Snapshot
Five months ago, I had an epochal day.
It's not as though I consider job promotions, marriages, the birth of children, anniversaries, or deaths insignificant life events to memorialize, but I find myself beholden to a more surreal standard of defining incidents. Namely, I can pinpoint a few innocuous moments that have sustained relevance due to my own extreme self-awareness. The first I remember was when I was four, sitting in the backseat of my mother's car in a heavy winter coat, waiting for her to return from picking up my brother at elementary school. The moment of silence felt strange, because on some level, my contemplation pushed my self-perception to what felt like external observation, as though I was watching myself in a dream while certain that I was awake and lucid. It happened again when I was a Cub Scout camp councilor in 2001; while participating in the colors ceremony at Fort Akela in Camp Garrison of the Musser Scout Reservation, a light rain began to fall as we prepared to lower the flag. Every detail of that bittersweet, melancholy moment is etched permanently in my brain. I've forgotten what would have been the third moment, but I suspected at the time I was trying to manufacture one, so that ephemeral epoch became apocryphal.
However, on June 23rd, 2016, the sensation hit hard. I was standing on my back deck, nursing a drink as my best friend puffed a cigarette on this warm, serene, and perfectly humid summer night. Perhaps coincidentally, it had been roughly six months since I'd moved into my new apartment, and I was feeling unusually good about the arrangement. I was in the midst of relating the particulars of my day, wherein a customer at work occupied an inordinate amount of my time talking incessantly and obliviously about whatever crossed their periphery. I spared no effort to be accommodating and polite, even indulgent, but after seven hours of listening, I realized that my patience for such vapid monologuing had eroded to practically nothing, leaving my overall tolerance for bloviation severely damaged. In spite of this revelation, I was in an excellent mood.
The forthcoming election was still a humorous distraction, too far away to be real. I had just heard about Kindle Scout and was mentally preparing to submit Life After: The Void for a campaign. My best friend had recently met a young woman with whom he thought he could establish a long-awaited fertile relationship. I felt comfortable, optimistic, and filled with rational hopes for the future. A few days later, when I began the campaign, my fiancée, who is without a doubt the most honest, dedicated, and pragmatic supporter of my work, said "You deserve a win." Though I am much more likely to self-flagellate than self-congratulate, and would never personally insist upon my being 'deserving' of anything, I tended to agree. At that point, Life After: The Arising had been rejected by 30 agents, and many of my attempts to publicize it had been disappointing. I continued to sacrifice the prospect of starting a career, instead maintaining a flexible retail job to increase my writing time. I had also dedicated more than a decade of tireless work to writing, revising, and editing in pursuit of publication, including a two-year frenzy of trying to make Life After: The Void the best book I possibly could without professional help. I was certainly not immune to visions of cupidity, but I had been practical about my opportunities, and a successful Kindle Scout campaign seemed like a tangible goal. 'Tangible goals' may not sound especially sexy, but the mere possibility of things to come left me feeling as though I was on the precipice of something momentous.
That was five months ago.
In that time, I put everything I had into the Kindle Scout campaign. I was rejected. I took it hard, but turned dejection into exertion, conducting a marathon of editing to prepare Life After: The Void for a self-published release. When I had time to internalize what had happened, the experience left me feeling emboldened. I did let some petty issues in the physical publication of the book get to me, but such is the fate of a perfectionist, and they were ultimately corrected to my satisfaction. Some time later, I suffered through a crisis of confidence that had me questioning the point of my writing career, but I endured.
During this time, my best friend became newly single.
Meanwhile, the parade of daily lunacies that had been the election turned into morbid theatre, where the posturing of four deeply flawed candidates incited more venomous discord than I previously thought possible. Like most, I openly expressed a desire for it to be over, but the final tally did nothing to assuage my fears as it exposed a partisan, discriminatory, hypocritical, spiteful divide among Americans that seemed to champion ignorance and isolation. I never expected such disagreements to be solved or compromised in a day, but to see conservatives and liberals alike mock, scorn, and ridicule each other while stockpiling rage to support their stubborn ideations in willful opposition to understanding and compassion was enough to fill me with existential dread.
Then, last week, an immediate family member lost their longtime job. Not for wrongdoing or negligence. Just a victim of slow business. That such a decent, honest, hard-working person could be so unceremoniously sacked only deepened the dread encapsulated by my already fragile worldview.
Two days ago, I received my first royalty notification following the two month delay after Life After: The Void was made available to pre-order. It was blank. I am normally loathe to examine tracking statistics before such payments arrive, but following this, I had to see what was in store. As it turns out, Life After: The Void has sold less than 20 copies. Though I am not destitute, I was hoping the profits of the new book would aid in the purchase of holiday gifts.
Yesterday, I was informed that my former professor, mentor, and friend passed away. An Academy Award-Winning production designer for such films as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and Kramer vs. Kramer whose lovable irascibility and brusque wit belied the heart of an eminently giving man who was always free with his time, solicitude, and erudition. We'd had dinner together often after his classes, he'd invited me into his home, and he'd read and reacted to everything I'd ever written. He was concise, plain-spoken, relentless, and encouraging with his criticism. He had both the keenest artistic intellect and the most finely tuned bullshit detector of any individual I have ever met in my life. I empathize entirely with his family and close friends, not only because I will miss him, but because he is irreplaceable, having made both the world of motion pictures and the world itself a better place. For the rest of my days, I will write imagining him tapping me on the shoulder to spare me my excesses, or slap some sense into me with the encouragement he once gave Dustin Hoffman on the set of The Tiger Makes Out : "Stay tough."
This is not a pity party, nor is it intended to elicit sympathy. I realize, now more than ever, how incredibly fortunate I am to be an employed and insured white American man who has an apartment, food, water, electricity, heat, possessions, and a means to indulge a passion for writing. I am healthy and alive. I'm also fortunate to have an abundance of supportive friends, family, and loved ones who enjoy many of the same rights and privileges. Don't doubt for a moment that I take none of these things for granted.
This is a merely a snapshot of life following this particular epoch, which, just five months ago, felt like the beginning of a hopeful new era, blah blah blah. Instead, the world around me seems to be a dubious, divided, darker, drearier, and more terrifying place. Not that I'm planning on withdrawing myself or quitting. It just seemed important to remember.
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