The Loneliness of the Midlife Male Creator
So one day, I quit writing.
It was inevitable, I thought, as I began packing up all my notebooks. Just the next step in a rocky seventeen-year marriage between myself and my muse, the separation before the divorce.
We’d tried everything—classes, counseling, books, groups—with no help at all.
Good riddance! I thought, as I deleted the folders off my laptop’s home screen and hid away the how-to books and literary bios. I didn’t even want to look at any fiction. The tether between me and the publishing world was, it seemed, severed for good.
Good riddance! I repeated. If that’s what it took—an endless cycle of writing and reading, dealing with a finicky muse that blocked you at the worst of times while also hiding from the world to find the solitude to even create at all—then those fools can have it.
I felt relieved.
I also felt lonely.
My Precious Solitude
Growing up the oldest of five kids, I became an expert at finding whatever temporary solitude I could within earshot of my parents.
And the more times I escaped, the more I began to understand that it wasn’t just about getting away from the latest argument over who got to play the Nintendo next, but more about getting in touch with a quietness in me which resonated with the solace I found.
Without having the language to describe it, I realized I was an introvert.
Equipped with this new understanding, I moved about the world keeping an eye out for places I could hide away—
the garage outside, the second-floor den at my aunt’s house during Christmas parties, underneath the bleachers during gym classes, the crooked spot in the chain-link fence that separated our grade school’s field with a neighbor’s yard.
But I needed something to do.
That’s when I discovered the holy shrine of solitude—the public library. It was there, with its free and inexhaustible collection of books, that I found worlds to explore, ideas to ponder, and emotions to feel.
One day, I started a journal about a crush I had on Kim Blasco. Next to the entry, I wrote a collection of words traditionally known as a poem (though it was nothing more than me, Han Solo, pining for a kiss from my Princess Leia).
It was my first piece of literature. Without having the language to describe it, I realized I was a writer.
But my solitude had a price. I always felt a little bit of shame every time I stepped away from the world and a little bit of guilt when the world discovered me.
I played the game that the extraverted world wanted me to play until I could find an odd hour in the day to be by myself in my solitude, where those feelings of shame and guilt quickly melted away.
My solitude was too pure, too good, to be spoiled. Too many revelations and feelings were discovered in my solitude. I felt like I’d found a treasure chest with an endless supply of gems and jewels.
By design, art is antisocial. In order to create original, authentic, and meaningful art, we must work hard to create and constantly maintain a place where we won’t be disturbed or interrupted. A solitude.
And so, if art was antisocial,
then I would be antisocial too.
Me and the Muse
In the beginning, there is art. We consume it and love it.
Then we create it. And at first, it is nothing but a flurry of action. In this honeymoon phase, we create merely to show the world we can do it as well as show ourselves.
Sometimes, very briefly, we connect with some higher part of ourselves, but mostly it is a lot of writing shitty shit and feeling good about it. I dressed a lot more like a writer than I actually wrote in these days.
Finally, we finish something. And at the end of every project, we can point to a stack of papers or a video or a song or a sculpture, and cry “There!” This becomes the reason for our solitude, our sneaking away, our being by ourselves. It’s something we can show others, when it’s ready.
But it’s not ready, we realize.
After this honeymoon phase, two things happen simultaneously—we strive to create art that is original, authentic, and meaningful, and we then get blocked.
We wish take a peak at the distant realm of pure Beauty, Drama, Love, Complexity, or Death, or at God or the Universe or something bigger than all of them, and then are kept from doing any of it.
I remember feeling so betrayed when I first became blocked. It was a serpent in my garden, a foe from within.
And because I didn’t know much about my blocks or where they came from, I dealt with them in unskillful and just plain terrible ways, either from working to exhaustion just to finish the thing or anesthetizing my feelings of doubt and fear with alcohol, drugs, sex, shopping, gaming, or a dozen other ways.
Projects came and went. Some were finished, most weren’t. I began to resent being blocked and worked to avoid it but only got blocked more.
During these rough times, I muscled through it while also staving off a ton of Imposter Syndrome. I never spoke of it, since writers are superstitious of talking about projects. I began to resent art making. I began to resent my solitude and in turn, resented myself for that.
Finally, after seventeen years of this…well, you know what happened.
A Unique Loneliness
Creative midlife men all share a unique loneliness.
For decades, we’ve fought so long and so hard with the world to gain and maintain our solitude in order to create art that when we get blocked, we feel trapped in a product of our own making.
Not knowing any other way to live this creative life—and having been conditioned as a men to not be vulnerable, to not ask for help, or to even have the means to do it—we quit.
Without having the language to describe it, we feel lonelier than we may have ever felt.
I quit because I was so focused on publishing. I’d piled on all these impossibly high standards and expectations for success just to say, “There!” with my work so that everyone I knew would nod their heads in unison and go, “Ah! THAT’S why he hides away”.
This is not only inauthentic but unsustainable as a way of creating.
I worked every day to be find and maintain my authentic self, so that my too art would be authentic.
I made amends not just with my muse but within the place she stayed—my solitude. Without even knowing it, I had either abused or abandoned my solitude. So I returned to it with wonder, with boredom, with awe.
I took notes about where I’d been these decades, and how my dreams, my expectations, my goals, and even my own self have changed, matured, and ripened.
In this re-discovered solitude, I got to know myself again, I got to re-dream again different life, a truer life, and therefore a truer art. And all I needed truly was the time, the place, and the space in my solitude.
I’m still blocked, that never changes. But even my perception of them has changed, thanks to Steven Pressfield:
“The more important a call or action to our soul’s evolution, the more Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”
Happily Married
One day, about sixteen months after I quit writing, I was prompted by my friend Kelly to write something. Anything, she answered when I asked her what. I felt the nerves return. The only way I agreed was if there was no expectations. I vowed to not try at all.
I wrote a two-hundred word thingy about walking through a forest preserve. I wasn't even writing it, I just transcribed it from a voice note I made from my phone. It was nothing, a scribble. It had none of the serious topics I’d usually pursued.
Also, it was non-fiction, something I hadn’t tried before, and so it gave me the excuse I could use for Kelly when it was rejected.
I sent it off to one magazine from Minnesota, The Woods Reader, and forgot about it.
You know what happens next—I got published. But here’s the thing, I almost didn’t even know.
One day, I saw Re: The Woods Reader in my inbox and I deleted it, like I had a hundred times before from every other magazine and review out there.
There was no way I was accepted. I didn’t even really edit it (I mean, I DID but not to the extent that I had edited other stories in the past).
It was only after going back in my email’s trash bin the next day that I realized that I was not only accepted but they would pay me $75 for my story AND for my pics.
Me and the muse are back together and stronger than ever. I’ve been busy starting a life coaching business to help men just like me.
I’ve created a logo, a website, a PDF guide, a business card, and several Reels on Facebook and Instagram, as well as taking breaks to draw, color, and play guitar. I’m more creative than I’ve ever been!
As far as my writing, I haven’t done much fiction. I have revisited and revised the outline of my second book, which I eventually want to finish, but I know it’ll be done in snippets. That’s a new way for me—writing in small snippets.
And now here, in this blog, is another way I’m getting back out there by going back in. This is the labyrinth, boys. We are the tribesmen, the fellow pathwalkers, the nerd warriors.
Thanks for your time. Till next week!
If YOU would like help charging up, check out my free 12-page guide.
Click on the pic!
P.S. I am only a coaching and not a therapist. If you are feeling lonely, sad, depressed, or anxious, please seek one to help you. I’ve been going for three years and it’s worked wonders on my own psychology!
