On Joining the Circus

O’Brian

It’s been too long, friend. I hope wherever you’re hiding isn’t so far out as to be unreachable—I hope my letters have found you, I mean, and were lucky enough to have found you well. Rest assured that this new digital format will not replace my physical letters. Perhaps being able to send you a short story, a poem, or a few words this way without full use of my calligraphy pens will have you hearing from me more often. 

Nonetheless, preparing this new message has made me nostalgic. I’ve been reminiscing on why I started all these letters to you in the first place, despite your reclusive tendencies. Do you remember? Give me some time, and maybe I’ll jog your memory. In either case, I’ve too much to report to dawdle now. 

After eight or nine years of my players suggesting I run my D&D games for hire, I’m finally taking their advice. It was a wonderful, romantic idea—taking something you love, like storytelling, and paying bills with it. But there was always a good excuse or the sensation that it wasn’t “the right time” to merge romance and reality. The years of mistakes and the fiction writing taught me a few lessons, though. I’ll admit that many of them are so obvious in retrospect.

Here’s one: There will never be a truly “right time” to do the things you dream of in your quiet moments. Not in the way my younger self imagined it, at least. There can be better times and worse times, certainly—but the “right” one for any deed does not have a bell to toll its passing. It is the time you push and squeeze and struggle and set aside for yourself. The discipline that life demands, in that respect, strips away lesser fancies—a truth as obvious as it was difficult to accept for a young writer with more imagination than good sense.

Today seems about as good as any other time in my case. Graduate school won’t begin for a while yet, and my almost three-year romantic relationship quite recently came to an unexpected resolution. The gates to my time have swung open; My services as a Game Master are now available to all.

The actual planning of a small business is more complicated than I could’ve imagined, though. There are spreadsheets, flyers, and a website to build. Videos need their filming, campaign modules their editing, and tax law its own corner of research. Nonetheless, the complexity has not properly extinguished the romance for me. I mean, are you kidding? I’m getting paid to run Dungeons & Dragons games! I already enjoyed doing it every weekend for ten years—why not earn some spending money while I’m here?

The whole experience is soaked with a whimsical abandon like I’m running off to become a traveling magician or joining a circus. Will I end up the clown? Walking tightropes? Freeing the poor tiger just before their slaver lights the flaming hoops?

I’m happy to find out in the doing.

But what about you? You’re eating well, I trust? Keeping out of sight of the law? Have you finally found that hilltop cottage by the sea we’ve always discussed? Or are those last limestone caves beside the waterfall still the home you crawl back to each and every night? 

I would be remiss in our friendship if I didn’t encourage you to at least eat an apple or some asparagus once a span. Your contentedness under foul conditions is one of your less-appreciated virtues, O’Brian, but it’s also equipped you with the capacity for… shall we call it accidental barbarism?

Our go-between has assured me that you can access the internet, at least some of the time. That’s good. This should do for a check-in, then, but you can expect more in the days to come.

For now, I’ll leave you with a poem. I’ve shared it with a few people already, and it was included in my thesis, so I cannot say you’re receiving an exclusive. But I hope you like it. You, of all people, will understand how long its content has been brewing.