I’ve worked with the exceptional artist David Mack on Fight Club 2 and Fight Club 3. He says the secret to career happiness is to recall what you loved to do at the age of nine or ten, then pursue that as a profession. I agree. Do you? What did you love to do before puberty attacked?
I wanted to read and write and do something to "change the world"... So I received my degree in Physics and Mathematics. Now I'm trying to learn the craft of fiction and write because that's ultimately what I want to do. Hence part of why I follow you.
I wrote incredibly gory stories on a typewriter (my own sequel to 'Mrs Frisby and The Rats of Nimh' where they all encountered a combine harvester sticks in the mind), listened to Phil Collins a lot and played board games.
I'm not so keen on Phil Collins now.....but do seem to have rendered myself largely unemployable despite getting over this hurdle of taste!
I wanted to be a judge.....then I became a lawyer and, well, found that beneath the robes...lay the same mea culpas that everyone suffers. I drew tanks, aircraft etc. even before that.....this had led me on a winding road to painting and publication/exhibition. Tada. He's right.
I just wanted to be Kevin McCallister from Home Alone at that time. Since that is a story, I suppose I wanted to tell stories, which is what I now do as a writer. Okay, I think this theory is legit.
I was dreaming of better days and planning to write just one book to replace the thousands I had to have borrowed by that point. So Im basically where I left off ........ As for hormones, my reproductive organs along with a few other important body parts were destroyed due to car accidents and ultimately removed. So I entered my second childhood early. Can't complain. I gotta agree. I also have used to watch MTV nonstop and sing and dance along. These days it Club YouTube lol. Where's Carson Daly and Jenny McCarthy. Even though I face-planted a highway and I have reoccurring Bells Palsy on the other side .....I started posting the videos on Facebook. I've got a face only a dog would love ......... Lolololololol ....I
I loved football. And wouldnt ya know it, made a career out of it. Worked in the NFL for a bunch of years and now work in sports tech dealing with football teams.
I really liked gluing googly eyes on walnuts and calling them owls or calling them Ma'am and Mister and sometimes digging holes in the ground to hide things I imagined I'd find later, but when those things were walnuts, I only ever found the googly eyes, left behind.
25 percent was; Train driver, Railroad policeman, Play the violin in weddings, Play Arabic Drums ( Darbuka) and 75 percent was to become a Soccer player ( I've tried ti'll I was 16 but, failed.. I still wonder why)
I wanted to be a cop, a fashion designer, a writer and a psychiatrist. I’ve made a living owning concession stands, screen printing t-shirts, UPcycling clothing, and antiquing. Also, as a newspaper reporter, along with various retail jobs. Spencer Gifts in the 90’s was my favorite job along with selling fragrance for a wholesale company.
R.I.P. Anne Rice. Although for someone who argued so well for the afterlife and ways to sidestep mortality, I'd prefer to think her stroke was a cover story for something more... eternal.
When I was a kid I was obsessed with Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey and I spent one summer writing a bunch and throwing them on Angelfire. Some are alright, others flat out suck. But I really did enjoy writing them. Also two of them were ones a friend of mine claimed he made up — that is the “try-angle” and the one about pigs and bacon. I think he stole those, which I didn’t realize at the time.
When I was 9 years old I sent away for the Mason Shoes Salesman kit, then spent the next two summers selling shoes door-to-door. I tried selling shoes again as an adult but it was indoors, at Macy's, and I did not like it.
About 9 or 10 I borrowed a 'Dirty Joke' book from one of my school friends. I began memorizing every joke in the book even when I didn't understand them. It took many years before I understood why 'mouthwash' was what comes after '69.' The rest of my life, I have been interested in making jokes. The only thing this has ever done for me is make people tell me to shut up.
I made my own greeting cards at around that age, called them 'Krismark', logo was a pizza slice... also very into Mad magazine. Currently considering designing cards whenever I manage to move to a place where I can have a desk. Mad sucks now, so that's off.
Here's my problem with that. I don't think I can recall what I loved to do at age 10. Besides play video games. Which I guess could be a career. I also loved eating Lunchables and going to the toy store. But I agree with the essence of it.
There’s a great part in the temple of art doc with you and David talking about this very thing. “Puberty reduces everything to one priority. But if you can rediscover the thing you loved to do at 9 years old, you can be happy for the rest of your life.” Amen
Play with action figures. Star Wars and especially GI Joe and He-Man. That gave way to video games and that obsession shared space with me all the way from puberty to these middle ages.
