I like the song! The chord progression reminded me (a little bit) of "Putting Out Fire with Gasoline" by David Bowie from the movie "Cat People." And your voice is great, it has variety within it! Did you record it at home?
Wow, thank you Marylyn! For "Good Dreams," I worked with an amazing producer, nickspat of Sunday Dinner Music Group (sundaydinnermusicgroup.com). I recorded a demo with the vocals at home, and Nick helped polish it into what you hear now. (And shout-out to Jonathan Jetter who mastered it.)
I recorded a lot of scratch demos over the past couple years, but having other people to collaborate with made a huge difference in helping me get the songs finished.
I am on the cusp of turning 63. I have wanted to be a writer since I was a child. I went through life never feeling "good enough, smart enough, creative enough, unique enough" for anyone to care about my words, my stories, my life. This December, my debut book is being published and will be distributed through Simon and Schuster. It is called, Out of Place: Coming of Age in Cold War West Germany. I am hard at work on the second draft of a Rom Com, I have a PR team...I am...a writer.
Congratulations, Mary! 👏🏼📚Your tenacity and courage are so inspiring. “ I am … a writer ” Perhaps by next year I’ll have published a memoir and I’ll be able to share that same phrase.
I’m going to be 58 next month. I used to edit a fanzine in my 20s and early 30s. Two years ago, inspired by a forthcoming trip home to NYC, I put together my first issue in a quarter-century. I was using a computer instead of Letraset sheets and glue, but the process felt the same. So did the feeling of accomplishment when I printed it and gave it out to people. It turns out that my advanced age can be an advantage in terms of perspective. It wasn’t me connecting nostalgically to my younger self (ok, it was partly that) - it was rediscovering a long-dormant source of creative fuel and expression. I’ve now published five issues with one more on the way. I can see myself as an 80-year-old zine editor reporting on gossip around the nursing home.
OMG, yes. "It turns out that my advanced age can be an advantage in terms of perspective. It wasn’t me connecting nostalgically to my younger self (ok, it was partly that) - it was rediscovering a long-dormant source of creative fuel and expression." Here's to the 80-year-old 'zine editor version of you.
Just had a look at your zines on Bandcamp. I can't buy cos distance - I live in Aotearoa NZ. Very pleased to see The Clean and Martin Phillips mentioned in your promo blurbs though!!
Self promotion is fine! We are on the Interwebs. It is part of the culture now. (And thank heaven for that. The fake non-self-promotion of the punk/postpunk/cool alterna-kids era got really annoying, passive-aggressive, etc.)
Plus: amazing to click through and find your top entry to be about Belle & Sebastian. My teenaged kiddo is obsessed with them. (And I got to see them in the '90s, yay.)
Love this! I especially relate to the idea that wanting to perform — and being good at it — is some sort of character flaw. I was a semiserious dancer when I was young but walked away in my 20s feeling, like the author, that it was time to put away childish things. But after I went through cancer treatment two years ago
I started dance classes again (ballet, modern) and it has been just transformative. Coming back to dance at 56, after a serious illness, is a powerful reminder of how precarious health and mobility can be, and how privileged I am to be able to still move this way (after a lot of stretching lol). A few months ago I joined a company of “older” dancers ranging in age from 35 to 79 and we performed last weekend and holy shit, put that stuff straight in my vein! I was trying to explain to a friend how amazing that audience-performer dynamic feels. I am not the most extroverted but I had zero self consciousness or stage fright. It was all pure joy. I am sad about all the years I missed — for dancers the ticking clock of age can be extra loud — but I hope I can keep doing this into my 90s.
Love it! 🥰 SHELL YES to releasing the inner Performer. So weird how shaming it was to be that kid who just wanted to dance and sing in a family of intellectuals!
Right!? Yet we worship Beyonce. Go figure. (I dance in a park every Wednesday, in all weather, with a devoted multi-age group of 20-40 weirdos. It’s totally wondrous in all the ways.)
I love this story: especially diving back into that flow state we once inhabited, before Adulting and fear of failure robbed us of our naturally creative soul. Shell YES to melting those inner critic voices.
