Turning 36

Last week (July 15), I turned 36. It is sort of a weird age. I don't feel any different than I did maybe six years ago, except I creak a hell of a lot more than I used to.  I don't feel old or antique. And lately, it has sort of dawned on me that parents are 60 and turning 59. It's not that I didn't know that before, it just seems like my time with them is running out. I wonder what  kind of things they thought about when they were my age. It's not just that, but my kid turned 12 in June. All of this just puts me in a weird place, there are thoughts I want to think of but I can't find the words. Most of the time, I feel like I am still 25, and  everyone else around me is getting older. I don't have gray hair, but I am fine with the grays. And maybe that's why I don't feel 36. Although I secretly hope that when I am old, I have white hair like my grandmother. It's sort of like blonde but  not.

I thought I would be a lot further along in my writing career than I am now. I go in these waves of working hard and sending away stuff. But of course, I also get  rejections up the ass. All rejections all the time. So maybe I am just good enough to be a writer. I am having a hard time writing lately. I had all these plans for 2016, which were flushed down the toilet. I have ideas, yet no ambition. Sometimes, I tell myself I just need a nibble, of someone in the world telling me I'm okay. But, then I suppose that is addicting,  the constant need of "atta boy." I don't give myself a pat on the back because I don't deserve them; I am just not good at writing. If that is the case, what then? All my life I thought of myself as a writer. Here I am about halfway through my life and I feel like I am just floating along like a dry hot wind from the west.

In my wind storm of thoughts and story ideas, I am lost and I don't know what to do. I always think like a writer and read like a writer and I don't know what to do with myself if I weren't a writer. I try not think like that. It creeps up all the time though. It is frustration and confusion and anger. Why can't I just be good enough, at least just once. I don't see it in myself. I can't stop comparing myself to any other writer and wonder what the hell is wrong with my work.

I suppose it is hard to explain.  I sit around wondering how other people's, normal, non writers brains work and maybe my brain is not right. Because I would like to feel normal once and maybe I can see something I didn't before.