It's funny how life lets us see things ... and then years later it really lets us see them.
About ten years ago my writing business, which I called Future Shoes, began to slow down. It seemed strange to me that it should be going south when I felt I was at the peak of my powers -- bright, pungent, at times visionary.
At that time I was writing about the amazing future about to open up for us, like a giant red poppy, and perfume us with its possibilities.
I studied all the gurus, I knew what the good stuff, what the fecund optimism of the 1990s looked like and what it sounded like, and by God, I felt I was next in line to kick some New Age business butt.
But instead, I went into a swoon, and I could feel my powers fade. I lost confidence, and clients, and then gigs, and soon I was down to a couple of loyal clients, paying me to do things just to be nice.
In my fear I made up a brutal joke, renaming my business Big Canary because the only future i could envision was me as a bird in a giant cage, singing for my masters like Tweety.
I barely did business in that capacity, but it reflected a trend that disturbed me, me losing my individuality to my ghost clients, writing for their pleasure, not mine -- or yours.
You do not have to labor with too many crazy clients, driven by ego and ignorance, wanting their name to be up in lights, even if it was you that did the heavy lifting. You do not have to do that more than a few times to feel sullied and slavish. It was the opposite of what i wanted, lashing myself to a warlord to protect me through the cold season.
Oh, those were hard days. I signed up with a series of well-connected loners who wanted to become authors. Most were brilliant but a little cracked, boiling with desire but ruined by some fatal flaw that kept them from making sense, and it was their fond wish that I help them overcome that flaw.
Each had enough money to float me in, and that was my crime -- turning my services over to them. I made them the warlords, and I was the scribe in distress. I did it because the economy terrified me, and I had lost confidence in my ability to survive on talent and pluck. I needed a bully with a gun.
And that was six years ago. The economy has been like a bathtub full of lukewarm jello, draining slowly. It was slow then, but you can sense it starting to swirl now, and the glup glup glup sound of lives disappearing along the rim.
My friends, a great fear has formed over top of us, like a sweltering sun that wants to cook the courage out of us. We now know it to be a great depression, like the ones that overtook our nation three times in the 1800s, and once in the 1900s. And now it is the 2000s, and this one means business.
I didn't want to believe it either. When I got laid off it was like a shiver that went through me but stuck and stayed. My guts shivered for over a week. Let this cup pass, I prayed. Please don't let this thing happen to me.
But you know what? There is no reliable protection in a barbarous age. The Internet won;t save us, our beautiful lawn won't save us, our 401(k)s won't keep the wind from the door.
We're in a new age, and the choices are stark. Surrender to a warlord and live within his walls and by his rules. Or find a way to become one yourself. It is the challenge of our times. It is the challenge of your life.
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