When 7 friends died around age 50, I left corporate slavery. Who's got time for that? After years of returning to my heart's calling to sing, I'm exploring where my brave voice belongs. My unique, spirit-based way of making spontaneous beauty, especially for and with the waters and the Earth, isn't the norm. 🌊 As I turn 65 on Sunday, I'm more and more ok with being my semi-weird true self. Even on TikTok. In September, I record outdoors with a world class Nature & Sound pro. 🙌🏽
Thank you 🙏🏽 Mark! I may get brave and take you up on an offer of collaborating in Seattle. I live across the pond in Indianola (my background is jazz, Gospel and improv)
This is an inspiring column. As for my story, many years ago when just after undergrad I finally figured out the personal necessity of my pursuing art in one form or another, I was studying jazz guitar (had done a "for friends" version of singer/songwriter since middle school) and had also discovered poetry/playwriting. I realized I did not have time or bandwidth to have a day job and do both art forms in a public, committed way, and so chose writing. Anyway, I kept playing guitar and singing all those years, so the music became my personal art form for me and for a long string of years, my parrot (best audience ever!), and it provided energy for the writing. Anyway, let's just say during the last string of years a bunch of life crap happened (including my "best audience" parrot dying), meanwhile my beloved guitar started having an issue and, without my realizing it or why, it became less fun to play. Basically I stopped making music. After some more life crap happened, including the death of a musician friend, I realized music had just dropped out of my life, and I had this real need to play again. I knew i had to get my old guitar repaired. And...my new guitar is wonderful and I'm kind of in shock as far as how good it feels to play again, so I'm playing. How do we let the things we love just move to the side, and then slip away, until years go by? I have a goal now of getting my voice in shape where I can record myself (for the first time) at Sun Studio. Because, why not?
Do it! In the past year, my husband finally finished building the guitar he'd started more than 20 years ago, then got back to the songs he'd abandoned, and soon he'll put out an EP. As long as you're alive, it's never too late to return to a creative passion.
Thanks, Mark, and for writing this! The thing I know when I'm thinking clearly is that the music supports the writing (and life), I just have to remember to do it. Buying a new guitar sure helped!
Exactly how I feel about picking up my guitar again. I hang with a musical group every Tuesday afternoon. It's like church for me, cause I am an atheist. Same feeling from this group, so uplifting and if you need a hug, you get it there. It's so joyful. My guitar skills are so rusty!
Letting some things slide is just how we cope with overwhelming barrages of options. It was probably a sound choice at the time. Don’t second guess what is waaaay down the river now.
You have The Present to get frisky all over. Rediscover!
Sorry about your beloved bird. They are definitely highly musical. That was a significant bond that I understand.
Due to some not-crap, I’ve been getting some things around here repaired too (teeth, tools, etc) and it has been so gratifying to have these ‘old friends’ functional again.
My mom wouldn't let me "mess up" the kitchen when I was a kid, but she and my dad were gone for a month-long craft fair when I was 15, and I cooked my way through about a quarter of the Betty Crocker cookbook. Cooking is something I now rediscover every time I want to get back to myself. And I have a stack of cookbooks plus Emily Nunn's newsletter to make my way through!
I so relate, Tracy. My Mom was a Registered Dietician, but we were not welcome in her production phases. Narrow kitchen?
So in college (had an apt) I got a reprint Fannie Farmer cookbook through a Chiquita banana promotion at the grocery for free. (It’s in several pieces now…) I knew what things ought to turn out as, but the path there was a real mystery. Especially with a colonial era cookbook!
The nice thing about self-teaching is that the motivation is 100% your own. Bon appetite!
At age 21 I wrote a college honors project that was half memoir and half academic about “women’s autobiography” (1989 so “memoir” not in fashion). I wrote about going between my divorced parents houses and their painting studios (Park Slope Brooklyn and SoHo Manhattan), and my experience with their leading entirely separate lives. I told my advisor that I couldn’t write any more until they were dead. Scroll forward to 2020 and my mother is declining with rapid dementia, my father has been gone 5 years, and I “heard” a memoir roaring in my head. I had written nothing creative in the intervening years. My draft now sits with several agents and I continue writing memoir at substack illustrated with my parents artwork (the painters Lennart Anderson and Mimi Weisbord). I have incorporated some of my college work into my memoir. I even found my college mentor, who had kept my first draft, and we’ve sat together in her Vermont living room with my recent work in our laps.
