Rant #2,444: My Back Pages

I have never let my work situation keep me from filling up my days with things that I have wanted to do, and now have time to do.

I have rarely been what you can describe as "bored" during the nearly nine months that I have been out of work, and I have never been complacent, either.

When I look back on this personal nightmare that I am going through, I will be able to say that I did everything I could to find suitable work, but there were forces against me that prevented me from doing just that.

Call it what you want--ageism, trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, or simply that I spent too much time at my previous job to be considered "relevant" by people doing the hiring that are maybe half my age--I simply ran straight into brick walls at everything I did, and every turn I made.

Throw in the ultimate curveball--the coronavirus pandemic--and I guess that it simply was not in the cards for me to find suitable work of any kind.

Two actual face-to-face interviews and two phone interviews over nine months demonstrates exactly what I am saying, and other promises and bargains made to me simply have not come through/

So as you know, on July 1, I had to do what I thought of as being unthinkable many months ago, although I did tell people even five and six years ago that this is where I would be--I had to file for early retirement and Social Security.

Now, the book has not been totally closed on me. Including this week, I have about seven payments remaining for unemployment insurance, and also as I have told you in the past, I continue to look for suitable work each and every day, mainly in the morning but all throughout the day.

My phone is at my side at all times just in case, but other than looking for employment using my phone, the only calls I get are those trying to sell me things that I don't want, and their persistence--I call them "phony phone calls"--is truly alarming, in particular since they are supposedly illegal.

Whatever the case, life as a person without a job has not been the panacea that some have made it out to be, at least for me.

I have other worries, like my parents and my son and my wife. My wife has been on the front lines of this since day one as a bank teller. Although rarely lumped in with other front line workers, don't tell me that bank tellers have had it easy during this pandemic--it is just the opposite. People panic, want access to their money, and have no patience--on top of the fact that she is handling money on a daily basis, the most germ-laden commodity on earth.

And as you know, we have already had one scare through her and her work, and that is one too many.

My son is another worry. He is on furlough, a perpetual furlough which I do believe it taking something of a toll on him. He wants to work, his work has told us that the ultimately want him back, but they have not given us a time frame, so he sits here with little or no direction. He does speak to people during the week to help him get him out of his doldrums, but he has not had any contact with those he knows that are his age since the pandemic hit. Talk about social distancing … this is extreme social distancing for lack of a better term. He has not seen or heard from people in his social network--his bowling and baseball leagues--since February.

My parents are another matter entirely. Happily, they are relatively healthy and alert, but at 88 and 89 years old, respectively, they still have much to worry about during this period, and thus, so do I. That scare we had a few weeks ago brought everything to the forefront, and happily, we came out OK. But what happened if we didn't, and what affect would it have had on my parents? I don't even want to think about it.

Everything I described comes back to me. In my family, I am the center point for everything, so whatever impacts one member of my family will directly impact me.

But like I said, I have tried to keep myself busy, mainly doing mundane tasks to keep me active during this weird period we are in right now.

One of the things that I did was to write a novel, a 37,000 page opus that I happen to think is pretty good, in particular because it allowed me to branch out from the writing I was doing professionally to something that I had never done before.

I have talked about that novel off and on here, and as you know, I did enter it into a contest for first writers, and while it did not win the prize, it was an inspiration to me and my thoughts on what I wrote.

I took a webinar about first-time writers and their work, got a few ideas, and began submitting my novel to publishers.

Two publishers liked a lot of what I wrote, but turned me down for one reason or another. The other publishers I contacted never got back to me, but every Monday, I send out my novel to another publisher, hoping that someone will give me a chance.

Realistically, I think this process is going to be like the job search process, with me knocking my head against the wall, but I still do it the way it should be done, and like with the job search, maybe I will get lucky.

Here is my pitch. It is not like a job pitch, but I followed all the rules that I learned in the contest and the webinar to craft something short yet interesting:

"Growing up different … the subject of constant ridicule … and then waking up one day and finding that the shoe is now on the other foot.

This is the story of Abraham Lincoln Panim, the subject of Larry Lapka’s debut novel, “Rat Face (The Strange Tale of Abraham Lincoln Panim).”

I am a former trade book journalist who decided to pen a totally fictional story about this poor soul, who was born with a malady called ‘zoomorphism’, a very rare disease of my own creation where animal characteristics are found in humans. Although most people outgrow the problem as they get older, the title character is at first scarred by his malady, but then though a stroke of serendipity, overcomes it ... or so he thinks.

This is a story geared to the young adult reader, and there are so many twists and turns through the completed 37,000 word manuscript to keep readers of all ages interested.

I would love for you to handle this story, If you have any interest, I can provide a few chapters for your perusal, or the entire manuscript if necessary. And I have many other story ideas for future novels too.

Please contact me via email or with the phone number provided below. I would love to hear from you.

You might never eat cheese the same way again!

Thanks."

That is pretty much the basic form letter that I use, and I adapt it each week to make it better, but that is the template that I am using,

I have not only sent out the novel to publishers--some require you to send them the entire manuscript, others just the first 10 pages or so--but I have also sent it out to a few people I know.

I plan to send out the manuscript to even more publishers in the coming weeks, and I might even make it available on Facebook and to you, the readers of this blog.

And I want this thing published, so self-publishing might be the avenue I use if I cannot get a publisher to take me on.

I would probably have to begin a GoFundMe campaign to do it, but honestly, I have not looked into this format at all just yet, so I have no idea what it would cost me.

But let's not put the cart before the horse.

In the midst of everything going on to me and around me, I was able to write a novel, and I do believe in miracles, both on the job market and the book market.

Maybe somebody will read my novel, see its potential, and publish it after it has been edited and polished up a bit.

Maybe not.

But I have to have hopes, and I have to have dreams, because without them, I truly have nothing.