48

I’ll let you in on one of my biggest fears.

When I was a kid I was worried I would be completely useless to society and end up homeless.

I used to fear the future.

I’m not joking.

When I was growing up, one of my biggest fears was becoming an adult and trusting in my own abilities to provide for myself. As a little kid I would stay up at night staring at the ceiling worried about what I was going to do with my life. In my mind I had no idea what work was. I imagined wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase filled with only God knows what and going off to an office doing random grown-up stuff and getting paid for it. The worry was wondering what that grown-up works as. What was I going to do with my life? What was my purpose?

True story, when I got my first job at a video game company and got the phone call telling me what my first salary would be I breathed a sigh of relief over the phone saying, “Thank God someone in this world thinks I’m useful.”

Thank you, Christian Busic, for my first job.

My oldest son is graduating from high school this year and I can sense a little bit of that anxiety from him wondering what he will be doing with the rest of his life. I can relate and I don’t give him any pressure to rush to any conclusions. I find it unsettling that some of us bust our humps trying to get into college and then suddenly a university asks you what major you want to do which will decide your path in the future.

Statistically, about 85% of graduating college students don’t do anything with their college degree.

“Find your passion,” I tell him. “It was what you were meant to do.”

Now, I’m at a point in my life where a few of my friends and folks around me are looking into the near future (maybe the next five to eight years) towards retirement. That golden ticket. The moment they can finally get off that train and spend the rest of their lives doing what they REALLY want to do with their lives. This all came as a shock to me. Not about about whether or not some of us can actually retire, but the fact that that time has flown and suddenly I’m nearing the other side of work life. I’ve been adulting for roughly 22 years now, which feels like nothing, and as I reflect on the past years I find myself rather fortunate that I happen to do have had the honor and privilege to do exactly what I wanted and was born to do. I understand that not many people get that in their life. I’m lucky. So, while folks around me are looking to get off the work force train, or at least dream about it, I realize that I have absolutely no interest in stopping, and that’s a good thing.

I think I did something right?

I’ve spent the last 48 years of my life worrying all these years if I’m going to be okay only to stand on the last third of a marathon called "the working life" and realizing that things just might work out fine.

When my father died a few years ago I remember him eating a hot dog as his last meal, which was odd because he was obsessed with his health to the point that he never took pleasure in indulging in fun things so this was something he would never do. All his life he just kept obsessing about eating right and exercising convinced he was going to die of cardiovascular disease when suddenly it was liver cancer. He just sat there eating his hot dog and saying to himself, “What was the point of worrying all those those years?”

He didn’t know I was listening. The best piece of life advice he gave me was something he didn't intend for me to hear, but that moment spoke volumes to me.

Now, here’s where it gets a little interesting.

I realized something recently about myself while attending a few literary conferences and festivals in the past few years.

I’m suddenly the old guy.

While 48 isn’t particularly old I’m finding myself to be the veteran on panels filled with twenty somethings. I see fewer and fewer of the peers that I came up with at conferences. The Publisher’s Weekly Marketplace is filled with young new people I’ve never heard of before. The output of some folks I had admired for years seem to have dropped off a bit and I pray it’s because they’ve willingly chosen to slow their lives down. The scariest part is that I’ve finally reached a point in my life where I question if I have enough years in my life to create all the ideas that I have in my head. It feels like only yesterday that I started out in this business and I was hustling to try to get my foot firmly planted in this literary industry hoping to be recognized by editors and art directors, and you, the readers. Now, I find myself hustling for a slightly different reason. I feel Iike I’m trying to keep up with the younger new voices. As younger generations plant their foot into the cultural zeitgeist I’ve noticed an extremely talented pool of young new literary voices who seem to effortlessly dispense this perfect voice suited to our current youth, but they do it in a slightly different way from me. Their perception of the world is slightly different than mine. To put it kindly, I’ve wondered if the perception of how I view the world has become a little dated?

Call this a self-reflecting form of ageism.

When you write a memoir about yourself you are left generally spending a lot of time reflecting on your entire life and you are left with this inner need to understand every facet about yourself. You need to understand how all the gears work and you constantly ask yourself why you are the way you are. This self-awareness has been quite useful to me. I think it’s important to stand outside of yourself and be completely unbiased as you reflect about who you are. The brutal honestly of my world is that I need to constantly be aware of how the world is changing and ask myself if I’m changing with it. This is not to say that I don’t think I have anything worthwhile to say or write, but I wonder if I’m delivering that message in the right way? In order to speak to people you need to know HOW to say something as well as WHAT you’re going to say. My childhood was filled with toys, tv shows, riding bikes into the night, and building junk forts in some far uncharted corner of town. Today’s youth is filled with the internet, Netflix streaming, texting, and Tik Tok memes.

It’s apples and oranges.

I know folks who use old vaudeville gags in their work. Pies in the face, double takes, and old puns. Tools of an old era that kids are left scratching their heads wondering, “What did the author mean my that? And what’s an anvil?” There’s a lack of self-awareness where they feed their own personal interests not realizing that the audience they serve is completely left in the dark. You suddenly look around and realize that you’re completely out of the loop and if you try to fake it then it will all just come off as awkward because everyone can see that you’re simply trying too hard.

There comes a point in life when you suddenly realize that you aren’t up with all the gossip and trends and the who’s who of social media celebrities but I think the kiss of death to any person’s personal growth is when they say, “I miss the good old days…”

The cruel truth about the world is that if you long for the “good old days” you’re suddenly going to find yourself surrounded by a world you no longer understand because the world doesn’t care if you change with it or not.

I know people decades older than me who feared computers and refused to ever touch one and now they are surrounded by a digital world and they curse it for being fully automated and they can no longer use cash. I know folks who miss old school rap while scratching their heads over what new rappers are playing these days. Do you fear self-driving cars? Too bad, because capitalism says it’s coming whether you like it or not. Does AI terrify you? I mean, yes, it ABSOLUTELY SHOULD, but it’s coming.

My attitude isn’t that I’m being forced to adapt. Now, my view is that I’m eager to see what lies down the road and where my place is in it. I see that the world is changing rapidly and I don’t want to get off this train because the moment I stop looking towards the future and spend more time reflecting on my past is when I stop growing as a person.

I don’t know how well I’ll adapt to the future but I no longer fear it. All I know is that I've done fine for most of my life and I should have confidence that my desire to grow will help me carry on.

There’s no point in worrying.

Take life one day at a time, and just savor the precious moments life gives you...

And eat the hot dog.