How I Found My life's Purpose at a Lame Ass Disney Resort

Ruminating at 61

I turned 61 yesterday. Sixty-one. I am, at this advanced age, living a bombtastic life. Much of the grease on my wheels comes from my esteemed and absolutely stunningly beautiful sexpot wife, Colleen. I suppose luck comes into play. I was lucky to meet her. I was lucky she was into hirsute short kings. I was lucky to fit so well her definition of “oh yeah,” and I apologize for putting that image into your hurl account, but I’m lucky.

But luck is an impatient spirit. Luck is impatient, luck is fickle, and luck is vaporous. You can’t trust it. You can’t depend on it. It’s not passive. Like the virtues, you don’t have it until you use it. You have to do something that would benefit from fortune. You have to act in a way that is, from some points of view, pure crazy town.

I did this last year when I applied to the University of Oxford just a month before my 60th birthday. Oxford. The one where all the murders happen. The one with the Radcliffe Camera and the Bodleian Library. The birthplace of the OED. Newton went to school here. Tolkien taught. Lewis Carroll went to Oxford. C.S. Lewis, Oscar Wild, Mary Shelley, Agatha Christie, Seamus Heaney, Jonathan Swift, and in the School of Continuing Education, the one I’m attending, Flannery O’Fucking Connor.

Pure crazy pants. First of all, I don’t need a degree. I’m already hitting a wall for work where I’m too old to be relevant to the kids running a shop. I’ve had to rebrand myself as ‘vintage’ and ‘old school’ to telescope the value of my experience and take their worried gaze off the drooping folds of my ancient neck. Why in the hell would I take on something as hard as going to, arguably, the best University on earth, and most definitely the oldest (first documented class was held in 1096, the same year the Crusades first raged across Europe), when I can finally get Senior Benefits? Next year I can draw Social Security (if it exists) and go on Medicaid (if it exists). I’m old enough to be a grandfather. I’m old enough to remember when punk rock started. I went to Walt Disney World when the streets were dirt roads. I’m old. It was a crazy thing to do, the exact kind of thing Luck loves to kick in the balls and yet lucked glanced over at my plans and said, “I’ll allow it”.

Many of you have congratulated me on my acceptance (some of you with surprised eyebrows drawn all the way back into your bald spot…) and I thought I’d report in.

It’s going well.

I have nearly completed my first year and I’ll be flying over in July to attend classes for two weeks in person (giddy doesn’t even come close to describing my mood) and here’s the thing: I am crushing it.

If you, like me, at an advanced age, are considering going back to school—do it. This has been one of the most transformative decisions of my life, certainly the coolest thing I’ve ever done. Here’s why:

1. It’s hard. I mean it’s second job hard. I am in class or working on an assignment most of the time that I’m not working for money or asleep. Every Wednesday a new lecture drops, and I spend anywhere from two to five weeks on a single aspect of creative writing. Each term (Hilary, Michaelmas, and Trinity) bears at least one graded assignment of about 2,000 words. Each weekly module gives exercises of anywhere from 500 words to ten pages of script to 40 lines of poetry—or more. There is reading and listening to the lectures of the novelist who runs the department, John Ballam, with additional material provided by any one of the 15 tutors, all of whom make their living in the field they’re teaching. The poet and novelist Lucy Ayrton teaches prose; the playwright, Shean McCarthy teaches drama, Edward Clarke for poetry…it’s a writer’s dream team. Finally, much of my grade will come from my yearlong portfolio work, (in my case 30 pages of a TV pilot) which for prose is 6,000 words, and for poetry, 100 lines.