I gave a Ted Talk on this very topic two years ago, focusing on older adults returning to music or playing for the first time and how that leads to healthy social communities and thriving creativity. https://youtu.be/nRlNDk8VR2c?si=E48usv8T2QtXXuex
Your mission ROCKS, Russ. We feel most alive when flourishing in that creative flow state. and yes, our energy enlivens the spaces and humans around us too.
I turned 71 years old last month. As a child, I started writing in first grade and loved writing stories. I had a passion for Monarch butterflies, too. I was a tomboy with four brothers. I collected reptiles, amphibians, and had two pet raccoons. I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian, but in 4th grade our veterinarian gave a career day talk. He said girls should not apply for vet school because they would quit after marriage and waste a degree. I went into teaching instead.
At age 57, I retired with a healthy pension after 35 years in teaching and 3 college degrees. My husband and I purchased farmland in rural Georgia. I spent eight years raising heritage animals—sheep, rabbits, hogs, ducks, and laying hens—until weather extremes and age took me down. Now I am converting a typical suburban yard into a wildflower garden and published a history of the Guinea Hogs in 2019. I’ve published in four farm journals and been a podcast guest. I feel like I am reliving my childhood passions!
Yes. I wanted to be a writer, but I became a doctor because doctors have jobs, along with a few other reasons. COVID was the first time I didn't have a job, as an anesthesiologist, unless I wanted to go to NYC and work in the ICU and maybe die. I was also getting a divorce at the time.
I left medicine this year. I'm writing again, and it sucks. Everything is so long and heavy, and I wonder if I ought to just go back to being a doctor because at least it's clearly useful to someone, but that's the same decision I didn't have the courage to make at 17. But I'd walk over bodies to write and if I die without doing it, I'll have wasted my life. It's enough, just to do it. It doesn't have to make money. It doesn't have to be any good. So I'm doing it, again, trying to start this fire and spend more time in flow. The anonymity thing is a struggle -- not only does it suck, it's been so personal and I already feel like a target. I have a bad habit of giving men money when I fall in love; that's a bigger deal when you don't have a job. But, again, I am still doing it. Just trying to figure out how.
"Life is far too short to give up the things that bring you joy." Yes! For me, it was writing. I published my first poetry collection at 39 and my second last month, at age 43. It's easy to regret my decades long detour, but I prefer to think of it as a really long research project😆. I collected amazing material and got sober. That life experience stuff is priceless when it comes to making art. Thanks for your story, Mark. I love the single!
I’ve always been creative and enjoyed all kinds of artistic pursuits, so when I abandoned my dreams of the stage for writing, it wasn’t devastating. But now, as I am in an MFA creative writing program, about to turn 59, and looking ahead I wonder “what if I got new headshots and took some acting classes…?”
In my late teens I wanted to be an actress and had even taken classes at The Actors Workshop in Boston. I didn't return to acting until I was 62. I had a chance to play Stefano in "The Tempest," and it went well! Then I started acting and improv classes. I did get lots of head shots and even a couple of small roles in small local films, so it's all quite possible! But it turned out that music was where I was headed, although what I'm making is more like musical theater! I only hope I have a few more years left, because this is fun.
I am 65 and a lifelong novelist, but a while back, I rediscovered painting. As a child, I always thought I would do both, art and writing, but a brutal encounter with an art teacher at 15 (such a delicate age) led to me walking away from art, even drawing, for decades. I started splashing around with watercolor, taking a class here and there, progressing to oils and acrylics and collage. I was so afraid to show the work to anyone for ages, but last month entered a painting in a community show and it was on display all month. It is so liberating and nourishing to reconnect with this lost part of myself. What’s even more delightful is that some of my writer friends, seeing me post images of my art, have taken it up themselves.
