Just Tango On

I am a fan of Tim Ferris and his blog/book/business The Four-Hour Workweek. Get rid of the distractions in your life! Cut unnecessary e-mail! Don’t answer calls that are too stupid! Outsource your life! Automate your business and your personal life! Become a weightlifter, a Chinese TV star, a World Champion Kick Boxer! The possibilities were endless. The romance of the well-lived alternative to the nine-to-five grind was right at my fingertips, just waiting for my large brain and a high-speed Internet connection. I saw it all within reach. I had been putting my finances online for several years.

I was ready to start doing nothing. I have been a full-time father, a part-time graduate student, a successful investor, and an aspiring writer the last thirteen years. I was in the hotel business with my dad for 15 years before that, and had to shut the business down because of too much debt and not enough customers. Then my dad passed away and I didn’t have to be in his business anymore.

I was a blocked, depressed, chunky little writer wannabe. I finally said to myself: “That’s it, no more hitting your head against the wall. You’ll never write and you are wasting your time. Let it go.”

The late nineties was a great time for the stock market and I was raking it in from the investments I made with my inheritance. My real estate was in the toilet. My wife was sick. My children were little. It was hard to figure out what to do. I liked school and I liked the stock market and my family needed me. I got out of business and became a private investor.

I didn’t go back into business and I was embarrassed. People would see me sitting around coffee shops or going to the gym in the middle of the day. They thought I was far richer than I actually was and I felt unproductive and lost. They would silently chuckle or secretly bristle with envy as they imagined my life of leisure and luxury. They had no idea.

Sure, friends felt a little sorry for me because of my dad’s difficult illness and my wife’s poor health. After a while, though, they got tired of my dark moods and my constant whining. I took suffering, puffed it up with self-pity, and put a scoop of despair on top. Needless to say, I wasn’t the life of the party, and I wasn’t invited to many.

I would try to write and I would work on my graduate studies. I wore black and acquired an air of mystery. Without an easily identifiable job, my children’s friends started to speculate. I must be a CIA assassin or a member of the Jewish Mafia. I intimidated people with my dark powers. Actually, I was just bummed out.

Here I am years later, a little chunkier and a little greyer. My children are grown and out-of-town. I am divorced. I have too little to do and too much time. It is discouraging watching the stock market slide. The support payments for my ex-wife and funding my children’s dependency are draining my accounts.

As I mentioned, there is also the writer’s block. My coach, Bradley Foster, an excellent motivator with a sympathetic ear, had tried everything possible. He asked me to describe what the block felt like. It felt like a large, square, opaque, and heavy concrete block was encasing my head. I felt it had been troweled into a cube. I could picture what it looked liked from the outside and even imagined a Mason with a trowel finishing it off.

Hitting my head against the wall didn’t break the block.

I am turning 50 in December. I don’t like birthdays. It has nothing to do with the advance of age. It has to do, in part, with my father’s attitude when I was young. He would give me my present weeks in advance, tell me its price, and brag to his friends and siblings how spoiled I was. After a while, I didn’t feel like I deserved a birthday present. December was a dark month. Clouds rolled in and the mercury dropped. The Christmas season consumed everyone and my birthday was an afterthought. When I was married, my wife often was too busy or too sick to observe my birthday. I bought my own cake and candles so my children could have ice cream and cake on my birthday.

It got to the point where I would Scrooge on my birthday and told everyone not to give me presents for Christmas. I didn’t deserve them. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want my birthday anymore. I didn’t want to be spoiled.

I was going to take my toys and keep them to myself.

Now my 50th looms. I don’t want any parties. I don’t want cake and I don’t like ice cream. I don’t even want to be in the same hemisphere.

I want to run away from home.