around here.
Need to run for some fathers day stuff (and, of course, a cigarette).
Quickie Post
Can’t write too much, as I’m running late.
Been thinking a lot about the move — it is officially decided, just a matter of coming up with the finances for it and we’ll be on our way. I’m excited, though I admit it’s a little depressing as well: I don’t feel like we’re just giving up — we’ve put up a good fight since we’ve been out here — but I feel like things could’ve worked out a little differently and we’d be a hell of a lot happier now. Anyways…
I like planning stuff, and this trip’ll be fun. Of course, I’m sure I’ll drive Patti crazy with it within the next couple of weeks, but for now it’s neat to talk about saving money, how far a drive it is, where we’ll stay (on the road and when we get there).
I know Patti feels the same way about it; we’ve done a lot of talking, and we both know it’s best for us to go back home, but neither of us are terribly thrilled with leaving. We came up with a good analogy that suits us both on this: it’s like having an sick dog, one that you just love to death but you know you got to have them put to sleep because there’s no way in hell you could ever afford the vet bill to fix them. You don’t want to do it, but you know it’s for the best. You know you’ll miss them, but you know it’s not worth it to try and stick it out, and you know you can’t make things better any other way without investing a lot more resources than you could possibly have.
Okay, it sounded a lot better when she and I were discussing it the other night, and this doesn’t sound quite right anymore, but you get the gist of it, right? (Scary thing is, that Chloe — our beagle — has been a little under the weather since we made that analogy. Maybe I should come up with something a little happier…)
Anyways, I gotta go smoke.
I Am Not A Writer
(Originally posted on http://mcory.wordpress.com on 12/20/07)
In total contradiction of the epiphany I wrote of yesterday, I think I won’t call myself a writer. I actually received some comments on that post — a modestly rare occurrence — that incited quite a bit of thought last night. I have two reasons behind it, one admittedly a little petulant in it’s start, though I’ve since come to honestly agree with it, the other a bit more rational.
The first reason was most definitely inspired by the comments yesterday of Mr. Cliff Burns, particularly this:
“The terms ‘writer’ and ‘author’ confer status because we associate them with great artists and storytellers from down through the ages.”
There was much more to his comments, and I beseech you to read through them — he does make decent points. Regardless, this particular sentence stood out in my mind. It’s very true, what he says, and I can completely understand that trying to associate one’s self with the likes of all the great writers of the past is quite wrong.
That much I could live with though, as I wouldn’t feel as if I were putting myself on the same level as Poe or Melville or Steinbeck or anyone. There are also, however, quite a large number of writers in this world who do have the arrogance I spoke of yesterday, that “you can’t call yourself a writer because <blah>.” By calling myself a writer, true, I’m associating myself with some of the greatest names in history; however, I’m also associating myself with the likes of those people who have too much pride to let anyone else into the little clique.
And, by the definition I’d given yesterday, I’d also be associating myself with people like Hitler (who actually has published more than many who call themselves writers, myself included), and I’m sure quite a few others who no one would ever want to be clumped in with under the same title.
(Yes, you may cry Godwin’s Law)
That’s my petty, immature “inner child” talking. I don’t like him much, but sometimes I can’t control him. Well, I could, but sometimes it’s just more fun to let him take the reigns. The second reason I hope you’ll find less childish.
What is the point of calling one’s self a writer? There is no practical reason, regardless of whether one is worthy of the title or not. It’s purely psychological, giving yourself an identity of any kind. I say this not in terms of profession, as calling yourself a writer has marketing potential behind it (”marketing” might be a bit of a strong word for what I mean, but I hope you get the point).
If I call myself a writer, all it does is make me feel better about myself. It gives me a little psychological foundation to stand on so I can get through the day, since that’s something that I want — I want to make my living by writing, I want to study the craft, I want to get that thrill from bringing a story to the close I’d had in mind on a daily basis.
What I call myself has no bearing on any of that. Calling myself a writer does not give me a pen to write with (or a keyboard, as is most often my case). Calling myself a writer does not in itself give me that thrill I desire. If I wrote for the next twenty years, calling myself a writer would still give no benefit to my life.. None of that is related to what I call myself in the slightest.
In fact, what I call myself — whether it’s “writer” or something less controversial — has absolutely no bearing on the world anyways. I am me, not some label I decide to give myself, or that someone else decides to give me.
I am not a writer. I am a person who writes, and who loves writing. Likewise, I am not a software developer; I am a person who writes computer programs and websites, and enjoys it sometimes. I am not a musician, I’m a person who plays piano and writes music sometimes.
