Fuller Wiser

Which risk to take, and how?

Were I single (as it appears I may soon be), just paying the minimum living costs, not even counting food & gas, requires 75% of my salary. Count on gas & food to knock out most of the remaining cash, & you have someone simply working to stay alive.

That is not freedom. My wife makes all of this talk about “setting me free,” and yet the result would actually be greater servitude. I’ve well and truly screwed myself, make no mistake, ye of no offspring.

There is the roommate possibility, but honestly, who wants to room with a guy who has a 2-year-old in the house every other week? I certainly the hell wouldn’t.

All of this is very confusing in the context of my last entry. Where’s the 4-years-then-stay-home plan? Well, that was apparently a mirage. My wife admitted that she was just trying to shut my whiny arse up the other night, and that she would be loath to commit to such an arrangement. Oh, and by the way, wouldn’t I be happier if I were single?

Not after running the numbers, I wouldn’t. Any way you stack it, I’d be treading water on my own. I’d suspect that was the point she’s been trying to get across, but honestly, I think it’s more about getting me and my complaining out of her life so she can breathe. Which, incidentally, she would have a harder time doing on her single income as well. Though not as hard as I would have it, being the non-degreed dropout that I am.

I mean, criminy. If a guy making executive secretary money can barely pay all his modest bills, what kind of screwy economy is this? Heaven forbid I go back to retail; I’d need eight roommates to make it. There’s a two-hour diatribe in there, but I’ll spare the interwebs the punishment.

The thing is, all artists have required patrons. Whether they’re publishers, record companies, aristocrats, or patient spouses, all have played the pivotal role of keeping artists out of the homeless shelter whilst they pursue their economically dubious dreams. Some benefactors are more cunning than others, taking the lion’s share to keep the goose’s eggs in their stable. Others, like my wife, truly believe in what is being accomplished, and are as perplexed as the artist himself when buyers are scarce. But once that rate of return is established, retaining enthusiasm and accepting sacrifice becomes more difficult. And eventually, impossible.

It would be one thing if I were childless, and could simply go about my way, crashing on couches and roommating my way to lower expenses. But the kid needs what he needs, and bowing out of his life right now would be unconscionable, even if I were psychologically capable of it, which I am not. Given my inability to come up with any form of child support whatsoever (and disinclination to become an absentee father), shared care is the only option open.

The problem is always logic vs. passion. I can tell myself that my long-awaited new project is in fact going on the market in one month’s time, and could lead to greater possibilities. But as I sit here watching the minutes tick by in this sterile office, my mind scrambles to claw out of my skull and leap out the window onto the street, where at least something is happening. Mostly among the homeless…

As I discovered in New York as well as Texas, cities are littered with dead dreams, carried in bodies that are shells of their former creative selves. Occasionally fate smiles upon an aging dream, sometimes before its carrier dies, sometimes after. But mostly these things expire with their creators, who often go mad from the burden they carry.

It’s an easy thing to say: “Put it all on the line…you only get one chance at life…do what you love…” But who pays the rent? Who will heal the unisured artist afflicted with bronchitis or a broken leg? Artists must have infrastructure or perish. But if that which makes one an artist has perished in the pursuit of infrastructure, what then is there to live for?

In my case, responsibility for the little one will at the very least keep me breathing. What will make me glad to be alive is an open question. 

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 cliché

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