"What do you want to be when you grow up?"
That was something kids seemed to be asked a lot when I was growing up (which is becoming increasingly further back in time as the years go by). I'm not sure if that is a question commonly put to children today, but it was, for me, a pretty exciting query. At least during my single-digit years. It conjured up an open landscape of possibilities. I don't know.. perhaps I'd be an astronaut? An artist? Mayor? When I entered my teenage years, and began high school, the question -- no longer posed as much by adults, but more to myself -- generated anxiety more than anything. It was crunch time. Crap - what do I want to be?
Reality reared its ugly head in a couple of ways. First, I met with the program director of one of the local (and popular) FM radio stations. I'd made an audition tape of some of the highlights of my on-air recordings. He stopped the tape seemingly at the end of every few words, pointing out how I could improve. His feedback wasn't mean, and was intended to be constructive. It was, but my ego was crushed.
Second, I got an internship for another local radio station and, while I liked soaking-up the behind-the-scenes knowledge of the decision making processes of the leadership staff, a lot of what I was called upon to do was grunt work. Radio stations do a lot of live events, where the DJs go out and broadcast from public places. My role was to do a lot of the physical set-up for those events. Like many young people, impatient to climb the ladder almost instantaneously, I became disillusioned with my lot in life, and eventually left my thoughts of a radio career behind.
One thing I've liked to do since I was young is write. Short stories, mostly, although I've written one (unpublished) novel. To be honest, beginning around the early 1990s, becoming a published, successful novelist became my dream job. It satisfies my creative itch, and it's something I enjoy doing. And, if I can earn enough from writing that it can become my bread-and-butter job, then so much the better. Of course, things didn't pan out that way. To be honest, I never developed the courage to submit my writing anywhere. I looked into it, of course, but often felt overwhelmed and never followed through. I'm also my own worst critic, reading stuff I've written and finding flaw after flaw after flaw.
So, I work in an office and am a politician. Those weren't on my bingo card as to what I'd end up doing in life but, hey, I'm comfortable and content, so no complaints. That said, I still like to write. Life often gets in the way, and living in a distracting digital age doesn't help. But, I carry on when the mood strikes, even if it's just on this blog. And, I've been working on a collection of short stories for what seems like ages. The goal is to have them done either later this year or early next, and I will be self-publishing them. I long ago gave up the ghost on writing becoming my main vocation. That resolution actually took some of the stress off of things, and now I write purely for pleasure.
When I self-publish, it will be in physical book format. I know some folks who've self-published, and they do what most people in this day and age should probably be, which is to make their work available as an e-book and, in certain cases, even have it recorded as an audiobook (a book on tape, for the fellow oldsters in the reading audience). I guess I'm too old school for that. I want people to have my book in their hands. Perhaps it is a small carryover of that shelved dream of becoming a successful novelist, from a time when that meant (for the most part) a physical tome. It's what younger Matt would have wanted.
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