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On writing again, thirty years later

I’m a fifty-four-year-old aspiring writer—old enough that it’s hard for me to write the words aspiring writer and not feel like an asshole. Ok, maybe less an asshole and more an imposter, but still, kind of an asshole. The muse has returned after a long hiatus, and I’m afraid I’ll scare her off, so let’s agree between the three of us to call it a hobby, and we’ll all feel better. Admittedly, hobbies are supposed to be light, easy, and relaxing. Whatever we call this escapade, it’s none of those.

The truth is, it’s been all-consuming. I write on plane flights, at the kitchen table after Erin goes to bed, and instead of watching Denver Nuggets’ games (forgive me, Jokic!). When I’m alone in the evening, I make toast for dinner so I can write rather than lose fifteen minutes picking up a burrito from Chipotle. While driving in the mountains, I turn off the music to ponder plotlines and record voice memos to myself—side note, driving on highways unlocks something wonderfully creative in the brain (more on this in a later post).

At this point, it’s become more of an unhealthy obsession than a hobby, but I’m making it sound like this is a bad thing. It isn’t.

Throughout elementary, middle, and high school, I wanted to be a writer. I wrote poems and newspaper articles and opinion pieces. In college, I majored in English with a focus on creative writing. I wrote short stories and one-act plays. The summer of 1992, my junior year, I stared at a blank page for three months—actually, the blinking cursor on the five-inch monochrome screen of my beloved beige cube, the Macintosh SE with a 40 MB built-in hard drive—you read that right, kids. MB, not GB. That entire computer could hold about forty seconds of video!

Back to the point, the goal was to determine if I could be a writer. Short answer—I couldn’t.

Watching that blank screen day after day was psychological torture. I would have confessed the location of Osama bin Laden’s hideout to make it stop. So, it was with palpable relief that I started on the prerequisite courses for medical school. I became a doctor, then a radiologist, then a neuroradiologist. I married a brilliant and beautiful woman, whom I first met when we were twelve. We moved back home to Denver and had two amazing boys. I ran a telemedicine business for a decade—what I’m trying to say is, a lot of time passed. And other than business emails and a handful of poems, I hardly wrote.

Now, more than thirty years later, and seemingly from nowhere, the feeling is back. Like Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams in The Notebook—my first love has returned. Ha. That’s terrible. But it is the strangest thing. I just woke up one day and thought, I’m going to try to write a novel today. And then I did.

This time, the joy is still there, but mercifully, the pain has vanished. Maybe the pressure is off. Maybe I have more life experience to draw on. Maybe I don’t care what anyone thinks anymore. All I know is, I’m not asking too many questions.

I don’t want to lose her. This fleeting little voice in my head. Muse, Calliope, spirit, whatever she is—I know she may not linger, but I’m grateful she’s back, and I promise to do whatever it takes to keep her around. We can get cappuccinos at La Belle Rosette on University Boulevard on a rainy day, listen to a Leonard Cohen song with one earbud each, and browse the poetry section of that used bookshop next to the old Dairy Queen. And when we’re there, I’ll whisper very softly into her ear, so only the three of us can hear.

Welcome home. I’m so glad you’re back!