I'm Having a Bizarrely Existential Midlife Crisis

🖐 The Friday High Five: # 105

Me mentally signaling my wife that I’d like some homemade chocolate chip cookies. MGM

Last week I decided to woo my wife by taking her to Culver’s and the library.

I know what you’re thinking: In this economy? Are you nuts?

In my defense, I had a $1 coupon.

I approached the library as I always do. Head into the stacks with no agenda other than to find something interesting. What’s interesting is always subjective, even to me. Last time I checked out books on the fall of Rome and the inner-workings of cults. Can you guess what I had on my mind?

This trip I only had the vague notion that I wanted to learn something, or improve myself, or be better. I ended up with a David Sedaris, a biography on Thoreau, a biography on Jesus, Moneyball, a book on Sebastian Junger’s near-death experience, and The Second Mountain—which unfortunately is not about how mountains adhere to the rule of two.¹ I tried to find a novel but nothing jumped out at me. This mixed bag of themes and topics is how I library.

I imagine you’re trying to infer my midlife crisis from this eclectic mishmash. You won’t find it. It’s not there. It found me while I wandered the aisles. And punched me in the nuts.

As I strode past hundreds of books without more than a passing glance, it dawned on me with sudden and blinding clarity that every book I dismissed without even the courtesy of curiosity had been written by someone like me. Only they were more accomplished, and thus better, because they have books in the library I can indiscriminately ignore, and I do not.

The fact that there were people behind these books is obvious. AI hasn’t yet infiltrated the library, though that doomsday scenario remains very much in play. This is also not like my suspicion about how I was conceived²; I know how books are made. It’s more about what happens after all the work and doubt and stubborn perseverance coalesces into paper bound between covers.

Each book was launched into the world with all the hope one can possibly muster. Standing there, surrounded by the natural hush of the library, it felt like that hope had been forever silenced. All those words, millions upon millions, shuttered and left to darkness. Whatever success the books had enjoyed had been brief, and now they waited like a silent procession of ghosts for somebody, anybody, to care.

All that latent expectation had a weight that was almost palpable.

Every writer wants nothing more than to be read. And yet I was disinterested in a staggering majority of those books. Most didn’t merit a single glance. At best, my eyes lingered on the spine in idle yet brief deliberation. A rare few were pulled down, and fewer yet ended up coming home with me.

And if that’s how I felt about these writers who’d achieved much more than I, what hope did I have? Me, with my silly newsletter?

This is my crisis. Not the prospect of getting older, or the looming shape of my own mortality, or the fact that I still haven’t been to Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. But how I spend the time I have. What I choose to write about. And, of course, the big one—does any of this really matter?

This is something I’ve been circling for a while.

Like it or not, we writers are slaves of the attention economy, where there are no shortages of competitors and it remains a zero-sum game. A choice to read this newsletter or that book is a choice to not scroll Reddit or watch Netflix. The fact that I have so many readers is both a great privilege and responsibility. Uncle Ben said it best.³ It’s not something I take lightly, which is why I try to be thoughtful about what I write, and not just stuff your inboxes in the hope you remember who I am.

I don’t know what shook me more about that library trip—the thousands of authors I’ve never heard of and will never read, or the names I knew but elected to ignore anyway. If Stephen King doesn’t have a chance with someone who’s enjoyed much of his work, what hope have I?

All writing is a quest for immortality. A chance to spit in death’s face. If a book is a tombstone, a newsletter is the equivalent of scribbling on a bathroom stall: ‘Eric waz here.’

In the end, there’s a meaningless to it all that I can’t quite shake. Because even the longevity promised by a book is a false sort of immortality. You can read Hemingway but you can never truly know Hemingway. Not in the sense of knowing a living, breathing man.

But what other choice do we have? Squandering time is even more unthinkable. So I will continue to scrawl on bathroom stalls, and try to find meaning, and perhaps one day create something worthy of remembrance.

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Being that it’s Friday and a large contingent of you like to know what I get up to, and what numbers I put my chips on, here’s a slightly abridged list of 5 things I enjoyed this week. Otherwise known as the High 5.

Deadwood

This was the thing I was most excited about all week. And it’s increasingly looking like I will be delving deeply, one might even say greedily, into season 1. Hopefully I don’t unearth any sleeping Balrogs.