Fantastic Barbara… show your work !!! That freedom to make art and not worry about what others think is empowering. I suggest you get Austin Kleon’s books - “Steal Like an Artist” and “Show Your Work.” Congrats on your first show !
Where would we be without that deep drive to create? It’s amazing to read all these comments, and I’m in the thick of it myself. I’ve been a professional visual artist most of my adult life, played music professionally during the folk/blues/jazz decades (piano, guitar , mandolin, dulcimer) and have ALWAYS written, in some fashion. Now at 71, I’ve switched it all up and am taking a break from painting to actually …. Gulp … write the memoir that’s been gnawing at me for years. In my Third Act, I’m embracing the writer I’ve always been. ✍️P.S. it sure is challenging to do it all... 🫣
Hi everyone — Mark here. Just wanted to thank Sari for having me at Oldster today, and thank you all for sharing your own stories here.
I like the song! The chord progression reminded me (a little bit) of "Putting Out Fire with Gasoline" by David Bowie from the movie "Cat People." And your voice is great, it has variety within it! Did you record it at home?
Wow, thank you Marylyn! For "Good Dreams," I worked with an amazing producer, nickspat of Sunday Dinner Music Group (sundaydinnermusicgroup.com). I recorded a demo with the vocals at home, and Nick helped polish it into what you hear now. (And shout-out to Jonathan Jetter who mastered it.)
I recorded a lot of scratch demos over the past couple years, but having other people to collaborate with made a huge difference in helping me get the songs finished.
I am on the cusp of turning 63. I have wanted to be a writer since I was a child. I went through life never feeling "good enough, smart enough, creative enough, unique enough" for anyone to care about my words, my stories, my life. This December, my debut book is being published and will be distributed through Simon and Schuster. It is called, Out of Place: Coming of Age in Cold War West Germany. I am hard at work on the second draft of a Rom Com, I have a PR team...I am...a writer.
This is wonderful, congrats Mary!
Mark, thank you! And a "congrats" to you too! It's never too late is it?
Wow. Congrats!
Thank you, Sari. And thank you for your Substack. It's always such an uplifting space.
<3
Congratulations, Mary! 👏🏼📚Your tenacity and courage are so inspiring. “ I am … a writer ” Perhaps by next year I’ll have published a memoir and I’ll be able to share that same phrase.
You don’t need contracts, the approval of gatekeepers or stacks of merch to be … a writer.
You wrote this and I read it. That makes you a writer. Allow me to reach for my Magic Wand____ POOF! Now it’s ’official’.
Carry on.
Sari has created scores of writers through her inclusiveness and ceaseless curiosity.
She’s a REAL Wizard. 💐
<3
That is very true. I have learned much by reading her Substack.
Ali, you are so right. I love this, "Allow me to reach for my Magic Wand___POOF!"
Thank you, Karen! I will look forward to your book!
Nicely done!
Thank you. Tiffany! It has been, and continues to be a great reward to my soul.
I’m going to be 58 next month. I used to edit a fanzine in my 20s and early 30s. Two years ago, inspired by a forthcoming trip home to NYC, I put together my first issue in a quarter-century. I was using a computer instead of Letraset sheets and glue, but the process felt the same. So did the feeling of accomplishment when I printed it and gave it out to people. It turns out that my advanced age can be an advantage in terms of perspective. It wasn’t me connecting nostalgically to my younger self (ok, it was partly that) - it was rediscovering a long-dormant source of creative fuel and expression. I’ve now published five issues with one more on the way. I can see myself as an 80-year-old zine editor reporting on gossip around the nursing home.
OMG, yes. "It turns out that my advanced age can be an advantage in terms of perspective. It wasn’t me connecting nostalgically to my younger self (ok, it was partly that) - it was rediscovering a long-dormant source of creative fuel and expression." Here's to the 80-year-old 'zine editor version of you.
Letraset sheets!
So, dude! Name of 'zine? Link?
Ha, i I didn’t mean to come off as self-promotional. But since you asked:
silentcommandzine.bandcamp.com
Bought it! Thanks
Just had a look at your zines on Bandcamp. I can't buy cos distance - I live in Aotearoa NZ. Very pleased to see The Clean and Martin Phillips mentioned in your promo blurbs though!!