Writing. I think the last time I finished a story to my satisfaction I was about 12. Also spending time in the woods alone with my stray dog. Maybe I'd have been a survival guide. My parents were always gone for days at a time on drinking binges, the nearest house being miles away... No phone. No television. For whatever reason I still long for those days of solitude in the woods of of northeast Ohio... to have that kind of time again (and a working typewriter!)
It took me all but 2/10ths of second to morph this simple question into something existential. What did I like at age 9/10? I LIKED HOW SIMPLE EVERYTHING SEEMED!
I absolutely agree and find it to be true for myself. I loved writing poems, playing outside, fingerpaints, exploring, running away, speeding down the hill on my Big Wheel and reading all the books I wasn't supposed to read.
I used to love setting up my whole bedroom floor as a “Barbie hotel.” Dozens of guest rooms. A lounge. A lobby. Back offices. A cafe. Many of the Barbies had jobs. Some were guests. Others were part of a spy ring.
Apart from (quite a popular answer here!) shoplifting as a kid, I used to love to write stories, draw, and make things for my toys.
I used to make "cut outs" of drawings I'd do of some of my favorite characters, coloring them in, and taping them to cardboard so I could play with them like action figures. Sometimes, I'd make little cardboard box "houses" for some of my cut-outs or action figures, coloring in wallpaper I'd glue to the inside of the walls.
And sometimes, I'd just have tea parties for my stuffed animals inside my closet. I'd have each one of them "knock" on the closet door like they were arriving to the party and introduce them to all the guests and eat cookies on the floor of the closet. I was a weird little kid. And probably a weird adult, too.
Plagiarism. Wait! No, I meant writing and drawing knock-off versions of the comics and Saturday morning cartoons I loved as kid. Ninja Turtles, X-men, Ghostbusters etc. Mimicry is how most inspired people learn right? Until you grow up and realize imitation isn’t exactly flattery. Those were good times though. And it wasn’t all for nothing. I have been passing as a mature adult for sometime now and no one has caught on to me yet. Go figure.
For me, if it has more to do with what I had a pull towards than what I actually did. Definitely some overlap, but what I did at that age vs what I had an interest in was mostly different. However, one overlap was an interest in human behavior and hearing people's stories. I loved talking to senior citizens back then and still love to hear their stories now. Probably is related towards my interest to writing as well.
Hey Chuck, do you know about those video courses called Masterclass? Such and such teaches this, she teaches that. Would you ever do one? There's a few writers on there too. Including David Sedaris!
I can see it now. "Chuck Palahniuk Teaches Transgressive Fiction." It's perfect! I think a lot of people would love that.
Standing on cliff overlooking the Irish Sea, that is what a strange Rabbi told me. I agree. I think what we loved at 9 can be likened to a sentence, or a part of a sentence. And the years between 9 and now are a paragraph added around it. Now, the secret is to push forward through paragraph with eyes peeled for traces of the source sentence. And when we spot it, double down on it.
Video games and history. Back in the 90s, my NES light glowed red throughout the night so I would not lose my gaming progress. When I wasn't stomping through Legend of Zelda dungeons, I was sitting in my mom's library looking through tomes of antiques and antiquities.
Now it is small delves into history for indie TTRPG writing projects I do as a side gig. I really enjoy this work and have the privilege to collaborate with great teams of writers, editors, and artists who are also passionate about gaming and making things together. I still have to attend the grind stone of the day job so the laptop stays charged.
If I had to limit it to the time before puberty, I would have to say I loved playing with words. The most influential pop culture thing would be in the mid-70's when Mad Magazine used to do parodies of popular movies, but for some reason they would add in popular songs with the lyrics changed to be funny, "Sung to the tune of..." I started to rewrite lyrics to songs on the radio, just for my own entertainment or to insult my brother. Today I still get out my cell phone when I have the germ of a song idea to record for future reference. More commonly I enjoy just writing a haiku poem about some situation in my life, whenever it seems good to do so. On the Gray Mirror substack, political writer Curtis Yarvin has been tossing in his non-rhyming poems lately, to which I sometimes comment with an official 5-7-5 syllable structured haiku, for fun, seems right.
Drawing? So became a dentist...
I wanted to create stories. Everything from film to novels.
I wanted to read and write and do something to "change the world"... So I received my degree in Physics and Mathematics. Now I'm trying to learn the craft of fiction and write because that's ultimately what I want to do. Hence part of why I follow you.
I wrote incredibly gory stories on a typewriter (my own sequel to 'Mrs Frisby and The Rats of Nimh' where they all encountered a combine harvester sticks in the mind), listened to Phil Collins a lot and played board games.
I'm not so keen on Phil Collins now.....but do seem to have rendered myself largely unemployable despite getting over this hurdle of taste!
