#The last lion visions of glory first edition upside down full#
Really, I believe in my heart I’m onto something and all the voices inside my head are in full agreement with me (I love those guys). They’ve heard me say that about once a week since 1992. I tell them I’m really close to something good happening and I’m convinced it could happen any day now. My real life buddies are always after me to golf more and to splurge on a golf trip with them to Myrtle Beach. I swear.īut telling people that just sounds like more evidence that I’m spending too much time in Fantasyland with my make-believe friends. I’m getting gangbuster feedback from top publishers and agents on my novel and on another couple of non-fiction projects - and these are real people with real jobs. My “work” time is spent doing strange things that are disconcerting to grown ups, but I hope will one day grow into something productive. I guess I’m in some kind of occupational puberty. I’ve only had three real jobs in my entire adult life and one of them’s been at the Pizza Hut. I can’t apply for unemployment because I’ve never been employed. I thought about it and said I didn’t really know. “They asked me what you’ve been doing the last few years. Just last week, my Mom had some friends over. I tell her I won’t know for six months.ĭuring some recent e-mail banter, a buddy of mine responded to one of my barbs by sniping, “Why don’t you just go back to pretending you have a job?” Even when I’m doing what I consider work, it’s really more make-believe work that I hope will one day lead to real work and, hallelujah, a really elusive paycheck.
It was the collective jaws of my wife, my mother, my in-laws, my extended family, my banker, the IRS, all my friends and the wobbly multitudes who’ve ever shared more than one beer with me simultaneously crashing to the ground. you were confused by a jarring sound that startled all the neighborhood dogs into howling, it wasn’t a sonic boom. She burst into tears and wailed, “Daddy, you always have to work!” Then our current 4 year old turned my world upside down after I told her I wouldn’t be there at the pool to toss her up in the air because I had to work. I knew then that was one poignant lament I’d never need to utter.
Nope, it’s always, “Wish I’d have spent more time with the kids.” No one’s ever said on their death bed that they wished they’d have put in more hours down at the tire store or spent more time keeping the hedge trimmed. My first thought was, man, that’s not going to look good on the loan applications. Then, in a matter-of-fact voice, my beloved Josie drove a stake through my self-image as a freelance writer who tried to appear professional. They went right around in a little circle. “What’s your daddy do? Mine helps sick people,” she said with estimable pride. It’s a conversation all children get around to and I was standing right there when the redheaded neighbor girl brought it up. Nearby, I was cluttering the counter top with discarded bread crusts that would have rendered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches inedible to the quartet of 5 year olds. She and her little trio of chums were busily cluttering the kitchen table with colorful scraps of construction paper.
I’ve based much of my identity on a sunny summer afternoon from 2006 when our oldest daughter, then 5, presented me with a Hallmark moment I’ll never forget. Conflicting reports from my observant daughters mean I’m either the hardest working man in America or the laziest.
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