I have PDFs too: https://silentcommand.etsy.com
Thanks Mike! Buying.
Self promotion is fine! We are on the Interwebs. It is part of the culture now. (And thank heaven for that. The fake non-self-promotion of the punk/postpunk/cool alterna-kids era got really annoying, passive-aggressive, etc.)
Plus: amazing to click through and find your top entry to be about Belle & Sebastian. My teenaged kiddo is obsessed with them. (And I got to see them in the '90s, yay.)
Love this! I especially relate to the idea that wanting to perform — and being good at it — is some sort of character flaw. I was a semiserious dancer when I was young but walked away in my 20s feeling, like the author, that it was time to put away childish things. But after I went through cancer treatment two years ago
I started dance classes again (ballet, modern) and it has been just transformative. Coming back to dance at 56, after a serious illness, is a powerful reminder of how precarious health and mobility can be, and how privileged I am to be able to still move this way (after a lot of stretching lol). A few months ago I joined a company of “older” dancers ranging in age from 35 to 79 and we performed last weekend and holy shit, put that stuff straight in my vein! I was trying to explain to a friend how amazing that audience-performer dynamic feels. I am not the most extroverted but I had zero self consciousness or stage fright. It was all pure joy. I am sad about all the years I missed — for dancers the ticking clock of age can be extra loud — but I hope I can keep doing this into my 90s.
Yes! I might need to get you to write for Oldster about joining and performing with that dance company...
Sari I would love to do that!
I'll email you.
Love it! 🥰 SHELL YES to releasing the inner Performer. So weird how shaming it was to be that kid who just wanted to dance and sing in a family of intellectuals!
EXACTLY. I deeply internalized the idea that dancing was not something that serious people did as adults.
Right!? Yet we worship Beyonce. Go figure. (I dance in a park every Wednesday, in all weather, with a devoted multi-age group of 20-40 weirdos. It’s totally wondrous in all the ways.)
🗣️ BRAVE VOICES 🗣️
I love this story: especially diving back into that flow state we once inhabited, before Adulting and fear of failure robbed us of our naturally creative soul. Shell YES to melting those inner critic voices.
When 7 friends died around age 50, I left corporate slavery. Who's got time for that? After years of returning to my heart's calling to sing, I'm exploring where my brave voice belongs. My unique, spirit-based way of making spontaneous beauty, especially for and with the waters and the Earth, isn't the norm. 🌊 As I turn 65 on Sunday, I'm more and more ok with being my semi-weird true self. Even on TikTok. In September, I record outdoors with a world class Nature & Sound pro. 🙌🏽
Thank you for the kind words Christine — so excited for you (and happy birthday!)
Thank you 🙏🏽 Mark! I may get brave and take you up on an offer of collaborating in Seattle. I live across the pond in Indianola (my background is jazz, Gospel and improv)
Fantastic. Love it.
Happy Birthday!!! Make it unforgettable!!
Thank you 🙏🏽 Ali!
This is an inspiring column. As for my story, many years ago when just after undergrad I finally figured out the personal necessity of my pursuing art in one form or another, I was studying jazz guitar (had done a "for friends" version of singer/songwriter since middle school) and had also discovered poetry/playwriting. I realized I did not have time or bandwidth to have a day job and do both art forms in a public, committed way, and so chose writing. Anyway, I kept playing guitar and singing all those years, so the music became my personal art form for me and for a long string of years, my parrot (best audience ever!), and it provided energy for the writing. Anyway, let's just say during the last string of years a bunch of life crap happened (including my "best audience" parrot dying), meanwhile my beloved guitar started having an issue and, without my realizing it or why, it became less fun to play. Basically I stopped making music. After some more life crap happened, including the death of a musician friend, I realized music had just dropped out of my life, and I had this real need to play again. I knew i had to get my old guitar repaired. And...my new guitar is wonderful and I'm kind of in shock as far as how good it feels to play again, so I'm playing. How do we let the things we love just move to the side, and then slip away, until years go by? I have a goal now of getting my voice in shape where I can record myself (for the first time) at Sun Studio. Because, why not?
