Don’t Fear The Reaper

Like, I don’t know, every other human on Earth, I am not really aware of my own aging process. Well, somewhat aware. I mean, every time I stand up and some piece of my body literally falls off, or any time I stay up until 6AM drinking liquor that’s so fresh and corrosive it has a grit to it and instead of bounding into my day with a few aspirin and a therapeutic vomit like when I was 25 I die for 35 seconds in the back of an ambulance, I feel it a little. But in general I feel kind of the same as I did long ago when I was cool. From my perspective, I’m the same asshole I always was.

But that’s not really true. In reality, I’ve changed a lot, I think. And that’s changed my writing. And that’s okay. In life and writing, you gotta be willing to change.

A Game of Suffering

Two conversations. First:

2000 Duchess: Why have we been standing in line for Mets playoff tickets for eight hours?

2000 Jeff: BECAUSE THE METS ARE GOING. ALL. THE. WAY. And also because the Mets front office is incompetent.

Then:

2019 Duchess: Who’s gonna be in the World Series this year?

2019 Jeff: I have no idea.

Baseball used to be such a core part of my personality it was sometimes the only way my friends and I could communicate effectively. Well, that and Simpsons jokes. But just like I stopped watching The Simpsons about ten years ago, my love for baseball has ebbed. I still have affection for the game and the beautiful stats, but I can’t summon the energy to watch games or follow the season any more.

It’s strange to realize that something I once devoted so much energy to is no longer of interest to me, and I struggled with it. I tried to force myself to care, because it disturbed me that I’d changed so fundamentally. But then I just relaxed into it, because if you think about it for a moment there’s nothing that strange about losing energy for something after thirty fucking years. I mean, I’ve changed. Evolved. For the better? Probably not, but that’s not the point.

What does this have to do with writing? It’s the same principle. You should find that your approach to writing changes. You should be reading different books, weird, challenging books and easy satisfying books that show you tricks and techniques you’ve never seen before, and at the end of a decade of such books you should be writing differently. Better? Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn’t matter.

Just like Beisbol Jeff, this can be tough to deal with when your writing is part of your identity. When a reader or reviewer wonders why you don’t write the stuff you used to, or when you get bored writing stuff that once kept you up late because you couldn’t wait to nail down that scene. It goes straight to who you are as a writer, as a person. Your identity. Just remember that it’s normal for this to shift and evolve. It really has to. If it doesn’t, you’re stagnating.

Or maybe this is all because baseball games are 57 hours long and I’m just kidding myself. Carry on.