And for My Next Trick: 10,000 Followers Will Fly Out My Ass

Maybe it’s time I join the circus.

At this point, I’m damn good at juggling. Even as I type, I have about seven things floating above my head that I’m going to need to catch and toss again in a few seconds. I’ll use my feet if I must. It’s fine. I’ve done it before. I’ll be a clown in the circus, juggling my day job, my writing career, my family, my friends, my finances, my marketing, my diet, a facemask, and whatever else the universe decides to throw into the mix. Maybe it will just tell me to dance as I juggle. Move to the beat, swallow a sword, and tie your hands behind your back.

It’s fine.

Everything is fine.

I’ve written before about how adulting can be a lot. But I think the burden gets a little heavier when the thing you want most is about two inches beyond the reach of your fingertips. And within the space of two inches is about 10,000 sets of eyes.

“So how long have you been writing?” The agent asked me as I relaxed a little in my seat. I had just pitched my speculative fiction novel, Aftershock, over a Zoom meeting, and he asked me to email him the entire manuscript.

Talk about thunderstruck.

We still had 4 minutes left, and my tongue couldn’t pluck a single coherent sentence from my brain. Perhaps he could tell I was internally sputtering like an engine starved for gas, so he took the lead, and we both accepted our fate would be four minutes of small talk.

“I’ve been writing my whole life,” I told him. “I have a blog, #adulting. Light-hearted humor and relatable stories.”

The agent lit up. “What’s the URL?” He asked.

I gave it to him and explained the premise.

“How many followers do you have?”

I stumbled. I spent hours last night reciting a pitch for Aftershock. I wasn’t anywhere close to pitching a #adulting project.

“Only a handful,” I admitted. Twenty-five, to be exact. Whoopie. (Also, love you guys.)

“I just spoke to an editor yesterday about wanting to do a project similar to this,” the agent enlightened.

I think my left lung sprang a leak. It blew around my ribcage like a flying balloon, and for once in my life, I did not have words.

“I love the idea. But for something like that to work, you’d need about 10,000 followers. Then we could talk.”

Oh, is that all? Dude, I don’t even have enough friends for each finger on my hand!

I can’t remember what I said next, but I must have said something, and I hope to sweet baby Jesus it wasn’t dumb.

“I’ve seen it done in a month,” he continued. “If you really go for it and you do it right, you can get 10,000 followers in a month.”

Who, me?

I am a fumbling fool trying to figure out what I am supposed to be doing with my life, and here I am, literally 9,975 people away from getting something I’ve wanted since the 4^th grade.

Let me just place this red nose on my face and hop on a unicycle as I juggle.

And for my next trick? 10,000 followers will fly out my ass!

I’m about to start cranking some serious content, ya’ll. Because I want this more than anything in the world. Drop me a like and a follow. Share with your friends. Let’s turn this circus act into a dream and pull a book deal out of my hat.

Follow me on Facebook

Follow me on Instagram

Follow me on WordPress

Let’s do this.

The Universe I Create

Between the hemispheres of my brain, within the confines of my skull, a million words are flying. They’re soaring across an intricate web of thought. They build a world, letter by letter, a place only I can see when I close my eyes.

I am sane.

I am an adult.

I know it is all in my head.

But it’s real to me.

In my head, there’s a place only I can hide. In my brain, there’s a world I constructed from dust. In my mind lives a man with a villain to fight. It is all fantasy that only I can experience, places only I can know, people only I can love.

It’s just me and the universe I create with letters and words and precise punctuation that alters meaning and shatters perception.

Just me.

Until the day I pick up a pen, scrape it across paper. Until that moment I tenderly tap keys. Until the world I’ve built writhes and churns and the words overflow. They cascade from my ears and trickle to my palms. I hold them, just for a second, just until they start to drip from the spaces between my fingers. Then I release them, uncup my hands and splash them into the world.

I write them. I write them all, so that this place might become real…so that these people might be loved. They aren’t just characters, concrete and simple. They carry a message and tell a story and mean something more than just what they are. They’re a product of my passion and the fruit of my talent and the result of emotion firing and misfiring in my cortex.

“Stop playing pretend and be an adult.”

These characters are apart of me, imprints behind my eyes. I will be 108 before I put down a pen and give up my passion.

