One Regret

The one regret I have--and it is a large one--about not making any real money over the course of my working life is that today, in semi-retirement, I don't have the money to travel.

With all this free time on my hands, I am sort of lost, and I am suffering writer's block even more than usual these days. I'm getting by, in a poor and foul mood, but I think writing a travel book or series of hard-travel articles might help pull me out of my rut.

I don't mean tourist summations, either.  A bad payday is as bad as no payday.

Think Paul Theroux.

Of course, one would like to have Theroux's talent as well, but that is another issue.  This is pure fantasy, I guess, but it would be fun to try.  One could, with a decent retirement account.  Failure wouldn't be an issue; not writing something worthwhile would be.

Write something I like--and not give a damn if it sells.

I blew it.  Most of the jobs I worked over the years angered or bored me, sometimes in tandem, so I usually lost them or simply walked away with the understanding that there was always another one down the block.  Maybe it would be better.

I wanted to do it my way or take the highway.

That worked for young people back in the day, or it did for me, when jobs were easier to get than they are now.  I could always find a new distraction, a new place, which pleased me temporarily.

Clearly, I lacked a certain amount of discipline in my life.  That goes as much for my writing life as it does for all the other things I've done or tried to do.  I never chose a career that paid beyond the value of a bowl of gruel and a cheap pitcher of beer after the rent. Sometimes, especially in recent years, I couldn't even make the rent.

I studied political science and history in school--what I learned was alienation.  I know many of my betters in the first two disciplines.  I am the king of the third.

About ten years ago, with a resume shot full of gaps and dubious assignations, I could no longer run my private racket, i.e., be the boss of my own working life.

My "earning years" were finally lost in a brutal market, passing with age and a deepening disappointment in everything.

I know I'm not alone in that regard, for what it is worth.

I once took pride in cooking a decent plate of eggs or organizing a protest.  I never wanted to own a breakfast cafe or be Gandhi.

Don't enslave me! I cried.

Then I lost interest and fell very hard.  All the way to the bottom.  I really cried then.

I don't regret that, or even where I am now in an existential sense.  I regret not doing what I needed to do when it counted.


TS