Do it! In the past year, my husband finally finished building the guitar he'd started more than 20 years ago, then got back to the songs he'd abandoned, and soon he'll put out an EP. As long as you're alive, it's never too late to return to a creative passion.
It's never too late! In fact, i think we have a responsibility to ourselves and the Gods of Art. As for your husband I'll say "wind in your sails!"
I like the Gods of Art part.
Love that you are playing again Steve!
Thanks, Mark, and for writing this! The thing I know when I'm thinking clearly is that the music supports the writing (and life), I just have to remember to do it. Buying a new guitar sure helped!
Exactly how I feel about picking up my guitar again. I hang with a musical group every Tuesday afternoon. It's like church for me, cause I am an atheist. Same feeling from this group, so uplifting and if you need a hug, you get it there. It's so joyful. My guitar skills are so rusty!
As is my voice. Practice!
Letting some things slide is just how we cope with overwhelming barrages of options. It was probably a sound choice at the time. Don’t second guess what is waaaay down the river now.
You have The Present to get frisky all over. Rediscover!
Sorry about your beloved bird. They are definitely highly musical. That was a significant bond that I understand.
Due to some not-crap, I’ve been getting some things around here repaired too (teeth, tools, etc) and it has been so gratifying to have these ‘old friends’ functional again.
Thanks, Ali! Functionality is underrated until things are dis-functional.
My mom wouldn't let me "mess up" the kitchen when I was a kid, but she and my dad were gone for a month-long craft fair when I was 15, and I cooked my way through about a quarter of the Betty Crocker cookbook. Cooking is something I now rediscover every time I want to get back to myself. And I have a stack of cookbooks plus Emily Nunn's newsletter to make my way through!
Love this. And Emily Nunn is the best.
I so relate, Tracy. My Mom was a Registered Dietician, but we were not welcome in her production phases. Narrow kitchen?
So in college (had an apt) I got a reprint Fannie Farmer cookbook through a Chiquita banana promotion at the grocery for free. (It’s in several pieces now…) I knew what things ought to turn out as, but the path there was a real mystery. Especially with a colonial era cookbook!
The nice thing about self-teaching is that the motivation is 100% your own. Bon appetite!
At age 21 I wrote a college honors project that was half memoir and half academic about “women’s autobiography” (1989 so “memoir” not in fashion). I wrote about going between my divorced parents houses and their painting studios (Park Slope Brooklyn and SoHo Manhattan), and my experience with their leading entirely separate lives. I told my advisor that I couldn’t write any more until they were dead. Scroll forward to 2020 and my mother is declining with rapid dementia, my father has been gone 5 years, and I “heard” a memoir roaring in my head. I had written nothing creative in the intervening years. My draft now sits with several agents and I continue writing memoir at substack illustrated with my parents artwork (the painters Lennart Anderson and Mimi Weisbord). I have incorporated some of my college work into my memoir. I even found my college mentor, who had kept my first draft, and we’ve sat together in her Vermont living room with my recent work in our laps.
Glad you picked it up again! Good luck.
I gave a Ted Talk on this very topic two years ago, focusing on older adults returning to music or playing for the first time and how that leads to healthy social communities and thriving creativity. https://youtu.be/nRlNDk8VR2c?si=E48usv8T2QtXXuex
Amazing! I'll check it out. Thanks.
Your mission ROCKS, Russ. We feel most alive when flourishing in that creative flow state. and yes, our energy enlivens the spaces and humans around us too.
I turned 71 years old last month. As a child, I started writing in first grade and loved writing stories. I had a passion for Monarch butterflies, too. I was a tomboy with four brothers. I collected reptiles, amphibians, and had two pet raccoons. I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian, but in 4th grade our veterinarian gave a career day talk. He said girls should not apply for vet school because they would quit after marriage and waste a degree. I went into teaching instead.
