Where Was My Friend With The Selectric Typewriter?

A few months back I got on a podcast kick and listened to a lot of Jeff Pearlman's TWO WRITER'S SLINGING YANG and Marc Maron's WTF PODCAST, focusing on writers. I love listening to writers talking about writing. I don't care what kind of writing, it's just great listening to people talk about their process and insightful. But I also get bummed out. One of Maron's podcasts is still sticking with me: his interview with Aaron Sorkin.

Sorkin is a writer I admire a great deal. I've had some of my dialogue compared to his. The interview was riveting, yet I walked away with a vague melancholy that's been gumming up the works for weeks. (It's not the only reason this is happening but it's nothing I want to write about publicly right now.) Sorkin told a story how he was a struggling actor in New York City and a friend asked him to hold on to his IBM Selectric typewriter while he went out of town. In a moment of loneliness, Sorking started typing dialogue and never looked back. It's a great story, especially the way he tells it. But I'm still thinking one thing all these weeks later:

WHERE WAS MY FRIEND THAT NEEDED ME TO HOLD ON TO THEIR IBM SELECTRIC TYPEWRITER?????

Success is heavily reliant on the support we get. Sorkin talked about his friendship with William Goldman, who became a mentor. I didn't have one of those. I listened to another WTF Podcast where Seth McFarlane talked about his career and how so much of it hinged on the support of his parents and the people around him.

I thought back to when I was younger and the support that I received. It didn't feel like it was much, but memory plays tricks on us, altering things, moving them around for new information while repressing other things only to have them bubble up on a random February car ride home from work. Yet I still don't remember a lot of support. I didn't have a mentor. I didn't know a lot of writers around me. (Much of this was during the pre-Internet days.) I knew that my closest friend fully supported me, yet he didn't have a Selectric kicking around. I had a few ex-girlfriends that saw my writing as a waste of time. (Hence the reason they are exes, I suppose.) Kim doesn't entirely understand this writing thing, but she supports it and that's all I need.

I've talked about things like this before. I've made my own decisions and I'm where I am because of me. And I like where I am. I look at the two men I wrote about and the lives they have. Financials aside, I'm not sure. Sorkin's divorced with one kid. McFarlane is a notorious bachelor. I love what I have. I think of the SIMPSONS episode where Homer gets our of debt and quits the nuclear plant to become a pin jockey at the bowling alley, complete with him burning a bridge. When things fall apart with the arrival of Maggie, Mr. Burns puts up a sign that Homer turns from "Don't forget, you're here forever" into "Do it for her." It's a touching moment and one that I live every day. I don't know if I'd trade all the days I've had with my family for a modicum of success that either of those gentlemen did. I'm lucky that I have the support that I have now and maybe this was the path I needed to take to get there.