Be Castle

***

Downtown Burlington in the summer feels like walking into a living, breathing Old Navy commercial. 

All these attractive, well-groomed, well-dressed, well-heeled and sandaled kids of rich parents, walking around the Second Cup or Spencer Park.  I've already had a few conversations now with some local friends about the pressure - subtle, somewhat insidious - that this environment puts on you, that makes you feel that you're not quite good enough, that you need to better yourself.  And yet, the living standard here is immensely greater than anywhere I've lived before, and I'm only renting.  Ooorah....

But I keep seeing the young couples, the ones who look like they could be perfect Old Navy or American Eagle Outfitter poster children.  Blonde, blue-eyed, tall and slim, wearing the new clothes, great features, and looking at each other like they're in love, because, well, they are.  The sight of young couples used to inform my model for the experience I was looking for, and it used to make me sad, thinking I could never have what they have. 

And yet, I did have that, at 19 years old.  Cross "experience young love" off the bucket list for Jody.  And again, oorah....

I mentioned in my last that I'm throwing out my romantic model.  That's to say, I'm abandoning my desire to actively seek out the Female Me.  That's not what I need as a top priority right now.  In any case, she'll meet me halfway. 

What I need is to become, as Neale Donald Walsch says, the next greatest version of the grandest vision I ever had about myself.  That means embracing the "new".  I can't do that if I'm employing plans, boundaries, paradigms, and ideas about myself that no longer apply to the dude looking back at me from the mirror. I can't attract newness when I'm framing it based on past experiences.

It's time to become a success worthy of my surroundings. It's time to become one of the wealthy denizens of my hometown.  To become someone who contributes to the stature and prestige of where I live. Someone who can bring some authenticity to this living commercial.

In short, it's time to become Richard Castle.

I've already written about how I use Castle as one of my personal avatars.  But I was watching Season One on DVD the other day, and I realized it's time to step up my game.  In the episode "Home is Where the Heart Stops" (not the best episode title, I know), Castle and Detective Kate Beckett attend a charity gala undercover to try to flush out a gang of thieves who use these occasions to case their targets: wealthy socialites with expensive jewelry.  While Castle wanders off to chat with another guest, a woman approaches Beckett and says the words to this effect:

     Rich, famous, handsome, and single.  We call him the white whale.

And when I heard this line, I knew this is where I need to be focusing my energies.  This is who I have to become.  The white whale....not Moby Dick: even Castle was worried about that one when Kate told him about his moniker.

It's the Scarface thing: get the money and the power, you get the women. 

The trick, though, is just focusing on getting the money and the power....

Power kinda sucks, though, I'll take money, especially if it comes in for doing something that I enjoy doing.

Of course, with the MS now at 106,000 or so words - I added a few before starting this blog - I'm closer than ever, but there's tons more work to do. 

But back to being Castle.

He's funny, charming, witty, good looking, and successful.  He isn't used to losing - which he finds out the hard way near the end of Season Two - and has a reputation for being a ladies' man because, let's face it, the honeys ain't no golddiggers, but they ain't messin' with no broke (broke).....

And yet, Rick Castle's also got a daughter whom he loves and looks after very well, and had his mother move into his Westie apartment.  His actual lifestyle is far less racy than his reputation indicates, and he is driven by far higher ethics than he otherwise gets credit for.  He's saved Beckett's life at least twice at significant risk to his own, and he's helped put away real criminals using his lateral thinking skills and finding the story behind the crime that academy-trained cops don't often see in their cases.  In short, contributing to the well being of society, in his own fashion.

This is the type of lifestyle I need to create.  There are a million wannabe writers out there, and though I've written a book and technically published it, it's not with a publishing house.  That's my measure of success.  Self-publication lets you hold your book in your hands, with your name on it, lets you know that you can be an author.  Publication with an agent behind it and the full distribution and promotional machine of a publishing house lets you know that what you've authored is good. 

It's like Bret Maverick in the Mel Gibson movie taking part in the poker tournament: he won't know how good he is until he puts it to the test.  That's my ambition with my novel MS.  I'm going to see how good I truly am.

That's my only real goal as of now.  That's the one thing that justifies the daily mediocrity.  Government work is good, and if I pass my probation at month's end, I will be, for all intents and purposes, bulletproof.  I'll be a permanent government employee backed by one of the most powerful public service unions in Canada: I would have to put poison my office cooler in order to get fired. And yet, as grateful as I am to be employed, the job is mediocre.  The money is good enough to get me significant luxury and pay the bills, but not to the stratospheric heights I'd like to reach in my life.  My job can send me to Florida: my writing could send me to Monaco or Dubai or the South Pacific. And each day not spent adding even a little to that writing puts me one day further back from those adventures.

That's where I'm at.  Castle will be my final avatar, I'm sick of using them. After this, I've got to make Jody Aberdeen the guy that others want to be.  And the only way I'm gonna do that is to keep writing.

Here's a clip from the pilot, if you haven't already seen it.  FYI, my book launch will look very much like this one (with equal to lesser frequency of chest signage....most likely lesser).

P.S. Writer's Block, consider yourself pwned.   See the image on the left.