“Characters aren’t real. Don’t waste your time developing them.”

They’re real to me, and they carry a message of love and resilience and acceptance and hope that so many of us in this world need. Character development is vital to the success of a story. They don’t deserve to be blurry.

“You’ll never get published, save yourself the time and disappointment.”

57 rejections. 4 manuscript requests. Two writer’s conferences. Three agent cards, two almost-had-its, a new writer’s laptop, a custom logo, a website, and another four cold queries. Not a single instant have I felt like I’ve wasted even a nanosecond of my time. I look wonderful failure in the face and analyze how I can use that to get better. If that isn’t #adulting, I am not sure what is. Failure is not disappointment. Failure is glorious opportunity.

Someday, the world will read these words and feel these emotions and meet these characters. They will live forever, permanently stamped on paper to outlive my body and change the world long after I’m gone.

And I will smile every step of the way, because I’m killing it.

We’re killing it.

#adulting

“Circle time!” My kindergarten teacher’s unusually high, lispy voice echoed in my small ears as I ducked under the playhouse door and cast aside my apron.

I played the mom on Tuesdays.

I took my spot in what I now remember as an oval as opposed to a circle. The carpet was a strange mix of navy, orange, and copper colors. They were all mixed together in some sort of awful concoction. I sat “Indian style” (totally politically correct…)  and impatiently rocked side to side awaiting directions.

“Let’s talk about what we want to be when we grow up!” The teacher sang as she sat in her worn rocking chair, brushing a golden curl out of her brown eyes.

Oooooo!

                                  “Fireman.”

“Policeman.”

“Singer.”

“Artist.”

“Accountant.”  (Who the heck was that kid?)

“Teacher.”

“Author”.

“Astronaut.”

“President.”

I would love to conduct a long-term study determining what percentage of those kiddos actually grew up to be what they said they would be in Kindergarten.

I was one of the kids who sang out “teacherrrrrr!” I don’t know now if I meant it, or if I was brownnosing (quite possibly the latter… I was notorious for that later in life).

But I said it.

And it did happen.

At least for a little while.

My teacher collected responses from all the children and continued to sing an awful song about growing up and accomplishing your wildest dreams.

I threw up my pizza all over the carpet a few moments later.

Let’s step back.

I’m a millennial.

And I’d place bets that you are, too.

Or perhaps you are the parent of one. Which is not easy. Kudos to you for not killing your kid and doing the best you could.

The life of a millennial, the whole growing up thing, seems to be different than the way our parents or grandparents grew up. But really, the life of our parents and grandparents was different than their parents and grandparents. This modern phenomenon of millennials and how they stereotypically think and act is fascinating to me, and even more so because I am a member of this group, chronologically speaking.

As I exited my teens and started the journey through my 20’s, I found myself and many others around my age using the term “adulting” as we completed major life changes or experienced certain successes.

Suddenly, the word “adult” became a verb.

And as it became a verb, it became a goal that seems to be difficult to successfully achieve.  Every millennial’s end-goal is to become the successful adult.

Cool. I’ve got a direction.

The only trouble is…. How do I even go in the right direction??

I think everyone journeys into adulthood differently. And sometimes there are instances of pure “adulting” without being described as an actual adult.

I mentioned adulting to an old childhood friend, and how fascinating it is to see each other again as completely different people. He responded, “Well. The paychecks certainly don’t say I am an adult.”

Interesting.

Is bringing home a fat paycheck what the expectation of adulting has become?

Perhaps. For some.

I want to shed some light on this thing called life and #adulting.

Let’s get real for a sec.

I’m nothing special. But I’m me.

And you’re you. Maybe you’ve got like, 20 followers on Instagram including your grandmother. But you’re you, and we’re real. And there’s no one else like us. Maybe you’re a gen x-er who is unusually hip, or a member of Gen Z who actually sets down your smart phone, but my guess is you’re a millennial struggling to find your spot and watching reality

spin

around you

like a

hurricane.

Totally been there.

You’re not alone.

Adulting is hard, the world is crazy, and there are so many real moments that pierce your lungs like ice and take your breath away.  If you look back a moment, how many times would you stop and say, “Whoa, is this actually happening to me?”

And how many of those instances would deserve a “#adulting” caption on Twitter?

We don’t know what we’re doing.

And it’s all good.