What's Your Zesty Passion for Life? - Mickey Hadick the Writer

On the evening of the most recent Picayune, exactly two weeks ago, I was in my basement exercising and threw out my back. It was a pulled muscle and I felt the fibers tear as the pain exploded and sent me to my knees.

Luckily, I was near one of the support posts holding up the beam, and I was eventually able to pull myself up. That took about five minutes. I gingerly made my way to the stairs and figured out how to ascend, using a combination of pressing against the wall, pulling on the railing, and keeping my posture stick-up-my-ass straight.

When I emerged on the main floor, exhausted from using weird muscles to move without moving my back, I called to my wife who assisted with pain medicine and found our cane.

I got the cane 15 years ago when I tore a calf muscle (exercising) and used it again when I tore my right meniscus (exercising). The dumbest part of this incident was doing the exact same move, a kettlebell swing, that I did when I pulled the exact same muscle 18 months ago.

I think I’m at the age when I can quit exercising and take up smoking without significantly shortening my life expectancy.

But I have something to live for

Around the time these injuries started, I considered quitting my job, thinking I could have more time to write if I wasn’t showing up nine-to-five at an office. At that point, I was almost thirty years into writing novels, screenplays and short stories with no significant publishing success. I felt a failure as a writer.

I’d considered being an independent consultant for years. I had a variety of technical skills with programming, design, project management and, most of all, as a webmaster. That thought of quitting my job returned then, as if it were my steady paycheck holding me back from success as a writer.

The frustration with my writing led me to a poet who made his living as a creative consultant, helping people with their “writing careers.” In one of our discussions, I told him my thoughts about going out on my own. He quickly cautioned me about the challenges of self-employment, how finding clients takes more time than anyone expects, and getting them to pay their invoices take twice as much as that, and how it can be frustrating at every turn.

He asked about my writing.

I told him about my novel in progress, and the two TV pilots I was working on. For ten solid minutes I happily explained the stories, the state of the manuscripts, and my intentions for publication and finding an agent. When I took a breath, he asked, “Do you hear yourself?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“The tone in your voice was jubilant as you talked about those stories. But when you talked about work, or starting a computer business, your voice was flat. There was no emotion.”

“Oh. I certainly enjoy writing.”

His advice was to find as easy of a job as I could, so that I didn’t have to worry about getting paid, and to work on my writing as much as possible. The best path forward was to chase that joy and jubilation I find in storytelling.

The Office is your guide

If you’ve ever seen the show The Office, it’s Stanley, Phyllis, and Kevin who have it figured out. They know they’ve risen as far as they ever will in Dunder-Mifflin, and they seek joy in word search puzzles, knitting, and playing in a band (Scrantonicity) respectively.

Of those three, I’m most like Kevin.

The past ten years of writing have been joyful. If my audience is limited, and I never discover a wide reach for my work, so be it. I know a few people get a kick out of my stories, novels, and humor, and that may have to be enough.

I’ll keep swinging for the fences because I won’t get another chance. The glory can be short-lived even for those who hit a homerun.

Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…

My current problem is too many stories…

I’m sending out queries for the one novel, I’m almost done with the rewrite of another, and I’m planning the next four writing projects. I’m going to interlace those novels with more humor writing, to boot.

I think things will calm down soon and I’ll get more stuff done is something that

people say all the time but never make it come true.

Whether or not things calm down, I’ll definitely keep writing. I hope you read something of mine that excites you but it’s fine if you don’t. Don’t waste time reading any book that doesn’t excite you. Life’s too short and there are a lot of books.

Did you know in Iceland there’s a custom on Christmas Eve to exchange books and then go read them while drinking hot cocoa? Sounds perfect.

When I was a kid, one of my cousins would eat a fried onion on Christmas Eve so that, when we gathered at his house for a party, he could fart at will.