Tag: existential angst

An Existential Crisis

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Something about turning 50 in just about a month is doing a real number on my mind and heart because it is really beginning to sink in that it’s kind of put up or shut up time. If I don’t do something, anything of creative note soon I’m going to be so old that whatever success I have will be framed exclusively in the context of, “how does it feel to be a success so late in life.”

I hate that.

But things kind of snuck up on me.

After Seoul, I was a changed man. I was consumed with grief over what happened with ROKon Magazine to the point that I was stuck very much in neutral. I had ambition, but no motivation. I was in something akin to a self-construction mental prison.

But now I’m free and I have a very clear focus –write the best possible first novel I can. And, if I’m really lucky, begin a career as a successfully published novelist from here on out. I have to say, though, that the limits of age are really beginning to roll around in my mind.

As I keep saying, even if I get what I want, I don’t get what I want. I want to be an overnight success and then go back to working towards making all the dreams of my 20s come true now, as someone in my 50s. Sadly, of course, that’s just not how it would happen.

Under the most ideal of circumstances, even if I am an “overnight” success by writing a really popular first novel….oh boy. I have, in real terms, just a few years to live up to my “potential.” It takes time to create things and being a success suddenly in my (mid) 50s just isn’t going to give me the same opportunities than I would have had in my 20s.

If you’re a man who’s never been married and don’t have kids, getting older kind of sneaks up on you because there are no rituals associated with zooming past your 40s. The best you have is you suddenly realize that, in real terms, you simply can not date someone in their 20s and, what’s worse, you probably don’t even really want to.

It’s not like I can somehow give my mind a hard reboot and think like I did when I was in my 20s. That’s just not how any of this works. If I’m a success in a few years, it will be in the context of being a success in my mid-50s after having done absolutely nothing with my life for the better part of 15 years. You just can’t fix that problem.

So, in real terms, I’ve made my decision and that’s that. To any “normal” person with a traditionally successful career what I want to with my life is pretty fucking bonkers. I’m being extremely and wilfully delusional.

Keep the faith.

Class Is A Very Corrosive Social Issue

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It’s very interesting how in America we’re so busy talking about racism that we are pretty oblivious to another prejudice: class. I can usually fake a similar class as the smug asshole Twitter liberals who want to sell me MeUndies on their podcast. That is, until, of course, my natural bonkers kookiness comes out and they dismiss me.

Also, I’m just too poor — at the moment — for smug Blue Check liberals to accept me in any real way, no matter how much they probably would like me if they got to know me.

And that, my friend, is why class sucks.

I could win the $1.1 billion Mega Millions jackpot and it wouldn’t change how old I am and it wouldn’t change my class background. I have a relative who is far more successful than I am who acts like he’s some salt of the earth red neck when, in fact, if we both went to a cocktail party with snooty wealthy people they would definitely gravitate towards him in the end.

I would, however, probably get drunk in such a situation and have very loud, very interesting conversations with the best looking woman at the party. That’s just sort of my thing.

Anyway, the older I get the more I understand the invisible power of class. When I was an expat in South Korea, there was a regular communist utopia going on because everyone was getting paid about the same amount and everyone was doing pretty much the same thing for a living. The only real differences were one of origin, which is why you often get asked, “Where you from?” when you saddle up to a bar and find yourself talking to someone new.

As I approach my 50th birthday, I’m feeling a lot of existential angst because no matter what happens to me there are some things I just can’t change because of my dissipated, squandered youth.

Age Isn’t Just A Number

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

It took me going to South Korea for about five years for me to realize I wasn’t a journalist but rather the more nebulous “creative type.”As such, I wasted at least a decade of my life thinking I might work for, say, The Richmond Times-Dispatch.

I’m old.

In highsight, that dream was both delusional and laughable.

Age, while as immutable as sex or race, is not a metric you really think about as something you have to contend with as something that might stand in the way of your dreams.

And, yet, here I am, nearly 50, realizing that even if I get what I want — to write a breakout pop novel — I won’t get what I REALLY want, which is to be a young successful writer living in New York City chasing hot chicks. Even if I stick the landing with this first novel, I’m still going to be so old that it would be extremely creepy for me to attempt to hang out with 24 year olds. And, what’s worse, all my female peers are now too old have children.

AND, if I DID manage to be a father, I’m so old that the whole thing would be weird.

I spent way, way, way too much time grieving over a failed magazine in South Korea to the point that even if I become successful at last, it will be considered “later in life.” My age, unto itself, will be the hook that everyone mentions when talking about my career.

And that’s if I stick the landing with this first novel. It could be that a combination of me being bonkers and being extremely conspicuous online with my drunken bonkerness combined with my age will make any literary agent worth their salt turn up their nose at me. I already can’t get literary types to help me with my manuscript — even if I offer to pay them!

It’s a very disheartening.

There’s just not anything I can do about it. No matter how successful I might ultimately become, the issue of what I did for about 15 years after leaving South Korea — nothing — will be a topic of conversation.

I hate that. I want to be judged on the merits of my talent, not how old I am. But that window of opportunity is gone. If I was 20 years younger, everything would be different. I would be normal.

I don’t know — am I having a midlife crisis?

People Using Internet Archive To Read This Blog Is Both Amusing & Frustrating


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Ok, I get it. I guess I must come across as something of an Internet crank and people want to poke around this site without giving me their URL — hence the use of the Internet Achive.

This is both extremely funny and extremely frustrating to me.

I hate how snooty some people can be when I know damn well if I somehow weaseled my way into a cocktail party where they were, I could fake being “normal” enough that they would find me very memorable. I have a larger-than-life personality and you liquor me up I can be quite colorful.

Or just drunk, depending on how you look at it.

I’ll put a move on you.

As I grow older, I find that my “colorful” personality is both a boon and a bane. It’s a boon because, if nothing else, people remember me. It’s a bane because a lot of people who are successful under the normal metrics of success — who are my peers — think I’m completely bonkers and want to have nothing to do with me.

To the extent that they use the Internet Archive as some sort of propylitic so my kooties don’t get on their computer. Ugh. Fuck that and fuck them. The worst thing anyone has every said about me was I was a “delusional jerk with a good heart.”

I can see what someone would think that. But I would stress the “good heart” part of that statement. I’m well aware that I can be very, very annoying — hence my lack of friends — but I mean well.