I saw the video below on Facebook yesterday. It’s about Anthony Bourdain and his story of becoming a celebrity in his mid forties. He talks about how he had basically given up on a lot of things but had resigned himself to an okay life. He wrote an article that he thought would entertain his fellow cooks that he hoped to get published in The New York Press for a hundred dollars. He eventually mailed it to The New Yorker where it was published as Don’t Eat Before Reading This. I had never heard of that article but I assume that’s what let to Kitchen Confidential which led to people knowing who the hell Anthony Bourdain is which led to lots of TV and fame.

It’s ostensibly an inspiring video telling you not to give up. I used to love these kinds of videos. I also used to love articles about success at any age, particularly people who became successful after 40 (here’s another one – I’m sure there’s more).

I have to admit that when I heard Anthony Bourdain start the story with, “I was forty-four…” I thought, “Awesome, I’m only forty! I can be a failure for another four years!” I would also be lying if I didn’t say that I’ve had this fantasy of sitting on a stage regaling a host with tales from the lean years. Ideally the host would be from The New Yorker. Terry Gross would be good. Marc Maron likewise but that would be a different kind of conversation.

Lately, though, I’ve been starting to resent stuff like this.

First, I know that it’s not good for me to hear this. I’m a procrastinator by nature so hearing that people make it later in life just gives me permission to wait on things that I want to do. It’ll happen eventually. I mean, it can happen any time! It’s the dangerous side of hope, that side that makes complacent, that makes you think it’ll just happen one day.

Secondly, I don’t care for the implication of these articles. Don’t give up hope on being successful! Also by “successful” we mean, achieving wealth and or fame. These articles never feature regular people that you haven’t heard of. Kevin Framingham was forty-six when he wrote his first novel. He sent it to twenty publishers and they all rejected it. He never did get it published but he was enriched by the experience. Sharon Washington was fifty-two when she launched her own online mail order company. It never got off the ground but she learned a lot about herself.

Stories like that don’t get written but it’s probably closer to the truth for most of us.

I think that deep down, on some level, I have always tied success to wealth and or fame. As a comedian and a writer, I do look for validation. I want laughs. I want people to read what I write (I constantly look at the stats of the things I publish online). Maybe if I were a doctor, success could be healthy patients. If I were a teacher, success could be year after year of thriving students. But to me, for the longest time, success always looked like getting on television or publishing a book. I guess I thought that if I did that, I could rest. There. I did something, see? Television. A book. I made it.

I don’t think it works that way.

That golden opportunity may never present itself or that life changing event may never happen. Or maybe it does and you have your Don’t Eat Before Reading This or your Santaland Diaries or your book about wizards you wrote in a coffee shop while you were on the dole. Then what? Fame, fortune, and happiness? I don’t even know what that would look like for me.

Here’s the real question, though. Is this all a rationalization or do I really mean it?

A lot of times I think to myself, “Okay, I’ll make peace with never making it. I’ll really just let it go. Then it will be the perfect time for me to actually make it because really makes it until they’ve really given up on making it.”

Sometimes I think these articles are just dangling hope in front of us because it’ll get clicks. But, ultimately, I am a hopeful person. I believe in working towards a goal that you may never reach. I mean, frankly, why not? What the hell else are you going to do?