Age is just a number

When I was a kid, I wasn’t much of a reader. Kind of odd considering I drop about $100 a month on Thriftbooks now, but as a kid it just wasn’t my thing. But after my grandfather died, we inherited some books from his library. A couple of them were these thin, tattered little novels with a dog on the front. It was titled “Hank the Cowdog,” and it was a story about a kind of moronic Australian Shepard named Hank. Now, on the surface, these appear to be children’s books, and in fact, with over 80 books in the series, they are now geared exclusively toward children. But in 1983, when the first book came out, they were anything but.

The author of the series is John R. Erickson, a cowboy who lives in the Texas Panhandle, where the stories also take place; he was working as a ranch hand in the 1970s in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles and moonlighted as a writer for livestock magazines in Texas. His stories were either first-person narratives or were fiction featuring cowboys with an eerie likeness to the author himself.

Hank came to life in a book titled “The Devil in Texas,” which was a collection of stories from cattleman magazines. It was just a short story about Hank, who was based on a real-life dog he had worked with who basically acted in typical male dog fashion: cocky, arrogant, and kind of dumb.

Readers loved his stories about Hank, so Erickson, who was still employed as a ranch hand with two young kids, took a chance and had a run of his book “The Adventures of Hank the Cowdog” published and printed through a small local publisher in the Texas Panhandle. He had to front the money for the printings and drove around to rodeos and livestock auctions in the family Ford Pinto (that was missing a muffler) to sell the books out of the back of the car.

Fast forward 41 years and he has reliably cranked out two new Hank books every single year along with a bunch of other books, both fiction and non-fiction. One of my favorite books of his was his very first book “Through Time and the Valley,” which was a non-fiction account of his trek through the Texas Panhandle horseback in the 1970s, talking to the locals about ranching, Native American history in the region, and all kinds of other things. It was his first book, and it is excellent. Also, his book “Prairie Gothic” is a fascinating account of the hard scrabble lives of white settlers and their descendants in that most unforgiving area of America (if you have never been to Western Kansas, and the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandles, you really should to get an appreciation for the toughness of its inhabitants).

But what does this have to age being just a number?

Erickson was 37 when he bet on himself and printed his book. He knew who he was selling it to, he had already gotten great reviews from friends and fellow ranchers on the characters and the stories. And he did all of this a decade and a half before the internet. No computers, no Kindle Publishing Direct.

His story has always inspired me, and there are some parallels. I was 38 when I quit my job to write full-time. I live on acreage. I own several dogs. But seriously, his willingness to go out on a limb inspired me. If he could make it work without the internet, then what excuse do I have?

Your mindset is more important than the tools you use, and they always will be. I guarantee Erickson was more focused and far less distracted than we all are on our devices. His tools have changed, but his output of consistent work has not. He is in his late 70s or early 80s now, still cranking out two new books per year, every year. Consistency is truly key.

So, if you think that you are getting too old to start something new, to walk away from your career and take a chance, then you are. Or you can get your happy butt out there and hock books out of your Ford Pinto (metaphorically speaking, of course).

I took the plunge 3 ½ years ago to leave the federal workforce and hung up my shingle to do my own thing. Was it hard? Yes. Was it terrifying to give my two-week notice? Absolutely. But if I can do it, anyone can. It isn’t easy, and it takes a lot of work.

If you’re ready to get serious, and I mean really serious, let’s talk.