Here’s one thing I didn’t include in my in-depth piece on the show’s prologue: I watched it at least 6 times. Maybe more! Who’s counting? I didn’t mention it in the piece not out of embarrassment—please, we’re far past that—but because it didn’t fit, and sometimes you gotta cut stuff you otherwise like.

I’ve rewatched the entirety of the first episode once and am starting to go through it a bit slower. One thing that jumped out at me, which I think I’ll explore in a satellite piece, is Deadwood’s economy. Sounds boring, but I promise it’s not! For instance: we learn in episode one that gold is going for $20 an ounce. The hardware guys (Bullock and Star) rent their lot for $20 a day. Interesting coincidence that starts to establish some baselines, from which we can draw conclusions.

I spent a not inconsiderate amount of time pausing to look at the prices on background items. Which is why I know you can get Elk or Deer for 15 cents at the Grand Inn’s kitchen, or you can get touch a woman’s breasts twice at the Gem for the same price. Imagine the mental gymnastics involved in deciding to spend your last 15 cents feeling up a woman instead of getting something to eat.

Also: If you touch both breasts, does that count as one touch or two?

Carry-On

Would it kill you to smile a little, Jason? Netflix

This movie popped up on Netflix right around Christmas, I guess because it takes place on Christmas Eve and in some quarters that makes it a Christmas movie. It was weird watching it in late January and getting the full blast of the Christmas season again. Like—I just put all our decorations away. I’m not ready for this again already.

Carry-On stars Jason Bateman as a sinister, emotionless assassin-for-hire who orchestrates a plot to smuggle something through TSA. I’m a big Bateman fan but I gotta be honest—at least 50% of his charm is his humor, and he demonstrates none of that here. Even Marty Byrde got to cut it up every now and then.

All in all, a pretty good thriller.

Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work That Lasts

I bought this on Kindle eons ago and let it collect digital dust for literal years, and then decided last week to start reading it. Even though I’d just borrowed 6 books from the library.

I didn’t consciously start Perennial Seller because it directly addressed some of the thoughts I’ve been grappling with in my own work. I’m not that self-aware. But fortunately my subconscious is a lot smarter than the dumb monkey who usually grasps the controls. This book offers a roadmap to get me where I want to be.

Here’s a quote that shook me:

The more books we read, the clearer it becomes that the true function of a writer is to produce a masterpiece and that no other task is of any consequence. ~ Cyril Connolly.

Moneyball

You’re not gonna believe what I did after finishing Moneyball, the Michael Lewis book.

I watched the movie.

Yes, again! I believe I watched it 3 times last year and at this point am on pace mathematically to blow that out of the water.

I don’t have any grand revelations to share that I haven’t said before. Other than that this is a strange feel-good movie that I can’t quit and also don’t want to.

The Beastmaster

I started rewatching this 1980s classic for the first time since probably the 1980s. It doesn’t hold up super well, but I’m kinda liking it? I think that’s the nostalgia talking but whatever, I’m gonna lean into it. And probably write about it. Meaning takes many forms.

One thing occurred to me that I can’t stop thinking about: Dar, the aforementioned Beastmaster, is basically Conan + Luke Skywalker. Not only in the plot sense but even more so the aesthetics. I’m pretty sure that was the point.

If Conan and Luke Skywalker had a baby… Universal Pictures | 20th Century Fox | MGM

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Your turn!

• Die Hard: Christmas movie or no? (I say no personally.)

• Asking for a friend: What do you consider an unhealthy number of times spent rewatching the same movie?

• 1980s drip: Is a man more intimidating or less if he chooses to sword fight only wearing a leather loincloth?

• Seriously tho: If you touch both breasts, does that count as one touch or two? (Mom, feel free to sit this one out.)

1. The rule of two, which of course comes from Star Wars: Always two there are, no more no less… a master and an apprentice.

2. My origin story: I was born 9 months after Star Wars premiered in 1977, which naturally suggests my mom’s womb quickened on its own after she saw the film. I get it—these movies make me feel things too. I learned about all the gender parts in health class but they neglected to teach us how babies are really made.

3. Uncle Ben: With great power comes great responsibility. He was talking to Peter Parker, otherwise known as Spider-Man. Hopefully you know who that is.