If You Don’t Want to Do It for the Rest of Your Life, Don’t Do It Tomorrow

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One of my best friends died a few weeks ago, and, although it’s a small consolation, he left me with an important lesson.

You see, I can’t imagine that he was all that satisfied with the life that he was living (or, as T.S. Eliot wrote, the life he had lost in living), but I also can’t remember him doing much to change it.

This isn’t a criticism of my dead friend — if I could possess the strength of character he had, I would happily die tomorrow. I just think that the fear of failure really stuck to him hard, along with not having many successful people to look up to and who could encourage him to start. He was a supremely talented voice actor, and I think he could easily have gotten a job anywhere.

But he did the same thing today, every day, that he didn’t want to do for the rest of his life. And I took that as a lesson when he died before he ever really had a chance to live.

Of course, I’m not exactly cursed with the fear of failure or anything — there’s really no doubt in my mind that I’m going to “make it” as a writer. Most of what I do every day is in service of that goal because I want to write tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day after that.