Watch a lot of Simpsons.
Yah. I tried to make Money from the kids around me. Convince them to overthrow these confused Adults. Then I tried to not get hit. So yah.
I wanted to be a judge.....then I became a lawyer and, well, found that beneath the robes...lay the same mea culpas that everyone suffers. I drew tanks, aircraft etc. even before that.....this had led me on a winding road to painting and publication/exhibition. Tada. He's right.
Stories, it was creating tales
I just wanted to be Kevin McCallister from Home Alone at that time. Since that is a story, I suppose I wanted to tell stories, which is what I now do as a writer. Okay, I think this theory is legit.
I was dreaming of better days and planning to write just one book to replace the thousands I had to have borrowed by that point. So Im basically where I left off ........ As for hormones, my reproductive organs along with a few other important body parts were destroyed due to car accidents and ultimately removed. So I entered my second childhood early. Can't complain. I gotta agree. I also have used to watch MTV nonstop and sing and dance along. These days it Club YouTube lol. Where's Carson Daly and Jenny McCarthy. Even though I face-planted a highway and I have reoccurring Bells Palsy on the other side .....I started posting the videos on Facebook. I've got a face only a dog would love ......... Lolololololol ....I
I loved football. And wouldnt ya know it, made a career out of it. Worked in the NFL for a bunch of years and now work in sports tech dealing with football teams.
I really liked gluing googly eyes on walnuts and calling them owls or calling them Ma'am and Mister and sometimes digging holes in the ground to hide things I imagined I'd find later, but when those things were walnuts, I only ever found the googly eyes, left behind.
Not sure I'd have a very long career if I took up shoplifting as a profession.
Can I split them in percentages? please?
25 percent was; Train driver, Railroad policeman, Play the violin in weddings, Play Arabic Drums ( Darbuka) and 75 percent was to become a Soccer player ( I've tried ti'll I was 16 but, failed.. I still wonder why)
I wanted to be a cop, a fashion designer, a writer and a psychiatrist. I’ve made a living owning concession stands, screen printing t-shirts, UPcycling clothing, and antiquing. Also, as a newspaper reporter, along with various retail jobs. Spencer Gifts in the 90’s was my favorite job along with selling fragrance for a wholesale company.
R.I.P. Anne Rice. Although for someone who argued so well for the afterlife and ways to sidestep mortality, I'd prefer to think her stroke was a cover story for something more... eternal.
I played RPGs. Today, I design them for a living.
As a kid I loved wandering in the woods, spying on my neighbors and writing. I still do those things though I don't get paid for them. 😎
When I was a kid I was obsessed with Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey and I spent one summer writing a bunch and throwing them on Angelfire. Some are alright, others flat out suck. But I really did enjoy writing them. Also two of them were ones a friend of mine claimed he made up — that is the “try-angle” and the one about pigs and bacon. I think he stole those, which I didn’t realize at the time.
https://www.angelfire.com/poetry/slow302/
When I was 9 years old I sent away for the Mason Shoes Salesman kit, then spent the next two summers selling shoes door-to-door. I tried selling shoes again as an adult but it was indoors, at Macy's, and I did not like it.
Reading books and building things in my dad's shop.
I loved socializing with people outside my family. It was fascinating to learn people lived much differently than I did.
Is staring at the toy aisle for hours wishing I had money to afford the cool toys a profession?
About 9 or 10 I borrowed a 'Dirty Joke' book from one of my school friends. I began memorizing every joke in the book even when I didn't understand them. It took many years before I understood why 'mouthwash' was what comes after '69.' The rest of my life, I have been interested in making jokes. The only thing this has ever done for me is make people tell me to shut up.
I made my own greeting cards at around that age, called them 'Krismark', logo was a pizza slice... also very into Mad magazine. Currently considering designing cards whenever I manage to move to a place where I can have a desk. Mad sucks now, so that's off.
Here's my problem with that. I don't think I can recall what I loved to do at age 10. Besides play video games. Which I guess could be a career. I also loved eating Lunchables and going to the toy store. But I agree with the essence of it.
There’s a great part in the temple of art doc with you and David talking about this very thing. “Puberty reduces everything to one priority. But if you can rediscover the thing you loved to do at 9 years old, you can be happy for the rest of your life.” Amen
At age 9 I spent a lot of time devising cool ways to kill grasshoppers. Thank god and humanity I'm not a serial killer. Trust me.
Play with action figures. Star Wars and especially GI Joe and He-Man. That gave way to video games and that obsession shared space with me all the way from puberty to these middle ages.
