Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

I’ve never been one for milestone birthdays, but this one is different. It feels like a milestone, and so a few days ago I decided to just go with it.

What I didn’t expect, though, was that this “go with it” approach has engendered a fair bit of introspection. I know. Shocker, right? Still, it doesn’t feel wrong to take a long look back in order to see the long view forward.

In a few short weeks, I’ll be sixty years old. Not bad for a kid who never thought he’d live past the age of twenty-six. I’m in good health, take no prescription meds, and sure, I’ve got a dodgy knee and could benefit from losing some of that IPA-paunch I’ve developed, but overall, I’m not in danger of punching my ticket any time soon.

So, I’m on the cusp of what feels like a new chapter. What have my previous chapters been?

My twenties were spent—not to put too fine a point on it—finding a mate. I’d always wanted to be married, from an early age, and so I spent this decade first finding someone who’d agree to marry me, and then figuring out what the hell that meant. It wasn’t easy. We were poor; we lived in crap apartments, drove crap cars, ate crap food, but were full of youth, vigor, and idealistic dreams of a bright future.

My thirties were a transition. I spent the decade building a career and discovering hidden gifts. Being a college dropout with credits in the Performance Arts, a career in computers was, well, let’s call it a stretch. For decades, I’d figured my career would be playing viola in orchestras, but that didn’t pan out as a viable option, so I had to push for something else. I fell into IT by accident, but parlayed my aptitude into a succession of positions that gave us the wherewithal to live comfortably, even if it didn’t light a fire of passion in my heart. But as I gave up on the dream of a life of rehearsals, rosin, and bright lights, I explored other options for creative expression, and thanks to some friends, found I also had an aptitude for writing.

Writing was the dream that fueled my forties. Successes with short stories convinced me to try my hand at long-form works. While still working in IT, and struggling there with layoffs, increased workloads, new languages, new tools, and dealing with the continuous parade of CIOs who were more interested in where they were going next than in where they were now, I was also writing—and selling—novels. There’s a definite bell curve to this decade, with 2001–2004 being the acme and the downturn, as my Fallen Cloud series was picked up by Roc and the SF Book Club, and then dropped before completion. I ended the decade bitter and depressed and, to top it all off, I suffered two minor strokes (because the first one wasn’t warning enough).

The fifties were the most difficult. It was another transitional decade filled with change. Writing was difficult. My parents were dying. We took in a young woman in distress and got her back on track, a good thing to do but definitely a major stress factor. Work continued to be awful. And addiction on both sides of our family created drama neither of us were looking for. Then, a year ago, things hit a fever pitch, and everything was very nearly destroyed.

Now I’m coming up on my sixties. What will fill the coming days, months, years? I’ve been in reaction-mode for so long, that it’s all I know, but that hasn’t been working very well for me. My fifties have left me tired, bruised, gun-shy, burnt out, and ultimately unfulfilled. I hate my job, I’m doing nothing with my writing, and my enjoyment of cooking and fine potables has become an unhealthy coping mechanism.

In deciding to take this arbitrary base-ten milestone as an actual milestone, it’s important for me to decide the direction that I want to travel. No more will the storms of modern life be the only wind in my sails. I will decide where I want to go, and set my course by the stars that I want to follow.

In my next decade, I want to produce something of which I will be proud, and those things—a completed novel, a well-tended garden, a new language, hell even a clean and ordered garage—they take time and discipline. They don’t supply immediate gratification. But if I change my focus, if each day I take a look toward the horizon instead of concentrating only on the things in front of me, I will eventually see the progress.

But, for the next three weeks, it’s nothing but screwing around and indulging my inner child. It’ll be my birthday present to myself.

And I’m going to enjoy it.

Dammit.

k