When Are You Too Old to Work Harder Than Everybody Else?

It sneaks up on you.

When in doubt, I work. When the world seems out of control, when I am scared, when I am nervous, when I am antsy, when I am feeling as if I am surrounded by despair, I work. My father was an electrician who worked 60-plus hours a week and wouldn’t even turn down overtime on Christmas; my mother was an emergency room nurse famous for taking multiple 12-hours shifts in a row. I am a person raised to believe that the only way through is labor. I never feel more comfortable than when I am writing — when I am making things. When I find an empty space, I try to create something to fill it. One of my favorite Roger Ebert lines is, “The muse visits during the act of creation, not before.” That’s a fancy way of saying, “shut up and get to work.” I always want to make more.

This has been the signature organizing principle of my professional life: Keep making stuff. I do not know any other way. I’ve always just planned on continuing to do that until I died, probably face first on my keyboard. But, as they say, age is undefeated. The synapses don’t quite fire the way they used to.

As mentioned last week, I’ve started working on yet another podcast. (This is now four.) It’s the MLB.com Morning Lineup podcast, in which we wrap up a whole day’s worth of baseball action in 10 minutes or less, every morning. If you like baseball, even just a little, you should subscribe, it’s a good show.

The show runs five days a week, Monday through Friday, and I’m one of a series of rotating co-hosts, alongside Matt Monagan, Mandy Bell and Anthony Castrovince. Throughout the year, I’ll be appearing every Friday morning, though this week I did Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s shows because it was my soccer-crazed son Wynn’s 10th birthday this week, and if I hadn’t taken him to see Messi play in the Copa America on Thursday night, he would have murdered me in my sleep.