Over five years ago I wrote a blog post titled, pretentiously, “The Ceaseless Onslaught of Adulthood or Pretension and the Act of Leaving Childhood Dreams to Children.” It’s about my feelings of getting older as a creative, and the push and pull between doing the responsible thing and doing the fulfilling thing.
Well, in the last five and a half years, I’ve further entrenched myself into adulthood, culminating with the purchase of my first house just two days ago. It’s a strange feeling, like a happy ending to a movie that you know is the middle chapter of a trilogy. I never had a clear distinction in my mind of what 33 year old me might be up to, but if 13 year old me did this probably wasn’t it.
There’s no way I could have imagined that I’d be married to who I’m married to, with the job I have, making the money I make (especially making the money I make, even if it’s not nearly as much as this sentence makes it sound like it is–growing up poor definitely put a cap on my conception of a good salary), and now living in the area I live with my own house.
Even ten years ago, around the time I first met my wife, I was making $10k per year through Americorps, working at an after school science program. I could barely make rent, had very few prospects, and felt like I was never going to escape my hometown. I was writing then, and had even just finished production on a movie I wrote (you can watch that, if you want), but was ignorant to what sort of writer I wanted to be, let alone how to become one.
Things wouldn’t get much better for a while. When I was 24 I did escape Buffalo. The next three years were hard. I was never able to get a foothold in my career, didn’t know how to make friends as an adult (actually… I still have trouble with that one), and spent almost as much time on unemployment as I did working. Luckily, I had a good support structure–something I know many others aren’t as fortunate to have.
I continued to write, entering screenplay competitions (and doing well in some, although never winning outright) and doing some freelance work to make ends meet. Still, no traction.
Fast forward to now and I’m by most metrics a successful adult. Wife, job, cats, house, car, etc. And I’m still writing. Still haven’t met with much success (as we covered last post). Sometimes the dream feels really far away, but more often I can still see it like a green light across the bay.
I initially meant for this post to say something about the act of getting older and turning pages in our lives. Maybe discuss nostalgia and what it does to us. But as I reflect on where I was at any other point in my life versus where I am now, I don’t feel much nostalgia. Beginning a new chapter feels natural and right, just as it did when I chose a different high school than my best friends. Just as it did when I left Buffalo, or when I followed my then-girlfriend (now wife) to New Jersey so she could pursue her Psy.D. Just as it does now, having closed on our first house.
The dream is still there. Maybe it’s evolved. Maybe it feels smaller now when compared with other life milestones. But it’s there. And it’s not going anywhere.
