Egg Splat

Lately I’ve found myself staring down the barrel of the future.
Is it loaded? Is it unloaded? I won’t know until I pull the trigger…
 
I guess I never thought middle-age would happen to me.
 
I’m not trying to recapture my lost youth. Sure, there are points where I would like a time machine to go back and kick some scrawny, past-me ass, but for the most part, I’m cool with how I spent and/or misspent my teens and twenties.
 
I don’t glorify my high school years (gawd, no). I don’t spend my time “remembering when…” (my wife insists I had no real life before we were married) I don’t want a shiny red sports car, and I’m not looking for validation/hero-worship in the eyes of some girl half my age. I’m actually in pretty good shape, physically, emotionally, and (as far as I can tell) mentally.
 
So the kind of “mid-life crisis” that seems so popular among men of a certain age (e.g., mine) has been largely avoided.
 
What seems to have sneaked up on me, though, is my growing professional obsolescence. I should have seen that coming. I’m a software developer. A computer programmer who got his start in the 1980′s.
 
Programming is a young man’s game. I should have known that in my mid-40′s I would find myself looking around, wondering where the world I worked in went, and wondering what’s going on with these newfangled smartphones and semi-useless tablets that don’t even have a keyboard.
 
Windows was supposed to last forever, wasn’t it?
 
Yes. I was naïve.
 
I’ve been pretty lucky. I released The Journal back in 1996, and its been making me a living wage since about 2003. It even earned me a nice living starting in about 2006.
 
It was The Journal that made my indie writing & publishing efforts possible. Supporting and maintaining The Journal leaves enough time to put in some writing and do the necessary publishing stuff, even when I do a major upgrade. And my experience building and selling my own software was quite valuable in getting started selling my books and stories.
 
Blithely, I assumed The Journal would always earn me a nice living. Forever and always. Like some company man in the 1980′s who thought he had a job for a lifetime. Put in his 20-30 years and retire. Who got a rude awakening when the layoffs started and all he had left was the sound of Gordon Gecko’s laughing all the way to the bank.
 
Remember those semi-useless tablets that don’t even have a keyboard? Seems most of my customers are buying those and, in many cases, leaving their laptops behind. And their desktops have been collecting dust for a long time now.
 
The world of computers and software has changed. And changed faster than I expected it would.
 
My vague plan for years was that I would be a programmer-who-writes until my 40′s, when I would transition into life as a writer-who-still-sometimes-programs. I had thought I was vaguely on track with that plan.
 
Unfortunately, the transition is taking longer than I thought it would. So I get to be a programmer-who-writes a bit longer. And I get to wade back into the young man’s game.
 
So I’m launching my efforts to take The Journal to new and interesting platforms (while hoping I’m not already too late). The task is daunting. Going xplat (crossplatform) with software is hard. And scary. Scares me, that’s for sure. And more than a little. But it should be fun too. It helps that I still like programming.
 
This means my writing and publishing will continue to be the equivalent of a part-time job for the foreseeable future. I’ve done this before, though, so I’m not worried about it. Just means I probably won’t publish 4-6 books next year. I’ll have to settle for 2-3.
 
Work on Gunwitch3 is still happening, and writing that will probably take me through the end of the year. I’ll begin the final edits for GoSH3 next week. I plan to have GoSH3 published before the end of September, so the first 3 books of that series will all be out in time for Xmas.
 
Have a great weekend!
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
I Got Lost Trying to Find the Proper PathAlmost Time to be a Writer AgainThere Is No WhyMy Latest Heresy: I Don’t Want to Write FulltimeThe Day Job Strikes Back!