Another birthday!
Posted By Scott on December 16, 2008
Today is my 49th birthday. Forty-nine seems like an awfully big number - just a notch away from fifty which, by any reckoning, is surely on the downslope towards mortality. I don’t know how forty-nine got here so fast.
Today, I can’t help but remember my 29th birthday. It stands out as the worst of them. To begin with, my girlfriend dumped me that day in spectactular fashion. I had it coming, because I had pulled an equally specatacular boneheaded move - and got caught. So, I spent the day alone and nursing my self-inflicted wounds. Perhaps worse than that, however, was the recognition that my youth was coming to an end. The future seemed like a bleak, withering descent into decripitude. The hair on my head was starting to fall out, only to emerge on parts that shouldn’t sport any hair at all. My friends were all getting married and having kids and waiting for me to do the same. I was settling into the comfortable corporate culture. Adventures seemed few and far between. My good days were surely behind me.
If I had only known then how rich those next twenty years would be . . . Terrible lows and magnificent highs, dreams shattered and dreams fulfilled. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. In my mid-thirties, still a bachelor, I abandoned corporate life to write a novel. At forty, back in the corporate world and married (with children, to boot), the novel was going through one of a series of rewrites on its way to becoming KING OF NOD. This was followed by an heroic two-year battle with a cynical and uncaring publishing industry until the book found its way into the hands of Peter Honsberger at Hooded Friar Press. (”Scott, my editor says your book is one of the best things she’s ever read. If you’re still interested, we’d like to publish your book.”) Now, at forty-nine, KING OF NOD has been released to the world with a critical acclaim that still boggles the mind.
It’s been a great ride. I can say that now, because I’ve landed safely. Would you get on a roller coaster if you didn’t know it would bring you back to earth in one piece? I think I would have enjoyed the last twenty years more if I’d known things would turn out just fine - better than fine; in fact, things are fantastic. I might have enjoyed the ride more with that knowing, but it wouldn’t have been half so thrilling. The thrill is always in the unknown - and that’s the greatest adventure of all.
I wonder what the next twenty years will bring?