Infinite Midlife Crisis
A midlife crisis spawns a flurry of content. You are the beneficiary. Congratulations!
The first red flag was at a stoplight on Wilshire. Driving into the hideous setting sun, gridlocked near Sepulveda. I was dry-crying, nearly hyperventilating, chanting: “Help me God help me God help me God.”
The second red flag was also at a stoplight on Wilshire, two weeks and four hours later. This time heading east. The stoplights were blinking red. A police officer in a yellow traffic vest was directing cars.
“Maybe I should be a police officer,” I actually said out loud, to no one.
Perhaps I’d been unduly influenced by the evening I’d just spent with FBI agents in Westwood—a story best saved for another time—but it wasn’t the federal law enforcement that had inspired me. What really lit my fuse on that blustery October evening was the traffic cop waving cars across Crescent Drive at 9pm.
A few blocks later, another brilliant idea started to take hold: “Maybe I could go back to school and become a private investigator.”
This is called a midlife crisis, folks. It doesn’t always look like a tacky Porsche and a poorly concealed bald spot. Sometimes it’s as subtle as a new Substack and a few white hairs in your beard.
The entire time that I was 36, I kept telling people I was 37. This was an attempt to lessen the blow of 37 when it finally came. It was a bad strategy, similar to my ingenious modus operandi of “never getting excited” about potentially good things on the horizon. I’ve employed that tactic as a way of avoiding disappointment for nearly a decade, only to (very recently) discover just how deeply unhelpful it actually is.
Because disappointment isn’t a problem. Crushing cynicism is a problem.
Similarly, 37 isn’t a problem. But as I sat there in the evening flow of LA traffic, it sure felt like one. “I would have been a good lawyer,” I thought. “But now it’s too late. No one goes to law school at 37.”
There are two inherent flaws in this logic— one is that plenty of people go to law school at 37. The other is that I am not 37.
I got home, blabbered to my wife about my early-onset midlife crisis, and then promptly realized— I’m actually 38.
Honestly, it made me feel better. Not just because I was finally free from the two-year nightmare of believing I was 37. But because 38 is a slightly more appropriate age to feel such ennui.
And, so, the ennui persists.
I have an upcoming series of posts next year called Never Build a River Empire. Therein, I’ll dive into what lessons, if any, can be gleaned from unrealized creative ambition. Without giving anything away, I can tell you one thing up front that I’ve learned in the process of writing it—there has been a discernible pattern in my life, and it’s not the obvious embarrassments that I revel in highlighting. It’s actually something more subtle and heartening: I try to do a lot of things.
So of course I’ve failed at a lot of things.
I’m someone who sees my failures with heightened clarity, but I usually need a third party to explain my own accomplishments to me. And yet, I am finally starting to see that, in a certain light, all of my accumulated failures are something of an accomplishment in and of themselves.
For me, trying and failing is a more effective balm for the weary soul than that narcotic ditch-dwelling-duo of inaction and complacency.1 Of course, the older I get, the more suspicious I get of new undertakings. Have I tried something like this before? Is there a clear reason it didn’t it work? Is there something I know now that I didn’t know then?
My latest undertaking is fairly straightforward: I’m writing fiction and essays that I release here on the Heated Forest. Not because I have a lot of time on my hands. And not because the world is clamoring for it. (The world rarely clamors for anything good). I’m doing it because I want to improve as a writer. Because it holds me accountable. And because I’m tired of writing things that are consumed almost exclusively by aloof Hollywood executives under the perpetual twilight-sedation of pragmatic cynicism.2
It’s all good news for you, dear reader, as I am here to pamper you with stories, essays, and esoteric scraps, both assembled and asunder, so that one of us may benefit from the shifting tideways of my heavy heart.
Which is all to say: this coming year, the Heated Forest will feature some of the greatest fiction ever written.3
It starts off on in January with Dream Wars. If the world were ending tomorrow and there was only one story I could finish editing and ship off to that big Library of Congress in the sky, it would be this one. It takes place in the larger world of a novel I’m writing called Children of Light. Dream Wars is about a film director who begins to suspect that he’s come under the hypnotic influence of a malevolent studio executive. Speed Read AI compares it to Barton Fink, Mulholland Drive, and Get Out. I don’t know about that, but I’ll take it!
Also coming in 2025 is Oxygen: a brand new short story about a father and son stationed on an abandoned mining planet. They get more than they bargained for when they find themselves on the wrong side of the grizzly, ruthless locals. It’s a survival thriller in the vein of Blake Crouch. Think Unforgiven meets Breakdown on Tatooine.
And in March, I’ll let you read a letter to my son, years before he gets to! (Are you incredibly lucky? Or just a subscriber to the Heated Forest? And is there really a difference?)
There’s plenty more on the way that I haven’t told you about. Partly because I don’t want to overwhelm you, and partly because some of it is still just a twinkle in my eye. But please know, from the bottom of my heart, I appreciate you being here, and I appreciate you reading. If you like something, let me know. If you hate something, let someone else know. Like, comment, share. Do all the things! Or sit back and passively consume. The choice is yours.
Before I go, I want to call attention to a few Substacks I think you might really enjoy.
Muse’s Moonshine - The infrequent musings of a gifted singer-songwriter currently trapped in Boise, Idaho.
A Fan’s Notes, by Nick Hornby - A music lover, author, and human being posting frequently about music, writing, and humanity.
Serious Trouble - My all-time favorite non-trivia podcast, where columnist Josh Barro and former federal prosecutor Ken White dig into the latest legal issues in politics and culture with insight and wit.
And while they’re not Substacks, here are two more, because I love you:
The Off Ramp Trivia Podcast - The funniest, hardest-working septuagenarians I know try to stump each other every week with a grab bag of fascinating trivia that just might make you a slightly less insufferable dinner party guest. They have over 250 episodes of evergreen content, all available for free.
Icebreaker - And finally, the award for “my favorite publication ever” goes to Salon Deputy Editor Daria Solovieva’s free, weekly bulletin on the latest news in tech and startups coming out of Eastern Europe. She’s posting stories weeks (and months) before the lamestream media pick them up, so check it out. It’s good stuff.
Well, that’s pretty much a wrap on 2024. I hope you’re en route to a holiday break that allows you to relax, breathe deep, and get ready for whatever the hell comes next.4
See you next year.
-BC
To be clear- not everyone who is still is inert. Not everyone who is inactive is complacent. I’m only speaking for myself.
A disposition that’s marginally worse than its more sophisticated older brother, cynical pragmatism.
By me.
Whether or not you’re spending the holidays with family, take to heart Mos Def’s immortal words from the Kanye-produced 2004 banger “Sunshine”:
Be good to your family, y'all
No matter where your families are
'Cause everybody need family, y'all
This really resonated with me. As someone who's twenty-nine that tells people he's thirty, it's starting to become apparent it's a weak coping mechanism. Keep up the good work!
I’m for one am stoked you started publishing your stuff regularly to share these gems with the weary and thirsty internet wanderers. How the hell else can we jolt ourselves from the “twilight-sedation of pragmatic cynicism” without this antidote to the internet?