Be careful what you wish for

I've wanted to be a full-time writer as long as I can remember.

Okay, that's an exaggeration. For most of my childhood, I wanted to be Walt Disney. Or at least an animator, which is what I thought Walt did. You know, sit around and draw cartoons of Mickey Mouse all day. It turns out he didn't, but that's another story.

For a brief period in my early teens, after devouring all of the James Herriott books, I wanted to be a veterinarian. Not in the mud-slogged farmyards of Yorkshire, necessarily. But somewhere.

Then, in tenth grade, I was introduced to computer programming, and I loved it so much I decided I was going to do that for the rest of my life.

Except that I didn't. But what I did end up choosing as a career--product engineering in the semiconductor industry--was initially inspired by those after-school hours spent coding on an old DEC in my math teacher's office (pretty high-tech in those days).

The muse calls

But all that time, I had one other passion. Writing. Not enough to write for the school paper, of course. That seemed like hard work--and a little dull.

No, I loved writing fiction. From high school on, I always had a short story or a novel or a screenplay I was working on.

By that time, I'd moved on from James Herriott to J.R.R. Tolkien so the bulk of my writing was in the fantasy genre. Elves. Dwarves. Swordplay. My first novel was about an escaped slave named Coran (shades of Conan the Barbarian), and was titled Requiem. Because pretty much everyone died by the end.

I never finished it. And that's because I didn't commit to working on it every day. I only wrote when I felt like it. When I felt "inspired."

But it sparked something inside me that kept me writing all through my twenties and thirties. After fantasy novels, I moved on to picture books when my daughters were little, then middle-grade novels when they entered those angst-torn years and Harry Potter was dominating bestseller lists.

I didn't hate engineering. Parts of it were really challenging and enjoyable. But as the years went on, I became more and more disillusioned and even bored with my career choice. And my longing to leave my career and write full time became stronger and stronger.

Unfortunately, my wife Tammy never made enough money to support us, and we had two girls to put through dance class and theater and eventually college. I felt trapped. So I kept wishing and hoping and dreaming that I would eventually be able to quit my job and write full-time.

A golden opportunity

I finally got that chance in 2016, when I was laid off from my job in Colorado Springs at the ripe old age of 53. I still wasn't making enough money from writing to live on, but I had nine plays with Pioneer Drama Service so that at least brought in something.

It took me ten months to find a job, and in that time, I managed to finish writing six plays and published four of them. I had a blast. But it was time to get back to engineering.

The new job took me to Phoenix, where my wife and I had briefly lived early in our marriage, so it was a happy return. And the job was good--and high-paying. I kept writing, but I figured I would keep the job until I was 66, when I would finally have enough money to allow me to retire from engineering for good.

Then January 17 happened. I showed up a little late for work that morning, and as soon as I sat at my desk, my boss came over to ask if I had a few minutes to talk. He ushered me into the human resource representative's office, and I was promptly informed that I was being laid off. Or, in the terminology of the company, my "position had been eliminated."

I'd been fired or laid off three times before in my career, and each one of those times it was painful. Depressing. Humiliating.

Not this time. I was now 60 years old and I had 24 plays with three different publishers. All I could think about, as the HR rep rambled on about the severance package, was that this was it. This was the chance I'd been hoping for.

I had quite a bit more money saved up than the last time I was unemployed, I was too old to get an engineering job, and now I would be forced to prove to myself, to my wife, to the world that I could support myself as a playwright.

A new beginning

That was six months ago today. And I couldn't be happier. I love working from home. I love being in control of my time. I love not having a boss to answer to or meetings to attend. But most of all, I love creating stories.

How productive have I been? Well, I revised a play I first wrote eleven years ago and got it accepted for publication. I put the finishing touches on another play after it received its world premiere in March and got that one accepted for publication. I wrote a short play--my first in nine years--on commission, and it's now slated for in-class use starting this fall. I gave my publisher approval to adapt one of my plays into a musical. I wrote two full-length plays. And I published one, with another one due out any day now.

Oh, sure. I'm still applying for engineering jobs, just in case a good offer pops up. I even got an on-site interview from one. But the result of that was pretty much what I expected. Companies just aren't interested in hiring 60-year-old engineers.

So I finally got what I wished for. I'm a full-time writer. And I'll be a full-time writer for the rest of my life.

People tell you to be careful what you wish for, and I get that. Sometimes things don't work out the way you expect.

But I've found that the opposite is just as true. Be bold with what you wish for. Because sometimes things work out even better.