How a dead man on the couch reminded me of what’s important.
I sat in the dark the other night, sometime around 2:40. My fridge hummed a low Db, like a bass looking to start a quiet barbershop rendition of Baby Got Back.
I sat in the dark because I couldn’t sleep. A dream woke me at 12:12, just an hour or so after I had turned off the lights. I fell asleep almost immediately until the shock of discovering an older man from church had died on my couch. In my dream. I could see him sitting in the dim light of the evening, his head leaning towards his shoulder and slightly back, his mouth open in a way that’s clear – that man is dead.
Two-and-a-half hours later, I sat on my couch, in the dark, thinking about why I dreamt of a dead man on my couch. They say (whoever “they” are, wise, smart, and capable) that everyone in your dreams is some part of you. Which left me pondering, what part of me died?
I do not imagine my life’s circumstances are unique to me. Like most everyone, my wife and I must needs find ways to pay our bills, feed ourselves, and live our lives. Which is why I applied for work at a new Sprouts grocery store opening in my neighborhood. My interview went as well as you could hope. My interviewer gushed at my answers and was excited for my prospects. I believed I could easily earn a spot on the team. But for whatever reasons, I never heard from them. And being driven, I have looked for remote opportunities to maybe generate income. For the few I believed would work, they turned out to be scams asking for money to secure my spot. Yeesh.
Economic realities are tough all over. Life is being…life, in all its demands and vagaries. In the midst of this, I love writing. I relish the process of working through my thoughts and ideas and stringing together a coherent array of words you might enjoy and maybe from which gain something, an insight or perspective. Maybe that helps make my pursuits noble. To be fair, though, I love writing because I love a good story. I cannot keep them to myself. Nor can I withhold the things that flow through my head when I experience or hear a story.
So, sitting there, in the dark of night, I wrestled with the tension between, gotta make money to help pay the bills and, damnit, I want to write! Why not both? Why do I, as a writer, have to choose between paying my bills and writing with a grumbling belly in the dark with only my blanket to keep me warm? Well, because I can’t type on my laptop without electricity, for one. I’m not pretending that I fell into these circumstances. I am living the sum of my choices. Sure, life had its say in my life. It’s what it does. But I am the result of my last one hundred, or one thousand choices. My economic circumstances are the sum of my last thousand decisions. I am living in the hard of my own making. Which means…which means…I have choices.
There is a scene from the television show Breaking Bad. Walter White is a teacher with cancer who turns to cooking meth to provide for his family after his death. Bad guys threaten him and his wife Skylar wants him to go to the police as a man in over his head with dangerous people. You can watch it below:
In the video, Skylar pleads “Walt, please. Let’s both of us just stop trying to justify this whole thing and admit you’re in danger.”
Walt replies “…You clearly don’t know who you’re talking to so, let me clue you in. I am not in danger Skylar. I AM the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I AM the one who knocks.”
Sitting in the dark, I imagined my life as Skylar, pleading with me. “Daniel, please! You’re in over your head.” Bitch please. You clearly don’t know who you’re talking to, so let me clue you in.
I’m not Walter White. My cancer is the damn interest I pay on my debt. And I’ve turned to writing because it’s what I’m good at. At least, compared to cooking meth, of which I know nothing.
I AM the writer. I AM the one who writes.
So what does this look like for me? I am the writer, what does that mean, in a practical sense? I have choices. To start, it looks like finding work in writing. Looking for and creating opportunities to write. I am focused on writing for small businesses, such as articles, web pages, descriptions, manuals, copywriting, and anything else they’ve discovered AI really can’t do with any measure of aplomb. This is where I look to generate that “right now” kind of income.
I am also working on two different books. The first is a book on Living As A Christian Disciple In A Me-First World. I began this last summer and have it outlined and am in the middle of research. The second is a novel about a man who receives a diagnosis and seeks to live a life worthy of a eulogy. This is my way of looking at the loss of my dad and the meaning of his life, as well as the measure of my own.
And I write essays, to process the events in my life, to express my ideas, to ask the questions that arise and to explore the sheer wonder of life. Because I don’t know what I’d do if I could not write.
Maybe that was the part of me that is dead. Or might be. From my dream. That in the face of my circumstances, a vital part of me might quietly stop breathing while sitting on my couch. This might be fear of the unknown looking face to face at my own mortality and wondering if that’s what I’ll look like when it comes to it. Or maybe I’m afraid I’m already dead inside. I ran a business and couldn’t get hired as a cashier in a neighborhood grocery. And online opportunity scams steal my breath before I can even get up and run. Maybe that dead man showed up in my dream because deep down, I fear I don’t matter anymore.
But even in the dark, I smiled because I’m still breathing, and thinking, and, obviously, I am writing.