Writing. I think the last time I finished a story to my satisfaction I was about 12. Also spending time in the woods alone with my stray dog. Maybe I'd have been a survival guide. My parents were always gone for days at a time on drinking binges, the nearest house being miles away... No phone. No television. For whatever reason I still long for those days of solitude in the woods of of northeast Ohio... to have that kind of time again (and a working typewriter!)
It took me all but 2/10ths of second to morph this simple question into something existential. What did I like at age 9/10? I LIKED HOW SIMPLE EVERYTHING SEEMED!
I absolutely agree and find it to be true for myself. I loved writing poems, playing outside, fingerpaints, exploring, running away, speeding down the hill on my Big Wheel and reading all the books I wasn't supposed to read.
I used to love setting up my whole bedroom floor as a “Barbie hotel.” Dozens of guest rooms. A lounge. A lobby. Back offices. A cafe. Many of the Barbies had jobs. Some were guests. Others were part of a spy ring.
Apart from (quite a popular answer here!) shoplifting as a kid, I used to love to write stories, draw, and make things for my toys.
I used to make "cut outs" of drawings I'd do of some of my favorite characters, coloring them in, and taping them to cardboard so I could play with them like action figures. Sometimes, I'd make little cardboard box "houses" for some of my cut-outs or action figures, coloring in wallpaper I'd glue to the inside of the walls.
And sometimes, I'd just have tea parties for my stuffed animals inside my closet. I'd have each one of them "knock" on the closet door like they were arriving to the party and introduce them to all the guests and eat cookies on the floor of the closet. I was a weird little kid. And probably a weird adult, too.
When I was a kid, I liked to write comments on Chuck Palahniuk's Substack.
Plagiarism. Wait! No, I meant writing and drawing knock-off versions of the comics and Saturday morning cartoons I loved as kid. Ninja Turtles, X-men, Ghostbusters etc. Mimicry is how most inspired people learn right? Until you grow up and realize imitation isn’t exactly flattery. Those were good times though. And it wasn’t all for nothing. I have been passing as a mature adult for sometime now and no one has caught on to me yet. Go figure.
For me, if it has more to do with what I had a pull towards than what I actually did. Definitely some overlap, but what I did at that age vs what I had an interest in was mostly different. However, one overlap was an interest in human behavior and hearing people's stories. I loved talking to senior citizens back then and still love to hear their stories now. Probably is related towards my interest to writing as well.
Hey Chuck, do you know about those video courses called Masterclass? Such and such teaches this, she teaches that. Would you ever do one? There's a few writers on there too. Including David Sedaris!
I can see it now. "Chuck Palahniuk Teaches Transgressive Fiction." It's perfect! I think a lot of people would love that.
masturbate, throw pinecones at frogs
Pre-puberty I had full intentions of becoming a Roman Catholic priest. Currently, I'm a drag queen. So...same thing?
Standing on cliff overlooking the Irish Sea, that is what a strange Rabbi told me. I agree. I think what we loved at 9 can be likened to a sentence, or a part of a sentence. And the years between 9 and now are a paragraph added around it. Now, the secret is to push forward through paragraph with eyes peeled for traces of the source sentence. And when we spot it, double down on it.
Paleontology. Nothing like digging up the ever elusive Psychosaurus-Rex
Video games and history. Back in the 90s, my NES light glowed red throughout the night so I would not lose my gaming progress. When I wasn't stomping through Legend of Zelda dungeons, I was sitting in my mom's library looking through tomes of antiques and antiquities.
Now it is small delves into history for indie TTRPG writing projects I do as a side gig. I really enjoy this work and have the privilege to collaborate with great teams of writers, editors, and artists who are also passionate about gaming and making things together. I still have to attend the grind stone of the day job so the laptop stays charged.
write!!!
If I had to limit it to the time before puberty, I would have to say I loved playing with words. The most influential pop culture thing would be in the mid-70's when Mad Magazine used to do parodies of popular movies, but for some reason they would add in popular songs with the lyrics changed to be funny, "Sung to the tune of..." I started to rewrite lyrics to songs on the radio, just for my own entertainment or to insult my brother. Today I still get out my cell phone when I have the germ of a song idea to record for future reference. More commonly I enjoy just writing a haiku poem about some situation in my life, whenever it seems good to do so. On the Gray Mirror substack, political writer Curtis Yarvin has been tossing in his non-rhyming poems lately, to which I sometimes comment with an official 5-7-5 syllable structured haiku, for fun, seems right.
I wanted to be a veterinarian, but now I’m in explosives. I didn’t know all the world had to offer at that point in my life.