During Mass for the feast of the Epiphany, the major liturgical dates for 2026 were proclaimed via chant. It was a lovely presentation to behold until my wife and I heard the cadence calling forth the date of Feb. 18 as the beginning of Lent. We looked at each other in astonishment. Here we were, with the “holiday” season over but Christmas season still in existence, and Lent is only six weeks away.
Time does not fly; it pulsates like a Millennium Falcon with an aftermarket hyperdrive. We are always reminded about how fast years go by when we get to the next January, but this year is going to be a little different — at least for me.
I have been writing since the sixth grade. I thought I was going to maintain my status as a writer in the entertainment industry until the end of my working days, but God had other plans. Due to the vagaries of trying to make a living this way, I had to pivot from following my muse to feeding my family. It meant eating some humble pie, and it hurt at first, but in so many ways it turned out to be a blessing.
One well may have been drying up on me, but a new one I did not expect began to fill up, and I discovered Catholic journalism, or it discovered me. Apologies to F. Scott Fitzgerald, but there was a second act in my writing life after all. There was still that annoying reality of having to feed, clothe, and educate children, so I also embarked on a different “day job.” These were also blessings. They all required my writing skills and were all nonprofit work, delivering some of the cardinal acts of mercy.
I went from pitching plots for television cop shows, with the aim of filling up my own coffers, to telling stories about providing for the poor to fill the treasury of the organizations that had taken on the task. I tell people that the two worlds I have inhabited were similar. I was telling stories in both instances, only in the nonprofit world, I was not making stuff up.
That is not to say I did not enjoy, even relish, my life as a working TV writer, though it became increasingly difficult to continually bend and compromise my standards to serve the needs of the zeitgeist in order to serve the wants of my checking account. There were certain times when I had difficulty looking at myself in the mirror at the end of the day.
I have never had that problem while plying my writing skills in my “normal” work life. But before anyone nominates me for a Nobel Peace prize, if my television career had been different, if two or three events turned one way instead of the other, I would have stayed. I would have been more financially well off, but I would have been less for it.
When those important dates were sung in church, I could not help but think of a less liturgically important looming date on the 2026 calendar: my retirement from the “day job.” In about six months, I will call it a day. I will no longer have to go to an office but stay warmly ensconced in my own home office. No more meetings, no more budgets and fiscal worries that are the natural predators to all nonprofits that rely on donations to exist.
I will have run that race for the last time. But whereas I may be feeling like the tank is empty when it comes to the five-day-a-week job, I find myself renewed daily when it comes to writing.
I plan on writing as a Catholic journalist until they pry the pen out of my hand. And as a great old movie writer once said, when asked if he ever worried about running out of things to write about: “The well fills up every day.”
I may be too old for my past life as a television writer, where turning 40 is usually the death knell, but Winston Churchill was 71 when he defeated Nazism, and Noah was a spry 500 when he was tasked with building the ark. So, if those guys can stay productive in their golden years, I see a lot more writing in my future — God willing.
