Living Your Best Encore: Brian Prousky

What is or was your prior job/career, and how many years have you spent there?  Are you willing to share your age?

I'm 61 years old. I spent 30+ years working in the social service sector. My wife and I also raised two children, meaning I wrote at night, on weekends, and holidays whenever a precious spare moment presented itself to me. Later, as my children grew older, these moments grew longer, and I somehow managed to produce four novels, a book of short stories, and a book of poetry. When I retired in my mid-fifties, I found a publisher, and my secret secondary pursuit became my un-secret primary pursuit. I now spend 6–8 hours a day writing. I've never worked harder. I've never felt as fulfilled or happier while working. 

What inspired you to pursue your current path (whether actively working, retired, or starting a second act), and how did you arrive at that decision?

My life has always had two simultaneous acts. Retirement from one allowed me to pursue the other with renewed passion and energy. An interviewer and fellow author just asked me a similar question, and this was my response:

For as long as I can remember, or since I learned to read, I had abundant admiration and an equal amount of jealousy for anyone able to create a world inside a book. A world in which I could lose myself. As I grew older, I often thought this was what I wanted to do with my life, though writing books seemed inaccessible and unimaginable. I doubted my voice would add much to the chorus of voices of the writers I admired. I doubted I had anything of relevance or interest to say. Let alone say it over hundreds of pages. As a teenager, I increasingly gravitated towards writers with a poetic cadence and many contemporary poets. And to Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. And I began to think differently about myself as a future, or even present, writer. I could concern myself with form as much as, or more than, content. It was a naïve and somewhat foolish thought, especially since those writers and singers I admired had plenty of insightful things to say.

However, I nonetheless began writing what I believed were pretty sentences, which soon turned into what I thought were pretty poems. Occasionally, I could inject a few insightful things of my own. Soon after that, I tried my hand at a short story, which was all form and no content and, therefore, about as interesting as a child's fingerpainting. Soon after that, I tried my hand at a novel, and, having learned nothing from my previous calamity, it too was all form and no content. It eventually ended up, like my first short story, being shredded. And that was about it for the next ten to fifteen years. But, oddly enough, I still thought of myself as a writer. Until my thirties, when, finally, the discordance between who I wanted to be and what I had become (a person who worked in an office every day) was unbearable, worse than unbearable. I sat down to write again and, lo-and-behold, discovered I had enough life now, enough of a sense of mortality, to have something relevant to say and say it in the language of the wild, pretty sentences I admired most. I realize this is all very esoteric. And I'm not entirely sure it's the truth. But it's somewhere between the truth and a romantic notion of the truth or between the truth and mythology.

Looking back on your life, what achievement or milestone are you most proud of?

Besides my marriage and two beautiful children, I'm most proud of my single-minded, bordering-on-obsessive desire to carve out a literary career. 

What lesson did you learn later in life that you wish you had known earlier?

I wish I'd had the courage to make writing my only career in my early twenties. I wish I'd had the courage to sacrifice material comfort to pursue what I knew in my heart or soul (if there's such a thing) was my true passion. My daughter, who's an artist, has always had that courage. And for that, she is thankful that I lived long enough to realize my dream of becoming a published author and poet. 

If you could turn back the clock to relive a particular age, which would you choose and why?

I'm pretty sure I've answered this question already. I would love a do-over from the age of twenty-one in the hope that I could convince myself to take a chance on myself and make a career in writing.

What do you want most out of life right now?

More years to write. More years to enjoy my family. Freedom from fatal illness for as long as possible

Brian Prousky is a Toronto-based writer of both fiction and poetry, known for his evocative storytelling and lyrical style. His work delves into themes of human connection, identity, and the complexity of emotional landscapes. His latest book, Bending in the Direction of Her Sentences, is now available. For more information, visit https://www.brianprousky.com/