2. It’s hard. It’s not just the volume. Oxford teaches by doing. My exercises test me every time. And the tutors will point out wherever I fail to fulfill the rubric of an assignment (they are even quicker to explain when students succeed). I am being instructed to write in ways that never occurred to me, in forms that terrify me, in nearly every form of prose, poetry, or drama. So far this year, for class, I’ve knocked out about 15,000 words, plus 21 pages of drama (a one act play). Every one of those exercises start with me staring at the screen thinking I’d never get it right. But the skills I’m developing are priceless—and it feels good to grow new literary muscles. It’s even better when they lead to something tangible. So far, two of my exercises have been published in literary magazines (a short story scene in LowLife Lit, and a poem in Dissections). Two other short stories were accepted, “Antler,” in Thin Skin, and “F.M.,” which was accepted by Mister Bull magazine (no relation) but has not run. I’ve finished a novel, written four short stories, eleven poems, two mini plays, a second novel excerpt, and various essays since September. Next week, I begin sketching out my next novel.

3. Apparently I’m good. WARNING: I AM ABOUT TO BRAG: Of the four graded assignments I’ve turned in, my marks have been in the high 70s on three and in the high 60s on one. For those of you who are suddenly confused about why I’m bragging about a solid D and C level GPA, Oxford grades different. High 70s are considered First Class Honors, or Distinction. Also, for those of you who went to school with me, I am also surprised; perhaps more mildly than you as I’ve been witness to my encroaching maturity for some time. I have spent most of my life shielded behind an entire stand-up act of self-deprecation so it’s counterintuitive for me to make statements like I AM GOOD AT THIS. Because I’ve also spent much of my life failing at a stunning variety of jobs, projects, tests, friendships, jobs, novels, band management, chess, vacations, parenting, learning languages, and jobs. So, the strangely concrete confidence I feel right now is a brand-new thing. I’ve only had it for about two years and I still don’t know what to do with it all the time and I’m worried I’m gonna drop it and it’ll break so I don’t take it out much but look, there it is, actual confidence.

4. I really want to convert to English. I mean it. I was already a little bit of an Anglophile (def a Welsh-head) but now I’m all in. I wear tweed underwear. I have a monocle.

That whole ‘finding my purpose’ thing happens here:

My success at Oxford is not mine alone, but it’s hard to explain who else is part of it and how. It was a very good friend, Scott Dayton, an Oxford alumnus from the Said School of Business, an actual philosopher, and a hell of a cook who made the wild suggestion that I apply. He will say all he did was send me a text about the program he saw in the newsletter, but it was more. It was classic Hero Journey shit: I was struggling as a content writer and freaked out by AI and looking at certificate programs for Technical Writing. Both Scott and my wife said at different times: you don’t seem excited about this. And I wasn’t. Scott sent me the info and when I pushed back (too expensive, I don’t qualify, I’m not good enough) Scott came back with an exhaustively logical explanation of exactly how full of shit I was.

So, I applied. And I got in. And here I am.

Here is where I should write …then everything changed. But that’s not what happened. Everything had already changed. Everything had been changing for years; it was just too gradual to observe. Sometimes, even I wasn’t entirely convinced I was making any kind of progress as a person.

Here’s the clincher. There were a few steps to getting in Uni. There were administrative things like money, application, and records. There was a process and a packet. I needed letters of recommendation. I had to write an essay (which went through 14 revisions, the most revisions on any document I’ve ever made). Finally, there was a video interview conducted by the head of the department and one of the tutors. They had sent a list of potential questions I might be asked. One of them was this: what is your purpose as a writer. I had nine months to come up with an answer.

Nine months.

For many of those months that question was a blank space. I could not answer it because I knew the answer mattered. I knew this was where they would judge me. Every time I thought I had it, the fucker wiggled out from under me, and I was back to being addled and confused. The thing is, I realized the question was way bigger. It was huge, actually. They were asking me who I was. They were asking me why I exist, and I didn’t know.

Then I went to Florida.

