So you're a writer, huh?

No, really. She did.

“Do you write? I feel that’s the direction you should take,” she said to me in our session. Okay, technically she’s an Intuitive, but her clairvoyance put me on a path. “Have you ever written before?” And at first I thought No. Then I remembered the plays and monologues I wrote in high school, the scenes and characters I created for sketch comedy, the break-up letters and notes of gratitude I sent, the road-diaries I kept when traveling, the graduate term papers handed back to me for edits because they were too long, the blog posts I wrote as part of my job, and the basic outline of chapter titles I had for a memoir I’d maybe write someday. “So what’s stopping you?” she asked me.

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Good question. What indeed?

 

We think of a Renaissance Man (despite its gendered specificity) as a person of many talents, interests, and passions—a Leonardo da Vinci, a Nicolaus Copernicus, or a Benjamin Franklin, though not historically correct. But I’m a renaissance man in the lowercase sense. The word comes from French for “rebirth.” And I don’t mean “born again” (if you are, that’s great, I don’t want to hear about it though). But more that I’ve embraced some large changes mid-life, and I am revitalized, renewed, and reborn.

 

I pursued acting for 25 years. I chased that dream and went to school for it—twice—even getting an MFA in Acting. I could finally declare in mellifluous tones at dinner parties and salons, “Why, yes, I am a classically trained actor,” and then deeply bow with practiced flourish to everyone’s reverent ooh’s and aah’s. I lived the dream Late Teens Me imagined, but Late Thirties Me found that reality much less dreamy.

 

Like many of us do, I approached the precipice of 40 and began to rethink what I wanted out of life. I didn’t need a convertible or hair plugs, but to ask the question again, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” And I didn’t know. But I knew an actor’s life was no longer enough. There were some other factors encouraging change: I got sober, I came out of the closet at 35, I outlived my father, and I was overwhelmed with grief over the loss of my mother. But you’ll have to read more about all that in my book.

 

What’s an appropriate length of time for massive life transitions—not only career, sexuality, and geography, but change in one's thoughts and feelings? I don’t know. So I got stuck in the metaphysical mud for a few years. Then purely as a lark, I consulted an Intuitive. I started the session skeptical, until she split me open a minute in and showed me all my parts. She not only told me I should start writing, she said, “This is going to be a big year for you. A lot of change is coming, whether you want it to or not.” Within two weeks the world came crashing to a halt and I lost my job with the lockdown. She was right about that, so maybe I should just write. Let’s see where that takes me.

 

Did I take the next two years to write an honest, funny, heartfelt, sad, and hopeful memoir because she said I should write? Or did she tell me the thing I needed to hear at the exact time I needed to hear it? Or maybe there is no such thing as clairvoyance and we determine our own destinies? I don’t know any of that either. 

Maybe I’ll ask my Tarot cards.