The roofing season recently ended.
I think I should do a better job of telling people that I’m in sales, but I don’t because I really want to be a writer/journalist.
Gag.
Cliché.
Who cares, and as someone who has been writing professionally for eight years, I can tell you, there isn’t any money in it.
I can earn money much faster by sitting in front of people and matching them up with a home exterior product that works for them and their budget.
In fact, me doing that funds all the “cool” stuff I do.
I actually love roofing sales though, and despite my best efforts, I don’t hate writing, even though there have been days that I have sat up and wished I had been given a gift that could generate more income, like computer software or mechanical engineering.
I mean, writing?
Again, gag, sigh, etc.
BTW: don’t put you’re a writer on your dating profile.
I tried that from 27-30 and was mercilessly rejected by women I thought were my equal, but for their part saw me as a penniless bum with about as much future earning potential as a street violinist (no offense to the street violinists who are indeed making it work).
I’ve even tried to convince myself that I don’t really want to write.
Yeah, Quentin, just put down that pen, er, keyboard and focus on “money-making activities,” as the online gurus say.
Ick.
No, I don’t hate capitalism, and yes, I love money just as much as anyone else, but there does come a point when it’s just numbers on a screen.
Mortgage gets paid.
Insurance is handled (man, those premiums don’t ever seem to decrease though).
Fresh groceries are in the fridge (super happy I don’t have to kill an animal in order to ingest protein).
I even ordered the prime rib last week when we went out, spending a whopping $8 more for a luxury item because I couldn’t stomach saving the money and then having to eat a greasy, soul-sucking cheeseburger that comes with way too many overly-salted fries.
If this is your first time clicking on the link to my posts, no, I don’t have a podcast, and most of the content I create and publish centers around journalism, which I enjoy, but I also have written a lot about my own life.
I stopped doing that because I thought it was selfish, and it was, but sometimes being selfish is okay (I probably read that in a $5.99 self-help book somewhere).
But really, it’s true.
I can’t always give, but the last few years I leaned heavily into that because the five years before that, all I did was take.
So now there needs to be a balance, and transparently I don’t know what that looks like, but I’ve been dabbling in the personal writing again and I may just stop being a coward and actually finish that fourth book, the one I don’t want to finish because I’m scared to have to go back and figure out what all the stupid shit I’ve done really means.
It used to be easy, looking back that is.
Whether that was a bike trip, or another bike trip, or living in China (loyal readers will understand what I mean).
I used to blog and write it all out because in my delusional mind, I thought people cared.
And I wanted to get chicks,, but now I see book writing more as therapy, a way for me to purge the sins of the past without actually sitting down on one of those leather sofas and dumping all my unresolved trauma onto a complete stranger.
When roofing season ends, I have no obligations other than to myself.
That’s good and bad.
Good when I want to spend an entire morning playing pickle ball at Eagan Lifetime.
Bad when my life feels devoid of purpose and I mask the frustration by reading an eclectic mix of books and profiling business owners and entrepreneurs in 5-7 minutes.
There is no doubt that I’m fortunate to be able to make a solid living that enables me to have extra free time.
And by extra I mean 3-4 months where the world is my oyster and I can do whatever I want.
Most years I go south for the sun and the beautiful women, although the sunshine isn’t always as appealing as advertised, and I’m now too weak to involve myself with women who won’t one day be my wife.
Weak to the point that I’ll cry in the security line at the airport because I know that no matter how much I like this woman from another continent, distance is too much of a factor, and that it’s back to America, where anything above a 6 tries to change and/or demonize me for not placating to the propaganda disseminated by mainstream media and universities.
It’s December, and it’s still cold in Minnesota, but that’s not what bothers me.
It’s that there is only so much pickle ball, reading, and writing I can do before it becomes apparent that there are still eight more hours of my day left.
That’s mentally exhausting.
Feeling like you have been productive, only to realize it’s barely past lunchtime.
The way out?
Not sure.
I could go get a part-time job at Amazon or Target, the monotonous nature of that likely bound to be more soul crushing than the the burden of endless free time.
Christmas just ended.
Another reminder that I’m lonely and there isn’t much I can do about it, so I’m going to travel to self-medicate, but I think these SkyMiles are a placebo because I feel just as useless ordering gelato as I did the other day while watching Netflix and sitting in my dead uncle’s plush recliner.
I think I could have been married by now, but more often than not I chose me over making a committment to someone else.
Although that may not be entirely accurate because the choice wasn’t always a conscious one.
I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
I thought the parade of Grey Goose, women, and feeling like the fun would never end would indeed never end.
Of course, it did end.
But I thought I was different.
Ew. Gag.
Quentin, when will you learn that the rules apply to you as well?
And now the thought of a stream of Geese filtering down my stomach makes me want to vomit, and the prospect of an ephemeral tryst seems even more unpalatable.
I thought coming to Venice would be illuminating, that it would somehow be different than any other trip I’ve undertaken.
But it’s not, and I knew it wasn’t going to be, but I gambled, flicked those dice down the hypothetical runway hoping that lightning might strike thrice and I’d become 2017 Quentin, the guy who was so impervious to outside influence that I could have walked straight into a brick wall and convinced myself that same wall was made of plastic.
Well, a few hours in, surprise, Venice is just a place, something I initially learned a few years ago when I thought the key to self-realization was seeing every corner of the globe.
I’ve certainly grown from expanding my purview and seeing things I ordinarily wouldn’t, but there is a limit.
The first time alcohol stifles your inhibitions and makes you feel something artificial yet thrilling, it’s cool;borderline revolutionary, if I may say.
Ah, now I know why people celebrate.
By the 3,000th plunge into inebriation, you know what to expect.
Your first date carries much more weight in the personal pantheon than the one you robotically went on with that chick from Bumble last week.
Same thing with money, and the same can be said for any jolt of euphoria that comes from what the world tries to tell you is important.
I’ll pontificate because it has to be said and because there aren’t enough people reminding us of this fact:
What really matters are the people who have been rocking with you since the beginning.
For most, that’s their family.
For me, yep, that’s my family.
Eating Crisp & Green with mom.
I get the Caesar salad and she gets Squash Goals.
“You’re so boring,” she tells me when I bring back the same thing, always minus the tomatoes.
“You’re right,” I tell her. “I am,” and suddenly that seems more like a compliment than an insult.
Dad doesn’t like Crisp & Green.
Actually, he doesn’t like the $15 one must pay to get satiated.
“Overpriced,” he deadpans, one word enough to say more than perhaps I’ve ever said over the course of publishing three books.
Yeah, that’s my family.
We eat salads and we all seem to be pretty well-aligned ideologically, which makes for insightful conversations, and also that we never have to spend five minutes discussing the weather.
And that’s enough for me, as I imagine it’s enough for any other nucleus.
Because parents don’t care if you are cultured or have amassed a fortune worth bragging about on social media (for reference, I’m not either of those).
They would accept you if you simply managed a Burger King or delivered food for DoorDash.
They just want you to be happy and fulfilled, and most importantly, call them on their birthday and come visit them for dinner from time to time. QS
quentinsuper.com 
Leave a comment