What if We Didnt Keep Track of Our Age

Been feeling something heavy lately. Oh yeah. My birthday. Funny how that goes from when you were a kid and you were all about it to carrying this heavy piece of sludge. Yeah. Another year and all that means and purports. Look we aren't wine. We are not getting better. But isn't the whole digit thing what really brings us down? Wouldn't we be better off as an arrow shot from nothing to nothing with no one measuring the arc? I mean, really,what is age but a way for other people to get a handle on you.

The old people love it. I don't mean the old people chronologically, I mean the old people. You know the people who started talking about being old when they were twenty. They love being old. They love talking about their back or the feet or their sight or their private parts. They were the ones who started going to bed in college at ten o'clock and talking about the "kids" staying up. They really take pleasure in aging and nailing all the people who stayed up all night and then went jogging in the morning.

The old people send you those cards. You know. Hey, sorry to hear your penis just fell off. Guess age gets everyone eventually Ha Ha. And they comment on those kids (thirty somethings) who are habitually doing foolish things. Sometimes they call each other mom and dad. But imagine if these same people never knew their own age. They would still act old but they couldn't point to you and go. Ha! Your the same age as me! You're old! They would have no idea.

Imagine that. If you felt young then you would be young. In fact you wouldn't have any idea how to age because you would have no idea how old you were. So if you felt like acting twenty your whole life then that is what you should be. Why shouldn't you be twenty to the day you die. Or if you wanted to be sixty you could be sixty. Right up to the day you kicked. No more obnoxious cards. No more obnoxious cakes. No  more disingenuous people saying, oh how do you feel now that you are blah blah.

No. I think I'm going to go for that. Eighteen. Cool age. Guess I'll stay there. Until I decide I want to be nineteen.

www.billhazelgrove.com

Writers Never Retire

Retirement. Where does that come from? Some sort of hangover from the World War II generation. Certainly the people who grew up in the last Great Depression never thought about retirement. Something companies and stock brokers came up with so people would invest their money. Whole generations working based on the dream or the promise that one day they could hang it up like Mr. Jet Blue and just say screw it, I'm done and now I am going to kick back. Asta La Vista baby. Then again, maybe not.

New York Times says people are really frightened now they won't be able to retire. The massive unemployment is draining savings and 401Ks and the houses aren't worth half their value anymore and the stock market crashed. Bottom line, people who assumed they were going to retire are thinking they may work until the day they die. Grim reality and very frightening for many, but for writers, it is something we have always known, because writers never retire.

It is write until you drop. That is the writer credo, if there is one. Once you commit to the road of the writer then security goes right out the window. You make peace early on with the fact you will never retire, in fact you don't even recognize the concept. What? Sit around and do nothing? If retirement is doing what you want then writers are already retired. The road of the writer is constant struggle. And if you aren't down with that in the beginning then pick something else.

So in a way the writer is recession proof. No one becomes a writer because they crave financial security. They crave something else. A walk on the wild side, a life less certain perhaps. But the promise of a nirvana at the end of years and years of writing. I don't think so. The only promise for the writer is that he will get up the next morning, sit down, and begin again.

William Hazelgrove's latest novel Rocket Man is due out this month.
http://www.billhazelgrove.com/