17 Comments
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Drew R Walsh's avatar

A weirdly entertaining piece. A scratch beneath the surface. Keep writing, kiddo.

Frank T Bird's avatar

Cheers, brother. Hope yo alright ⚡️

Robert Gowty's avatar

Just wait until you discover “pwd” doesn’t stand for password. Did my head in for years.

Frank T Bird's avatar

I honestly thought it was play with Willy in the dark. Wasted a lot of time there.

Caroline Osella   (they/them)'s avatar

Follow 'Notes From The Periphery'. Oz, excellent fiction, sales, and most lately, I believe, cybersecurity. I look forward to fiction from you with this new world as backdrop.

Arthur Rosch's avatar

Frankie, me boy, I identify, I really do. Let me share this with you. First, I am 78 and I've written many books, poems, essays, a ton of stuff. Last week I got an email from someone claiming to be the Managing Editor at Kensington books. She's heard about me and read some of my stuff. She wanted me to go with an agent, name of Ali Lake. So I contact Ali Lake and I send her the most dreadful query letter, a real error. Ali tells me my book needs formatting in order to be acceptable. See...I self published. Now book companies will refuse a self published book. I didn't know that. in order to make it acceptable to Kensington I had to hire a formatting specialist. A guy who can re-struture the book etc. Cost 1K. So I went with it. I invested in myself, in spite of being slightly dubious about the credibility of the thing and the people. I think I'm painting a picture of desperation. I'm now old enough to foresee that all this work will vanish when I do. I don't want that.

Hang in there, bro. Accept your situation and maintain your creatiivty. No one else will do that for you. REmember: you are gifted. Only a few people have such drive and originality. You have them!

Frank T Bird's avatar

Cheers, Art, you legend. I’m alright. Not depressed or anything. Just ‘off white’ 🙏

Arthur Rosch's avatar

Thass all right, mate. All you have to do is survive till you get old. Simple.

David Perlmutter's avatar

You're just making me more depressed about not having a "real" job...

Frank T Bird's avatar

Cheers,Dave. Yo the king 👑

Rivers + Robots's avatar

Post-pandemic midlife career changes for me + my husband. Different journey, same general feeling.

You made this gut wrenching, soul excavating, complex lane-drift from artist to commercial, while remaining artist (while not labeling yourself because we're all just products of decisions and former selves, untethered and free to continue choosing) feel like a fun read.

👏 👏

Frank T Bird's avatar

Cheeers, mate. Weird times we live in ⚡️

Quantum Animation's avatar

Have you considered writing porn. It's very lucrative, and you're quite good at it. Seriously, that's the post COVID world, frequent career changes and gig economy. The security thing could be lucrative, but sounds like a drag energetically.

If it helps, my husband started an IT career at exactly 49 with NO formal training what so ever. He wound up becoming an IT director of Front End Services for a big natural food chain of over 100 stores. So yes, it can be done.

The Hunter S. Thompson comment caught my eye. There's a writer on here named Count Metalmind, Circuit and Sin. He fancies himself Hunter. He assumes the identity of a 6 foot something robot who wears a purple Fedora and floral shirt. He's an excellent and funny writer much like yourself. You may like him.

https://substack.com/profile/284846000-count-metalmind?utm_source=global-search

Frank T Bird's avatar

Cheers for all that, Q. Nice to hear your husband did that. It’s our modern version of a mid life crisis that leads to something more useful than a Porsche Boxter. I’m just taking it one step at a time and seeing where I end up. Ya know what it’s like being from the Matrix generation we get ideas about learning Russian and wearing black hoodies etc. I’ll probably end up in some dull ops job with a fat Snickers addict called Akmar. I’m actually fine with that lol.

Quantum Animation's avatar

Good luck. Send my love to Akmar. As for my husbands useful version of the mid life crisis - after 11 years of this job, he got laid off in a take over of the company, ran out of the office building, sold nearly everything and moved to Mexico for awhile. So much for the mature juggling of reality. Of course I joined in, but I’m a whole different story.

Frank T Bird's avatar

Those with structure crave non structure. Those with non structure crave structure. There’s something deeper I think 😆

Quantum Animation's avatar

True, but one doesn’t tend to find the something deeper when engaged with the structure side of the polarity. That seems to intoxicate one with the fumes of the dream. Unless those fumes are from the incense of a Zen monastery.