My uncle’s 80th birthday. I drove down and Colleen flew in shortly after. I also visited cherished friends I hadn’t seen in more than 30 years, people who, it turns out, love me to my toes. It was heartwarming and wonderful and blissful. I dropped Colleen at the airport, stopped in at Lee & Ricks to honor my dad with a few warm water oysters, waved goodbye to family from my truck window then headed back to the Colorado Springs Disney Resort (currently being remodeled) where I had a room one more day. It was the end of a long trip, a lot of good emotions to soak off in the lazy river with a Mai Tai. I finally gave up when it started to rain, threw the balcony doors open to let the storm in (Florida boys love them some storm) stepped into the enormous and ridiculous shower to enjoy endless hot water and steam, leaned against the faux stone, and had not even one thought for what seemed like hours.

And discovered my raison d’être.

Imagine you’re at the edge of a meadow, looking at the tree line on the far side. You’ve been staring at that tree line for god knows how long and you think you have a pretty good handle on what’s there and what’s not there. Then a twelve-point buck turns its head to look at you and you realize it’s been there the whole time.

It was like that. Like a magical buck, this phrase was suddenly there in the front of my mind: I am here to set your heart on fire.

Not, I am a writer. Not, I am a storyteller. Not I am here to tell truth in words. No. Those things are all technique. Writing is a tool. Storytelling is a technology. Journalism is a method. All these things are tools for what I’m really trying to do when I write, every time I write, every time I tell a story, every time I give a lecture. No matter what I am doing, this purpose is at the heart of it. I am here to set your heart on fire.

And just like that, my life changed.

We all walk around with simmering anxiety. It is the root fears, the same fears all humans have. They are the enduring questions that drive us, that turn us into seekers, into explorers, into artists and writers and musicians. The first and seemingly most urgent question, the one most men are hesitant to recognize and definitely won’t ask out loud: will anyone ever truly love me?

That question haunts a lot of people. Because you think, well, dude, you’re married, you have kids, of course you’re loved. But it goes beyond that. It’s bigger than that. Because the core need of that question is: am even I worth loving? It’s part of human development to answer this question (section 3 of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs). It is answered partially by your spouse. By your children if you have any. It is answered with a resounding yesyesyesyes if you have a dog. But, speaking as a man about men, we need it echoed and proven in the world outside our front door.

My friends answered that question for me.

(After my wife, I mean)

My posse, my crew, my lodge has proven to me over the last ten years or so that not only do they know who I am, not only do they get me, but they also love me for it. And I love them back.

But below that first question lurks a more difficult one, which can only be answered after the first question’s been resolved. Why am I here?

If you are fortunate enough to be loved for real, to be known and loved by people you know and love, then that lifelong anxiety softens and dries up and blows away. You suddenly have the space and the quiet confidence to do this important work and discover why the hell the universe put you here—you who have lived in the same lifetimes as David Bowie and Philip Glass and Etta James. You who have lived in the same lifetimes as Salvador Dali, Harry Crews, Alan Ginsberg, Banksy, Noah Wyle, Wes Anderson, Alan Rickman, your mom, your dad, your friends. When you ask enough, that question will be answered, and you will understand what Lao Tzu meant when he wrote:

A tree that cannot bend in the wind breaks, while a tree that flexes survives.

You may understand the message delivered to Buckminster Fuller in his hour of darkness while walking along the shores of Lake Michigan on a cold October night, preparing to drown himself so his family could survive on his insurance money. I will paraphrase this poorly and please read his books, however, in tha darkness at his lowest point, his nadir, a voice said:

When you work against the purposes of the universe, the power of the universe pushes back against you; but when you work for the purposes of the universe, you have its power at your back.

Both those quotes mean the same thing. When you do the thing that is you, everything falls into place.

This confidence I feel now, this very subtle, very quiet, very solid confidence comes from knowing why I’m here. It powers everything I do. It stills me. It makes me quiet (no, seriously). It gives me constant energy and motivation. It allows me the space to love more and love better. It gives me the confidence to put others before myself in nearly every situation of my life. It wakes me up in the morning and it puts me in front of people—whether through words or in a room—and it urges me, demands of me, that I fulfill my role, that I do my level best to ignite those hearts before me.

And I gotta tell you, it feels good.

—Bull