John's transition from athlete to writer: a life narrative

Fictional Character

Youth

John was never a particularly good student in school but his teachers always said that he was a good writer. During high school, John did the work necessary to get through his classes, but he lived for skiing in the winter and surfing in the summer. He never got involved in team sports but he was good enough at skiing and surfing that he was considered something of a "jock" by his classmates nevertheless. When it came time to pick a college, John limited his search to the relatively few schools in Northern California where he could continue both of his interests.

Early Career

About all John really learned during his first year of college was that he was much more interested in skiing and surfing than in any academic subjects. His parents desperately wanted him to get a degree but John could not see the purpose of getting a degree just for the sake of getting a degree. John had no interests outside of skiing and surfing and he enjoyed his part-time jobs working as a ski instructor and surfing shops so much that he could never imagine giving them up to get a so-called "real job" even if he found a "traditional" career that interested him. When he announced his intention not to go back to college for his sophomore year, his father told him that if that was his decision he would have to support himself.

John figured he might eventually find himself interested enough in something "serious" eventually; until then, he was perfectly content to continue just working at two seasonal jobs where he could also enjoy skiing and surfing as much as he wanted. Both of those jobs also had various social aspects to them that allowed John to date fairly regularly and without necessarily maintaining the type of committed long-term relationship that he had doubts about anyway. The other thing John liked so much about his schedule was that he had plenty of time to work on his writing. He actually wrote two books: on skiing and on surfing. Unfortunately, all he ever got from publishers was rejection letters and he could never bring himself to self publish his work online because that seemed to be useless except for its vanity value; instead, he just gave copies out to his friends occasionally.

Later Life

Within John's family, he was quietly regarded as something of a "loser" and his parents always wished he had become a professional and a married family man like his brothers. However, both of John's brothers admitted to John that they actually envied his carefree life. Both of them had been married and divorced, and remarried; both were overweight; and they envied John's independence. John's only real regret was that his parents both died unable to appreciate that his choices in life were the right thing for him. Ultimately, John actually lived a more fulfilling life than his brothers and never regretted his choices in life.