Get up off the tracks...

My teenage daughter is on her computer, instant messaging with her friends, looking at each other's MySpace pages and laughing at YouTube videos. She spends countless hours this way and if I was the least bit competent as a parent, I would drag her, kicking, screaming and squinting out into the sunlight and throw a Frisbee with her.

What I choose to do, instead, is sit in my little office just down the hall, goofing on this blog when I should be working on freelance assignments. Some digital tunes, a mini fridge filled with Mountain Dew and Life Is Good, just like the little bumper sticker says.

What is wrong with me? The onslaught of mid-life crisis approaches like a freight train bearing down on a prostrate wino whose face is resting on the track. Despite the imminent doom, that feeling of cold steel pressed against my cheek is comforting somehow.

This isn't one of those 'buy a sports car and rent a toupee' mid-life crises. This locomotive has the word 'CAREER' painted in reflective, white letters just under the headlight.

I like what I do and I like the people I work with, but I don't love it. What I love is writing comedy.

I had a little taste of it in college. Even though I didn't get paid squat, nothing could match the charge I got every time I saw my name on a humor feature or cartoon in the student newspaper. For some reason it didn't seem to be a reasonable career path to pursue after graduation.

Making a living at comedy writing might be a little pie-in-the-sky at this point in my life. If I had an ounce of adventurous spirit left, I would split for Alaska and sign up as an ice-road trucker. Work for a few months, then move to Hollywood and write a sitcom about it.

"...your shift knob broke off in the Arctic air? Well, that's what you get for trying to write your name in the snow."