TIMOTHY J O’CONNOR is an author of mystery, crime, and thriller/suspense novels and short fiction.
I was born in raised in Worcester, MA, way back in those halcyon days before the internet. When we still played touch football and pickle and whiffle ball in the streets after school. When we played hide-and-seek and capture-the-flag and jailbreak until the streetlights came on. Back in the days when you carried around a scrap of paper with important phone numbers, or kept them taped to the fridge.
Or, god forbid, remembered them.
Back when you drank water right from the tap. Back when you could pile a bunch of kids in the back of a truck with no seatbelts and head down to Logan field or Hot Dog Annie’s. Growing up, I didn’t realize how idyllic my childhood was. But looking back, that heady time before the internet and iPhones and 24/7 news was a great time to be a kid.
More importantly. I read books. Like a fiend. My parents would find me hiding under the covers at night with a flashlight, devouring books until the wee hours of morning. At first it was Encyclopedia Brown. Then Hardy Boys. Then I moved on to Michael Crichton and John Grisham, all while I was still in elementary school. It got so bad I had to go to the eye doctor and get a pair of glasses because my eyes were literally twitching from overuse.
My love of reading continued through junior high and high school when I found Stephen King, who still tops the list for me. As I went into college, they made me read a bunch of books that I didn’t want to but probably should have. But meanwhile I was running my own writing class: classics with Salinger and Hemingway and Vonnegut, drug culture with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, transgressive fiction with Chuck Palahniuk and Irvine Welsh, dystopian fiction with Phillip K. Dick and Orwell and Huxley.
I started writing in college. At first, it was writing for classes. Writing for the teachers and the other students. But in the summer between junior and senior year, I started writing for myself.
I took a job as a security guard, watching over the staff parking lot all summer. The teachers all had a swipe card to get into the lot. So I sat there everyday from 8-6, ten hours with nothing to do but tell the handful of confused-looking parents no, this is the staff parking lot, you’re looking for the other one.
In the first week, I read ten books. Two a day, for five days. By the end of the first month, I had read everything on my roommate’s bookshelf and everything else that seemed worth reading.
One day, I started picking off pieces of muffin and feeding them to the ants that were marching outside the windowsill. I watched as the ants formed a brigade to secure the cargo and haul it back to their underground sanctuary.
The next morning, I deployed a line of crumbs leading back to the half-eaten muffin I had left rotting in the summer sun. I watched as the ants sent out scouts, located the motherlode, and proceeded to dismantle and carry the entire remainder of the muffin to the dirt below. A thick line of worker ants flowed in and out of the hot, sweaty security booth as they went about completing their mission.
I had become king of the ants.
I also suspected I was starting to lose my mind.
The next day, I brought my laptop and started writing, a habit I’d continue through the rest of college. Over the years, I kept it up, carving out time to read and putting pen to paper. But as I got further and further into my career as a software developer, I found myself spending more time at the keyboard and less time reading and writing for pleasure.
Fast forward another decade, and I found myself in a corporate job in a hyper-growth startup. It was a good job and fantastic place to work. But the work itself was draining my batteries. As a manager spread across a large team, I was devoting all of my time and energy into putting out other people’s fires. I didn’t have any part of the job where I could express myself creatively or put my brain to use, and creative work is my lifeblood.
Worst of all, I stopped reading.
I’d read, sure, technical papers and trade articles and news and other such stuff. But I stopped reading for fun, except one or two weekends a year on vacation. And when you can only squeeze in two weekends a year to do something you love, because the rest of the time your mind is 100% occupied on your job… something is wrong. At least for the type of life I’m interested in living.
Eventually, I burned out. I couldn’t sleep. I was anxious and depressed all of the time. I’d wake up in a panic several times throughout the night, clutching my phone to see what fresh hell it hath wrought. I’d pass out in bed at 6pm after a long day of meetings, dead to the world. For an introvert who thrives on creative problem solving, it was just too much for my brain (or maybe my soul) to handle being “on” all the time.
I decided to quit.
The first thing I did was start reading. I plowed through a few dozen books and fell in love with it all over again. As I got deeper and deeper into appreciating the craft of writing, I found those old short stories I had been working on. And then a few new ones popped into my head. And then a few more. Before I knew, it I was writing my first novel. Then a second. Then a third. Once the words started flowing, they didn’t stop.
It’s only been a short while since I took the leap into writing full time, but I already feel like I can breathe again. I’m not saying I’ll never go back to working a regular job. Never say never. But I really like how it feels to look out the windshield of life and see nothing but clear skies and open road.
So for now, I’m not looking back.
Life is short. Do what makes you happy.
– T
