By Brendan O’Meara
Brin-Jonathan Butler is a frequent guest of the podcast, and he returned to talk about Flacco the Owl, among other things.
Brin is the kinda guy I can just listen to for ours. He’s operating on another level, certainly a level far above my Windows 95 operating system.
Brin is the author of a few books, namely The Grandmaster and The Domino Diaries.
Parting Shot: Wasting My 30s and Early 40s
Yes, awesome, thanks to Brin for being so patient…We recorded this some six months ago and I’m only now getting around to it, which gives you an idea of how bad I am at work…
Talking to these ol’ SB Nation Longform guys brings up all the emotions from my ill-begotten 30s where I spent 2.5 years working in specialty running, 1 year working at a Whole Foods, 1.5 years at a bookstore, and four months working for a winery, that’s nearly five years of relatively wasted time NOT doing the thing I had always set out to do.
Six Weeks in Saratoga came out in 2011 and I have yet to publish another book since. Come 2025, 14 years after Book 1, Book 2 might make it to the shelves. 14 years … what the fuck have I been doing? I look back at all that time wasted at being the world’s worst freelancer. Then feeling like a loser for not being able to actually make a go of it, which calls into question your skill and maybe this is how the natural order weeds out the weaklings. After all, if you have skill, then why all the rejection? Why, when you took a copy writing job for a university, was the editor mad at you for having to, you know, edit your work? Was disappointed she had to edit it and tighten up your copy? In my defense, she was a fucking asshole. They can’t all be joys to work with.
Then I land a book contract to write a biography and suddenly I’m feeling valued again. Like, oh, OK, maybe I’m not a piece of shit.
I recently applied for a job at a weekly newspaper and didn’t get a callback or an interview. Journalism is the only industry I know that seems to penalize experience. The better you are, the more expendable or unhirable you are. It’s insane.
Before you know it, you’ve wasted so much time. Before you know it, statistically, there’s more time behind you than ahead of you. So what can you do? You’ve got to somehow seize the moment. I think, most importantly, is trying not to compare your fucked up path to others. Everyone else’s path seems and looks like well-paved Audubon to riches and satisfaction. Meanwhile, your path seems like a labyrinth where every step leads to a greater sense of misdirection and panic.
Nobody has ever asked me for advice, but I don’t think I could offer anything that’d be helpful except leaning into the fundamentals, accept that rejection is as certain as death and taxes, and don’t waste your time looking over your shoulder. Look at all those marathoners out there. Some run it in two hours. Some run it in six. Everyone who endures the 26.2 miles has the same measure of joy and accomplishment. This work is just as often an exploration of self discovery and exploring the unknown. Putting your attention on that seems to appease a great deal of the anxiety and insecurity of your path. So stay wild, CNFers, and if you can’t do, interview, see ya!