At age 57, I retired with a healthy pension after 35 years in teaching and 3 college degrees. My husband and I purchased farmland in rural Georgia. I spent eight years raising heritage animals—sheep, rabbits, hogs, ducks, and laying hens—until weather extremes and age took me down. Now I am converting a typical suburban yard into a wildflower garden and published a history of the Guinea Hogs in 2019. I’ve published in four farm journals and been a podcast guest. I feel like I am reliving my childhood passions!
I love this so much!
Thank you!
Cool story.
Yes. I wanted to be a writer, but I became a doctor because doctors have jobs, along with a few other reasons. COVID was the first time I didn't have a job, as an anesthesiologist, unless I wanted to go to NYC and work in the ICU and maybe die. I was also getting a divorce at the time.
I left medicine this year. I'm writing again, and it sucks. Everything is so long and heavy, and I wonder if I ought to just go back to being a doctor because at least it's clearly useful to someone, but that's the same decision I didn't have the courage to make at 17. But I'd walk over bodies to write and if I die without doing it, I'll have wasted my life. It's enough, just to do it. It doesn't have to make money. It doesn't have to be any good. So I'm doing it, again, trying to start this fire and spend more time in flow. The anonymity thing is a struggle -- not only does it suck, it's been so personal and I already feel like a target. I have a bad habit of giving men money when I fall in love; that's a bigger deal when you don't have a job. But, again, I am still doing it. Just trying to figure out how.
Keep at it! Sounds like writing is vital for you. (But don't give any more money away!)
I’m 63. Aspired to be a writer at age 9 🙄
Got married, raised a passel of kids. Played around with writing. Finished two books in 42 years of marriage. Now pursuing it with serious intent.
"Life is far too short to give up the things that bring you joy." Yes! For me, it was writing. I published my first poetry collection at 39 and my second last month, at age 43. It's easy to regret my decades long detour, but I prefer to think of it as a really long research project😆. I collected amazing material and got sober. That life experience stuff is priceless when it comes to making art. Thanks for your story, Mark. I love the single!
I’ve always been creative and enjoyed all kinds of artistic pursuits, so when I abandoned my dreams of the stage for writing, it wasn’t devastating. But now, as I am in an MFA creative writing program, about to turn 59, and looking ahead I wonder “what if I got new headshots and took some acting classes…?”
In my late teens I wanted to be an actress and had even taken classes at The Actors Workshop in Boston. I didn't return to acting until I was 62. I had a chance to play Stefano in "The Tempest," and it went well! Then I started acting and improv classes. I did get lots of head shots and even a couple of small roles in small local films, so it's all quite possible! But it turned out that music was where I was headed, although what I'm making is more like musical theater! I only hope I have a few more years left, because this is fun.
I’m doing improv now. There’s still time! :)
I am 65 and a lifelong novelist, but a while back, I rediscovered painting. As a child, I always thought I would do both, art and writing, but a brutal encounter with an art teacher at 15 (such a delicate age) led to me walking away from art, even drawing, for decades. I started splashing around with watercolor, taking a class here and there, progressing to oils and acrylics and collage. I was so afraid to show the work to anyone for ages, but last month entered a painting in a community show and it was on display all month. It is so liberating and nourishing to reconnect with this lost part of myself. What’s even more delightful is that some of my writer friends, seeing me post images of my art, have taken it up themselves.
Inspiring!
Fantastic Barbara… show your work !!! That freedom to make art and not worry about what others think is empowering. I suggest you get Austin Kleon’s books - “Steal Like an Artist” and “Show Your Work.” Congrats on your first show !
Thanks, Karen. We all want to share our creative work, right? I do love Austin Kleon’s books (and his substack!).
Where would we be without that deep drive to create? It’s amazing to read all these comments, and I’m in the thick of it myself. I’ve been a professional visual artist most of my adult life, played music professionally during the folk/blues/jazz decades (piano, guitar , mandolin, dulcimer) and have ALWAYS written, in some fashion. Now at 71, I’ve switched it all up and am taking a break from painting to actually …. Gulp … write the memoir that’s been gnawing at me for years. In my Third Act, I’m embracing the writer I’ve always been. ✍️P.S. it sure is challenging to do it all... 🫣