A Cruel World for the Creative

The world can be a warm, inviting place full of possibilities and open doors…. If you’ve got the right type of mind. If you’re science-oriented, a number-cruncher, and grow up with determination, good study habits and money, you’ve got it made. You can go to college, get a masters’ degree, walk right into a job with a cushy salary and benefits and have a nice, safe career and life. I’m not saying it’s easy. But I bet it sure is nice knowing there are jobs out there that match your exact passion and set of skills.

But what about the rest of us? What about the creative? The writers? The artists? The actors? The ones who will fall asleep during Math class but will tell you stories that will make the characters come to life and leave you riveted right up until the end? For the rest of us, the world is a cruel place. Sure, the world needs storytellers, and people will always love their books, magazines, movies and artwork. But we can’t cure cancer. We can’t heal, not with medicine. We can’t do your accounting or win a case for you in court. We may have skills, but to the tangible world, our skills are seen as having less value… and sometimes, so are we.

To demonstrate why my 22-year-old brother is made of awesome, here is an example of a text message conversation we had the other day, from beginning to end:

Him: Who would win in a fight between Danny Tanner and Steve Urkel?

Me: Danny Tanner, for sure. But Urkel probably has a bigger dick. That’s something.

Him: But what if Urkel turned into Stefan? I bet Uncle Jesse would have to jump in then.

Me: Very true. In that case, Stefan would win for sure.

Him: Not to mention Danny Tanner just needs his ass kicked. Both Michelles turned out like shit.

Me: And DJ is all crazy Christian now. And Stephanie had a meth problem.

Him: Steph is a meth head?

Me: Not anymore. She overcame her addiction, but it ruined her first marriage… to a cop.

Him: Damn. And they thought Kimmy Gibbler was messed up.

Me: Indeed.

My brother has three passions in life: baseball, hunting and fishing. Without sounding like an overly proud sister, he’s damn good at all three of them. He had professional scouts eyeing him his first year of college before he got a bad injury and had to have surgery. He’s a monster on the baseball field. Obviously, it’s a long shot trying to go pro, but the kid had (has?) a legitimate chance.

But life got in the way. There were injuries. There was the fact that he didn’t exactly take prime classes in school because, like me, he didn’t care. He and I both love to learn and we’re both smart. But we hate the organized, “you must take this b.s. class” system that is college. We like to learn on our own terms. The education system is not our friend.

The other day, he called me. I’d never heard him sound so disappointed. It’s been a rough fall for him. His girlfriend of six years broke up with him (his high school sweetheart). He transferred schools, leaving a lot of his friends behind. And now, it looks like some of his classes didn’t transfer and he won’t be able to play baseball this spring. It was the one thing he felt he still had to look forward to. Our parents are wonderful people, but they’re cut from a different cloth. They don’t understand. So he called me.

“I have no idea where to go from here,” he said simply.

It was a line I’d said approximately five million times in my life and still say about once a month. It was hard for me to be encouraging since I can relate. Writing is the only thing I know how to do. I have very limited skills other than that. I have outside sales experience, but I loathed that part of sales. I have bartending and waitressing experience, but I’d rather get a pap smear with a rake than do that again. I can scoop ice cream and make coffee. Needless to say, I’m trying to make a go of the writing thing.

His loss of direction gave me an opportunity to plant a thought in his mind. It was something I never knew he could do until his senior year of high school. He was selected to participate in the “Mr. West Valley” pageant, a fundraising effort our high school puts on every year to raise money for the Children’s Miracle Network. The popular guys make fools of themselves with “talent” competitions and, at the end of the program, they read speeches they’ve written about their heroes. My brother’s speech blew me away. I had no idea the kid could write like that.

I’m not one who thinks everyone should follow in my path. After all, I’m batshit crazy. I have no idea what I’m doing. All I know is I want to make a living as a writer and I’ve got some things I’m interested in writing about, some story ideas in my head, and a half-finished NaNoWriMo from last year on my laptop. But this kid could really pull it off. I suggested he do what I wish every single day that I had done in college: major in creative writing. Give this writing thing a try.

The market for outdoors writing is pretty big Patrick McManus, one of my family’s favorite outdoors writers, lives right here in Spokane and has made a living combining hunting, fishing and humor. My brother is an expert on all of those things. He could write about them for years. He could write about baseball. He’d have to get a pen name for some of the stories he has lest he be sued by any former baseball greats he’s hung out with, but the kid can tell stories. Many of his texts have been featured on textsfromlastnight.com, the holy grail of wit.

“There’s no money in writing,” he said right away, and I laughed, because I spent my whole life hearing the same thing. But there has to be, or no one would do it, right? There’s a lot more to it than “do what you love, and the money will come.” There’s a lot of writing for free involved, a lot of patience, and a lot of charging groceries and praying your checks don’t clear before your meager payments come in. But it has to pay off eventually for those of us who are truly passionate and stick with it. There are those of us who refuse to fail, and I firmly believe money is one of our ultimate rewards.

I don’t know if his story will have a happy ending. I don’t know if mine will, either. If the creative among us were rewarded the way more traditional thinkers were, we’d be set for life. But we are not all cut from the same cloth, and some of us have to choose a different path and find our own way to happiness. This year has been full of disappointment for me, but it has also been full of signs…. signs that I’m on the right path, signs I’m doing what I’m meant to do, and signs that, one day, I’ll finally have the financial stability I crave and my stories in magazines and on bookshelves. And I think eventually my brother will find his way there, too.