perspective and soda

Alright, I'm working on two Gibsons and one whiskey and soda, so we'll see how coherent this blog post turns out. Coldplay's "Paradise" isn't helping, either (and yet, somehow, it's helping oh so much).

There are many recurring archetypes in fiction. One of the most overdone is that of the "invincible young dude." You know 'em, you love 'em: slick, loud, brash, overconfident. Unafraid of death or misfortune. They're on top of the world, and they're hot stuff, and nobody can tell them different. They're practically begging to be taken down a peg.

And sure enough, it inevitably takes a calamity (a buddy's death, a close encounter with the bad guys, a near-death experience, or some-such) to wake them up, bring them down to earth, and make them realize the truth: they are not invincible, and never were. They're just as human as the next man. They're privy to all the ills which flesh is heir to: pain, suffering, displacement, impotence, deprivation, loss, failure, death, injury, disability. And whenever a cocky young buck gets his comeuppance, there's a painful interlude in which they reappraise their outlook and readjust it—allowing for failure. It's a heartrending thing to watch, but it's a necessary growing experience. Ultimately the brash youth will be more mature the next time a catastrophe comes around.

Never have I identified more with this trope than I do now.

I have received my wake-up call.

For many years, I thought I was immune to life's downturns. Pukey economy? Ha! Job slump? Not even on my mind. Housing crash? Fuhgeddaboutit!

As Emperor Palpatine would say, my overconfidence was my weakness.

Keyword: "was."

Everything has finally caught up with me.

A niggling fear has been dogging me for the last few months, a fear I had never acknowledged or suspected before. I never dreamed that I would suffer at its hands, not in a million years.

The fear of mediocrity.

It feels, lately, that everything I ever planned, hoped for, strove for, dreamed, daydreamed, or wanted is slipping slowly away from me. All chance of worth, accomplishment, notoriety, fame, or happiness turns increasingly dim. These days it seems like the best I can manage is shadows and dust: a half-life, a skulking, underdone fugue of broken dreams, wants unanswered, hope turned hollow. Insecurity and doubt plague my every step. In the face of adversity, crippling economic disadvantage, the humiliation of dependency, and the general pervading listlessness, it seems as though all my personal demons have crawled out of the woodwork to torment me. Suddenly, my novel's prospects fall miserably short of expectation; at best it will manifest as a paperback on the bottom shelf of the science fiction/fantasy section in Barnes & Noble. Suddenly, my lofty pilot's ambitions fall to rubble before my eyes; I feel I will live out my days as a peon copilot for some regional airline in the Midwest, ferrying disagreeable passengers between Springfield and Chicago or Des Moines and Minneapolis. Suddenly, I realize that I will never work as a drink-slinging bartender in a high-class establishment in Las Vegas or Edinburgh or Santiago; the best I will manage will be half-assed Manhattans in my basement.

A painful process this has indeed been.

Yet hope springs eternal. I've got quite a few more novel ideas floating around my skull, and I think I know how to fix my current manuscript. I'm working on the perfect Gibson; pretty soon I'll turn my hand to Manhattans and polish them until they're perfect. And as for flying...well, I don't want to say anything too committal here, but I believe I have a deal worked out. I'm placing an important call tomorrow, the outcome of which will determine my fate. Further bulletins as events warrant.

In the meantime, I'll dream of Paradise.