Forty

My birthday is on Friday, and I'm turning forty. Birthdays tend to be a time to reflect on a life and see where you stand after another year, but forty is a bigger milestone. It's basically a centerpoint since your average lifespan on this rock is around eighty years. Hence, I've been really thinking lately about what I wanted to do with my life and whether I've actually done that or not.

The biggest thing in my life has been my family, and to that end, I've been very successful. Been happily married for sixteen years, and my children are doing very well. I know what it takes to be married and how to stay that way. I know that it takes compromise and the desire to remain in a relationship in order to succeed, and I have been able to see where people have failed in that regard. I've always been a bit of a loner, but being in a solid relationship for what amounts to almost eighteen years (when you count the dating aspect of our relationship), I have a decent handle on what makes one work.

Moving past the relationship, however, I'm a failure. I have been in a job for the last eight years, and I've been successful in it because I'm exceptionally smart. That's about it. I probably the only one in my position without a college degree because I can just do what I need to, and I do it better than anyone else. Why don't I have a college degree? Because this isn't what I wanted to do, and it still isn't. I'm in the job I have to have in order to survive.

With everything else I do, when I run down the laundry list of what I've done, it sounds very impressive. I've written three full musicals and one was staged. I've had a play performed. I've published four books, and I've written dozens if not hundreds of songs. I can play lots of instruments, though my preference always falls to piano, and I can even play and sing at the same time. I've written a lot of screenplays, and I even produced and directed a couple of them. I've written the soundtracks for not only my movies, but also two others. I've recorded a ton of music which I arranged and performed. But none of that actually means anything since none of it is a living.

So I have written four books, and am wrapping up a fifth, which is the fourth in a series I'm writing. I've self-published all of them because no publisher is interested. People who have read them are enthusiastic, but they don't sell because it is not well known. This is what I want to do, and the world just doesn't want me to do it.

The musicals are all old, and I've never done anything further in that area because no one wants to hear any of it. They want stuff they know from people they've heard of. Unknowns get no attention.

Screenplays are fun, but again, unless you're established, no one cares.

I perform as a musician regularly in public at my church, and it's fun enough. Of course, that doesn't pay so there is no living there. Just to have some measure of success, I've written a lot of worship related songs, but my worship leader is not interested in them either. I can't even give away my work.

So I've a rousing success in the personal department. But I'm an absolute and unequivocal failure professionally. My epitaph will be "He never stopped trying." Trying is all I have though.

People pay attention to kids who appear to be very talented, and they believe that with so much talent, that kid will certainly do well. Well, here is a guy on the far side of that equation bursting at the seams with a ridiculous amount of talent, and you know what? No one cares. It doesn't matter one lick how much talent you have. I don't even have to give some random made-up example about someone with a lot of talent failing because I am that person. Everyone I meet remarks how talented I am, but it doesn't mean anything. If anything, being that talented alienates me from everyone else because no one has any idea how to relate to me. Being that talented has hurt me more than it has helped because there are very few people out there like me. When one has no experience with someone who has such an overarching talent range, they treat you just like everyone else.

You know what? I'm not everyone else. I never have been. It sounds stupid to say I'm special, but that's what it boils down to. Everyone has their specialties, and some people actually get to use them. I get to use what those in charge designate as useful and they waste the rest.

I want to be done, but that would be succumbing to failure. I don't want to be a failure. I don't.

But I am.