So What If I’m Having a Midlife Crisis?
September 10, 2022
Who is the writer, actor, musician, artist whose work you so relate to you know if you met them and became friends with them it would be like Elton John meeting Bernie Taupin and you’d create amazing, life changing work together? When I say meet them and make friends with them I mean friends for real, not win a contest in 1988 from a local radio station to meet General Hospital actor turned “rock star” Jack Wagner after his concert. Not that. More like seeing Ween in the basement of Tokyo Rose in 1995 and hanging out with them in their bus after and shooting the shit and vibing and hitting it off with Dean and not hooking up but there was definitely potential and now you are friends.
Like that, but it’s Pamela Adlon and you love her so much – Better Things was the best, most creative, smartly written show with dynamic characters that actually inspired me to change my life – the scene where she’s 50 years old hanging out with all her talented and interesting friends in her living room and her mom busts in wearing a bra and yells at them for drinking her wine and they all hang out together laughing and talking. I loved that scene so much it makes me sick. I remember watching it in my living room in Falls Church, Virginia after leaving my career in publishing and not knowing what I wanted to do next and feeling trapped and stuck and like I’d never get out of my rut and seeing Pamela Adlon, surrounded by creative, smart and interesting people making art and knowing I needed to change my life. And I did! We moved to Amsterdam and I’ve never been happier. But I’m at a crossroads now, too young (and not wealthy) enough to retire, if people really still do that, and still full of dreams and desires and I need to figure out my path.
What if?
What if you decide at 50 years old you want to be an actress and you google is it too late to become an actor at 50 years old and the internet informs you it is not too late, which you take as exciting news.
What if you write and star in your own production of the Devil Wears Prada but it’s about shitty media men?
What if you write a novel about a woman forced out of her career by her abusive, sexist boss and she moves to Amsterdam and gets a job at a ladies’ detective agency but it turns out to be a coven of witches who use their magical powers to solve mysteries and get vengeance?
I want to find my writing community.
I want to write a killer screenplay and a novel and a creative nonfiction book.
I also want to open a coffeeshop catering to middle-aged ladies and invite all my writer friends to Amsterdam to do readings from their books. (Coffeeshops in Amsterdam sell legal weed.) My coffeeshop will be decorated like an old-west bordello and there will be lamps with beads and feathers and flattering lighting and spaces for reading and doing crafts and have a delicious selection of fine teas. I have a space in mind –there’s a woman here who owns a coffeeshop that is also an art gallery and she’s old and cranky and I want to learn the business from her and have her bequeath me her license when she’s ready to retire and I will host literary salons and smoke out of a long Cruella De Vil-style cigarette thing. The laws changed in Amsterdam some years ago and the number of coffeeshop licenses is limited and finite so this woman is key to my plan, though she is resisting my charms thus far but I shall persist.
What if.
Sure, this may be a classic midlife crisis, but it’s also about finding your people who bring out your gifts and help you find your best work, even if you don’t know what that is. It’s about facing the reality of midlife, and knowing there’s more out there for you and not having the currency of youth but still feeling desire. It’s about the gift of imagination and the power to turn your dreams into reality.
This is what I want.
xoxo
P.S. Do you think I should take a screenwriting class?