[copied from my old Myspace blog]
Damn–it’s amazing, but in three days, I’ll be 34-years-old. Like, before the advent of medicine, this used to be the end of the useful human lifespan, didn’t it? And here I am feeling like I’m just getting started in some ways.
And yet, I’m starting to notice some changes. I can’t physically do everything I did at 18, for instance. I also have to watch what I eat now. I’m also finding out weird things about myself, such as that if I drink too many caffeinated beverages, that the ole plumbing starts to–
Okay, sorry. Won’t go there. But you get my point. I ain’t gonna live forever.
Damn.
My friend Will Ludwigsen has an interesting solution to the problem of approaching-middle-age paunchiness, one that I’m thinking about trying out. Now just to buy a sledgehammer and an egg timer.
Age has its benefits, though. One is that I finally have enough years behind me that I have a past. Highschool (class of ’91) seems like another lifetime, and my first post-college job is just a bad memory–a distant one, at that. Even the sting of my parents’ divorce is finally fading a bit.
Having more years also provides another benefit, and that’s the continued opportunity to make new memories, new sources of happiness. My March column at Horror World (which will likely be at this link after 4/1/07) is one such memory. It’s about the day I met my future mother-in-law and how she immediately threw me to the wolves, cleverly disguised as a class of third graders. Everything having to do with my wife, of course, is a source of happiness–and how great is it to be old and confident enough to state, and mean it when you say it, that you love your spouse without reservation?
The future is going to hold other opportunities, and some of them will concern writing. I’ve decided I’m not always going to be just a horror writer. In fact, when I’m done with this blog I’m deleting the word “horror” from my Myspace handle. There’s lots of reasons for this, but the main one is that I’m going to follow the readers by writing what they want to read, and horror, as much as I love the genre, is on shaky ground as a marketing category. Apart from that, I’m sick and tired of the egotism of some of my peers, and I’d like to find out if the grass is greener in other places.
