What I'm going to do when I grow up

My friend John Newman is starting to get irritated with me again. He's one of the small handful of folks who know my life story and the reasons I started the Montag blog. (Do you know this is the first time I realized that rhymes? But I digress.) Every couple of months he gets tired of my e-whining and send me a note that says, in effect, "Either live with the status quo or get on with the next phase of your life, or both. But quit whining."

Once upon a time I took a wild chance, quit my job and launched a new enterprise. But after a month I started second-guessing myself, and I had trouble going out in the morning to do my enterprising thing. That's when I blundered into a book called "Do It! Let's Get Off Our Buts" by Peter McWilliams. (Yes, medicinal marijuana buffs, that Peter McWilliams.) The book inspired me to get off my buts and get off my butt. For the next five months I had the greatest adventure of my life with that enterprise. It did not succeed. But it did! I had reinvented myself in the public's eyes, and while that career move didn't work, it opened doors to another career move that made me more successful than I have ever been. Whenever I reach a crossroads since then, I haul out McWilliams' marvelous book.

Obviously I'm at a crossroads or I wouldn't be writing about this. Actually, and this is why John yelled at me again, I've been at a crossroads for more than a year. I have three, four or five ideas for great adventures, but I also have the best job I've ever had - one that is financially and psychologically rewarding but which also carries corporate shackles that allow me to fly but not as high as I'd like. The job and the adventures are mutually exclusive - a condition which, by the way, is nearly identical to that which led me to my successful-but-not-successful adventure once upon a time.

"In one sense you and I are alike," John wrote me last night. "We have a limited amount of time to make a difference - we have more days behind us than ahead of us - so what do we do? I will leave you to answer that question for both of us."

What I'm going to do when I grow up: I'm going to have some adventures. Tonight, when I return home from my comfortable corporate job, I'm going to stop "just thinking" about these adventures and commit them to paper. If I have time tonight after I write them down, I will get started on one or more of them. Otherwise I'll get started first thing in the morning. The corporate job will keep me from going as fast as I can, but it will pay the bills in the meantime.

Why am I writing this here? So that if months continue to slip by and there's no sign of change, my friends and readers with memories will ask, "Hey, B.W. or whatever your name is, how's it coming with those adventures?" The fear of having to say, "Oh, I haven't done much about my dreams" will be a motivation for me.

And this particular Montag blog entry will either be an exciting turning point or an embarrassment on my way to T.S. Eliot's famous life of "quiet desperation." Either way, thanks for stopping by while I'm on the ground floor. It's up to me to determine which way the elevator goes from here. God help me!