Right now, I’m a person who needs to get out and have his cigarette so he can get ready for work.
I Am A Writer
(Originally posted at http://mcory.wordpress.com/ on 12/19/07)
I’ve come to a conclusion that puts things in a whole different perspective. It isn’t anything mind blowing, but it’s a subtle concept that feels great when I try it on.
For most of my adult life, I’ve identified myself as a software developer. Even more so now that I can officially call that my job title. It’s what I went to school for (kinda), it’s what I’ve focused most of my energies on the past several years, it’s been me for quite some time.
There’s absolutely no reason I need to keep thinking that if I choose not to. There’s no reason why I can’t redefine myself as the mood suits me, why I can’t look at life and say “You know, this is what I do for a living, but it’s not who I am.” So, who am I?
Today I call myself a writer; that may change tomorrow, or even later today. That part’s irrelevant — why do I even need to “be” anything? The important thing is that I don’t want to be so closely tied to an industry — any industry, really, just programming in particular at the moment — that I don’t give myself the opportunity to try something else, to see what else is out there that I might love to do.
This comes up from a very common and generally harmless question that we all ask others: “So, what do you do?” It’s often one of the first questions you’ll ask someone, or be asked, when you meet them for the first time.
I hate that question.
Not that I don’t have an answer for it — always have. I just don’t like it. It’s very limiting; if I ask you “So, what do you do?” then from that point forth, you are associated with your answer. All your hopes and anxieties, dreams and fears, aspirations and failures are summed up in your response. I’ll never be able to look at you again without thinking “He’s an engineer” or “She’s an administrative assistant.” You are no longer a person; you are a job.
Okay, I might exaggerate somewhat here — you’re still a person. But my perception of you is now tinted; your choice of career will still come through as an identifier the next time I see you.
Unfortunately, that question is often clarified as “So, what do you do for a living?” That’s a terrible version, as it forces the “standard” response — a programmer, for myself. I ask it when I meet someone for the first time too, though I try to avoid that — “Where do you work” is better, as it subtly breaks the relationship between the person and the job.
So, thinking that, how do I want others to think of me? Not as a programmer. Not that I’m ashamed of it — not by any stretch — but it isn’t “me”. There isn’t really any aspect of me that can be summed up with a single response to such a specialized question. I don’t really want to be pigeonholed as a writer, either, but, as that’s where I’m wanting to go with my life at the moment, it’s more appropriate than identifying myself as a programmer.
I’ve come across a rather arrogant train of thought over the past year and a half that I’ve been giving writing a half-way serious effort: “You can’t call yourself a writer because…”
Bollocks, I tell you. (Or bullshit, if you prefer a more Americanized response.)
There is absolutely no reason whatsoever someone can’t call themselves a writer. I’m writing this blog; ergo, I write; ergo, I’m a writer. I’ve written short stories and a novel. I write emails and shopping lists and notes and poems. I am a writer.
Am I a professional writer? No. I pay my bills by developing software. Am I a good writer? That’s entirely up to you; I think so, and most who have told me anything about my writing have said they think so too, but your mileage may vary. Am I even a published writer? Not yet.
I’m still a writer though. Odds are that you are too, if you choose to call yourself that.
For some reason though, there seems to be quite a few people out there who want to put themselves on a pedestal because they’ve accomplished a certain feat. Which is perfectly fine — you worked hard on your MFA/series of novels/articles/short stories; take pride in it. Unfortunately, a lot of people have a bad habit of denigrating the accomplishments of others. “You aren’t a real writer if you don’t have your first book published and your second one ready to go.” “You aren’t a real writer if you don’t have <insert degree or award here>.” “You aren’t a real writer if you haven’t done/don’t do this, that, or the other thing.”
It’s petty and entirely useless — odds are, whatever qualifications someone tells you that you need in order to call yourself a “real writer”, they have those qualifications. Such people should be sterilized and imprisoned. There’s always someone who’s done more, who’s better qualified to be a “real writer” — if you ever start to think otherwise, or find someone who does think otherwise, I have two words for you: Harry Potter. Seriously, if you’re going to start placing requirements on yourself, you might as well set them high: you aren’t a real writer until you’ve created a cultural icon, have movies made (or planned) of all of your books, and have more money coming in from royalties on merchandise alone than the GDP of a small country.
Alas, that I could vent endlessly (and I could), but the time has come to go be a programmer for another eight hours. And to smoke; can’t forget that.
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