But What Now?

In the March 9th edition of Parade Magazine, Frank McCourt wrote a two page article called We All Can Have Second Acts (& Third!). I read it and hung onto it and read it again.

Mr. McCourt came to this country as an Irish immigrant. He initially earned his money picking up garbage. Knowing he loved writing, but following his practical mind instead, he became an English teacher.

He refers to this decision as the voices in his head, the one who knew that his dream was to be a writer and the other that said, “Yeah, but that won’t put bread on the table.”

The parallel for me is that teaching English was what I dreamed of doing, although I never did become an English teacher. I did eventually get a degree in English Literature at the advanced age of 39, but by that time I was pretty entrenched in the working world, ‘putting bread on the table,’ with no plans of going back to school to become a teacher.

But I digress… After 30 years of teaching, he retired and as he puts it, made little marks on paper until he had a book. In his words, “I stood before kids and talked about writing. Many of my students were superb writers; some were geniuses. I envied them.”

That book was Angela’s Ashes which went on to be a bestseller and then a major motion picture.

Frank McCourt was 66 when he had his first bestseller! Stamped on a beautiful picture of him sitting in a deck chair with a serene lake at his back is a circle that says “Live Longer, Better, Wiser.”

That’s good advice for anyone, but the more important message for me that there is time to follow my dream, i.e., do what I love. Reading this article again helps to solidify my decision to retire from my soulless job at the first possible moment I can.

Occasionally I need these reminders to help me get over the current paycheck that keeps so many of us tied to a life we just muddle through but hardly even notice anymore, except for all the complaining we do about our coworkers who are as miserable, or more, than we are.

Viva la second and third acts! I’m there.