About Being A Kid

Post 188:

            Being a kid was great. It’s not a sentiment shared by all, I’m sure, but I loved it. It was basically about having fun, entertaining the kids next to you. If there were no kids around, screw it, maybe there’s an adult or two around that I can make laugh.

            Of course there’s the possibility that I was simply annoying, but hey, there’s another great thing about being a kid. Kids don’t care. Not in the adult sense of caring. We adults have to be serious, by God. The world might come to an end if we don’t take politics or our neighbors or our work or ourselves seriously.

            Give me a break. To a certain degree, we’re just chasing our adult-sized tails. That sounds weird. Whatever.

            I’m writing to myself (which is pretty much what I do anyway) today as a reminder. Life is a series of performances, one after the other; sometimes you kill it, sometimes it kills you.

            I’ve been consumed the last few months trying to put together a new novel. This is my fifth so you would think I’d have it down by now, but alas, this might be one of those callings that you never quite master. Fine. I’m giving it a whirl, trying for those heavy themes, trying to emulate and push the boundaries of the great authors of the past.

            Foolish? Maybe. Impossible? Probably. Painful? Yes, but I’m done with all that.

            It recently occurred to me that doing serious work doesn’t mean I have to take it seriously. Let’s be clear. Obviously I have to mine for gold, take my brain to places it’s never been, create, create, create. This can be make you feel a bit like Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill only to do it over again, but that’s a dumb myth, and this is life. How’s that for a run-on sentence?

            It all comes down to worrying about your performance. If you’re a person like me, trying your best to never be an adult, you can’t get too bogged down in that quagmire. Enjoy it, even if it’s hard. Even if in the end, it sucks. You don’t run out of tomorrows until you do. And then—pretty sure it doesn’t matter.

            Enjoy performing. Try like hell to enrich the lives of your audience.

            If you do, enjoy being a kid. If not, enjoy being a kid. Whew. I knew I’d get to the point somewhere.

            Later on boys and girls. See you after.