(I started this post a few days before my dad went in to the hospital. It was intended to be a humorous look at my life and getting older. Now I don’t really know what it is, other than here it is.)
Depending on how long I have left to live, it might be too late to hit the actual middle.
What would I like for my mid-life crisis?
My hairline restored? Nah. A couple years ago I shaved my head bald for charity, and I think I actually look better bald than the way I look with my goofy-ass hair grown out. When I was twelve-ish my mom took me to a barber school for a haircut. The woman cutting my hair spent some time running her fingers this way and that in an attempt to figure out how to begin with the disaster that was me. She told me that I had seven different cowlicks going on. My hair was all kinds of fucked up and it’s been annoying for my entire life. Now as my hair line has receded, I think I’m down to four. Fuck hair. The less I have the better.
An expensive car? Nope. I don’t really give a flip about cars. Never have. If it doesn’t break down and gets me where I need to go then I’m happy. Of course, it’s easy to take that attitude when you don’t have the money to get one. Which I don’t. But even if I did, I couldn’t see myself in a douche-mobile.
A motorcycle? Now that’s a possibility. My first mode of motor-powered transportation when I was a teenager was a motorcycle. I didn’t even get a license to drive a car until I was in the Air Force, and I wrecked my first car within a month of getting it. I never had a major accident on a motorcycle and I looooove riding them… but, damn. Back then the only person I had to be concerned with was myself. Now I just don’t know if I can let go of the safety of a car and take on the risk of riding a motorcycle again. Especially around here with the huge amount of idiot drivers we have and the horrible condition of most of the roads. Maybe I should wait on that until my end-of-life crisis.
Video games? From the time of my first Atari 2600 back in the day, I’ve never really stopped playing video games, so it would be hard to turn them into a mid-life crisis. I suppose I could try collecting arcade cabinets. Hah! The only problem without that, apart from the cost, is that there aren’t that many arcade games that I remember fondly from my youth that I would also like taking up space in my house. I have a crapload of games, but all grouped together they would take up the same amount of space as a couple of cabinets. I like variety too much to settle on a couple of stand-up cabinets.
Drastic career change? Hmm. Quite often I find myself wondering if I made a mistake by allowing myself to fall into graphic design. After the Air Force, I did a lot of shit jobs. One of them was through a temp agency assembling baseplates for a company called Applied Magnetics. It’s the place I was heading to when I rolled my VW bug way back when. The work itself was monotonous and slow, so I started thinking of ways to increase the efficiency of the job. The in-house engineers were interested in my ideas and worked with me to turn them into reality. These baseplates were the core components for an emerging technology: optical disc drives. From what I can tell, the contracts were military, however one order came through an account called “Skywalker,” so it’s possible that they went someplace in the George Lucas empire.
With my improvements to the process, what used to take 15-25 minutes when I started the job only took 10-12 seconds by the time I was done, and we cut down the number of magnets that broke by at least 80%. The lead engineer asked me if I would be interested in working in their department (I’m getting the feeling that I’ve already told this story before – another sign of getting old). By that time I had been accepted into The Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design with my sights set on becoming an illustrator, so I politely declined. Based on what happened while trying to achieve my goals of becoming an illustrator (which I know I’ve talked about before), that was probably a mistake.
I’ve always enjoyed trying to increase efficiency, get things done faster and faster. No idea why, but I like it and I’m pretty good at it. However walking away from a paying job in this economy in the hopes that I can find something more inline with my heart’s desire just isn’t a doable thing, especially with other people depending on me and my income. Much like riding a motorcycle again, no matter how much I might want to I just can’t see doing it at this time.
Take up with a woman half my age? Don’t be stupid. I love Heather.
I guess it’ll sort itself out when the time comes.