I’ve found a crux.
It’s always a good thing to have when you’re pondering a multi-pronged dilemma. Tracing each bit back until you bump into something larger, and often familiar, that you’ve found whilst prodding another prong.
It goes like this: I am neither American enough to put long-term goals over daily pleasures, nor European enough to enjoy daily pleasures and not care if long-term goals get met. I want both, and therefore, I am screwed.
Or rather, something will have to give. In my youth, when the synthesis of the good life and the meaningful purpose seemed just over the horizon, foregoing tasty vittles and eating ramen was not especially difficult. Particularly on a retail wage, the ultimate anti-gluttony enforcer. But I’ve spent enough years with enough money for decent food and disgust at what I had to do to make that money that I’ve fallen into the old twelve-pushups-and-cake-for-a-reeward cycle. I need breaks from the life that I can’t break free of because of the breaks I’m allowing myself which make that life slightly more bearable.
Sigh.
So now the search for the deus ex machina resumes, Parte the Umpteenth. It’s the predictable spawn of the pessimism and inertia that I have now lived with for nearly as long as I once lived without them. Add the routine required for childrearing, and the feedback loop is set to stun.
My wife and I share one characteristic that has been both beneficial and destructive during our decade of marriage: We prefer violent shakeups to gradual change. It’s the reason we’ve uprooted ourselves so many times in the past to experience new things, which was good. It’s also the reason why we’re having such trouble coming up with a long-term plan that includes stable elements such as our son. We keep looking for the big pineapple basket to turn over and start from scratch, but that flipping makes a much bigger mess nowadays than it used to.
Taking existing elements and rearranging them doesn’t look like progress to either of us. And after too many encounters with financial disaster, we are loath to subtract. But addition gets harder, and schemes are difficult to sustain with the current workload.
During my most recent bout of artiste anguish, my wife floated the idea of us returning to single-income life after my son begins elementary school, when we will no longer be paying for daycare. That’s subtraction, but with the potential reward of daily creative output, the calculation could balance out.
But it’s definitely subtraction. I make well over the amount it costs to send him to daycare, and that extra income pads our lifestyle around the edges just enough that we are squeezed rather than pinched. A lot would have to change. Neither I nor my wife would have our own creative space, as we would need lower-rent lodging. Having it all to myself for 40 hours a week could negate that, and make me more receptive to kid-care in the evenings while she pursues her interests.
In the most optimistic view, I would not be without income. I am presently releasing works that will hopefully continue to bring income at a steadily higher rate each year. The way I am going about it will soon change so that I can release them more frequently, and hopefully with increasing returns from name recognition and repeat customers. But even in that optimistic scenario, the odds overwhelmingly suggest a pay cut of at least 50%.
Such risks are the beginnings of notable biographies. They who put it all on the line for their dream, who were scoffed at and prayed for, and who were ultimately rewarded for their fortitude. But as I’ve written here before, no one prints the other kinds of biographies, the ones where the whole lot was placed on red, only for the wheel to come up black.
Machina it may be, but given the number of years I’m likely to be on this earth to take risks, it may be all I’ve got. I can only see so far ahead, and there are times when rearranging deck chairs is not your wisest choice.
Close, no cigar
That’s what they say
Better luck next time, you’re not just a bum
Here, have a cliche
Close doesn’t count
It’s too close to call
It works for horseshoes and hand grenades
But that’s about all
- Close, No Cigar, Little Jack Melody