A Year Ago I was a Baby & Now I'm an Old Man
Thinking about life before and after I published my first book
LB and I were looking at old pictures of Zoë from a year ago in my Google Photos account (typical mourning behavior) when I stumbled on pics of my first readings for COUNTERFACTUAL LOVE STORIES & OTHER EXPERIMENTS, my conceptual short story collection about mixed-race identity in the Midwest. And then it kinda hit me: so much has happened in the past year that I didn’t even realize how different my life was a year ago and yet, as the cliché goes, how little my life has changed too. I have a feeling many of you know what I mean and if you don’t, you will soon enough when your book comes out.
Some part of me thought that having a book out in the world would change my life radically. And I’m sorry to say it just doesn’t. At least not for me!
I should warn you in advance that I’m the kinda person who fucking adores playing the “Where was I living three years ago on this very day? Ten years ago? Fourteen?” game. And it’s Ann Arbor, Chicago, & Buenos Aires btw. So anyway, returning to my typical mourning behavior above, I was looking at all these photos of me giving readings from CLS&OE and it hit me that a year ago I really thought my life was going to change after my first book came out. I really did. And I’m kinda surprised I was that naïve.
This just goes to show that even when you’ve weaned yourself off of the Big-5 literary rockstar dream, some part of it still lives inside you forever because being a writer is such a romantic idea at heart: when you books are out there in the world, you will be known for your stories. You will be hated for your language. You will be remembered/loved for your characters. For giving a voice to the most ineffable parts of the human experience. Some part of me thought that having a book out in the world would change my life radically. And I’m sorry to say it just doesn’t. At least not for me!
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