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Chasing your dreams in a creative field can be both draining and daunting. You may see peers catch big breaks, rocket past you, or just inexplicably succeed despite the mediocrity you’ve done your best to bring to their attention. Meanwhile, you’re stuck at your day job, because quitting to pursue your heart’s true ambition is “risky.” Next time you feel like you’ve been banging your head against the wall and it’s time to give up your dreams and passion projects, do what I do: read a list of famous “late bloomers” to convince yourself that you still have time.
George Eliot published her first novel at age 40, adopting a pen name, possibly so her fiction could be judged separately from her extensive and widely known work as an editor and critic.
Mathematician Roger Apéry only became a household name at the age of 63 when he proved Apéry’s theorem.
J.K. Rowling was 30 and living on state benefits when she finally published the first Harry Potter book, and her editor advised her to get a day job. A day job! He sounds just like your family!
Harrison Ford worked as a carpenter until George Lucas cast him in Star Wars at the age of 30. He would never suffer a moment of sorrow or regret for the rest of his life.
Susan Boyle was thrust into the spotlight on Britain’s Got Talent at 48, having struggled for years to break into music. None of that worked and a random talent show was what clinched it, so maybe just skip the struggle and go to a couple auditions?
Colonel Sanders started his franchise in his sixties, and before that he probably had to do a lot of open mics.
Alan Rickman didn’t break into film until his late thirties, so just stick it out at the call center one more year to save up.
Vera Wang didn’t start designing clothes until age 38, after 17 years in a dead-end job editing Vogue.
David Mamet directed his first film at age 40, having previously only written. Imagine how he must have suffered.
Arnold Schwarzenegger was first elected to public office at age 57 and who really knows what he was up to before then?
Morgan Freeman scored his breakout film roles in his forties and early fifties. You still have loads of time for your Twitter jokes to attract notice.
Toni Morrison published her first novel at 39, so just keep thinking about yours in the shower and maybe it’ll drop into your lap.
Ang Lee wrote and directed his first feature film in his late thirties, and if you really buckle down at work you could probably get promoted to lead technician, so you’ve got time.
Thelonius Monk struggled to make a living from his music throughout his thirties, much like you’ve struggled to practice your guitar without waking the kids.
Junot Díaz spent ten years writing his famous book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, published when he was 39. He prepared by publishing a different novel at 29, and you’ve prepared by setting aside early mornings to read books about screenwriting.
While Helen Mirren started acting at a young age, she wasn’t internationally acclaimed until later, so that still counts.
Julia Child published Mastering the Art of French Cooking at 49 and was finally able to leave her job in social media marketing.
Rodney Dangerfield broke out at the age of 42, and probably your dream is to be Rodney Dangerfield.
Kerry Washington became Scandal‘s Olivia Pope at age 34. Sure, she had a long acting career before then, but she somehow came up on an infographic I found while searching at 3:00am.
Someone named “Danny Aiello” also shows up when you Google these things.
Raymond Chandler published his first short story at 45, and you could definitely write a short story. You tell your friends stories all the time. Emails are kind of like short stories.
In her sixties Laura Ingalls Wilder published her first novel, which is a lot like your dream of becoming a successful and well-paid life coach.
C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada founded the Hare Krishna movement at the age of 70, and before that he must have done some odd jobs to pay the bills.
David Sedaris first came to fame at 36 on public radio, sharing hilarious stories from his life of odd jobs. You will start a blog about your life as soon as you think of the perfect URL.
Martha Stewart started a catering company at 35 and published her first book at 41. She’s got to retire at some point, and that’s when you can finally get serious about following in her footsteps.
crying because THANK YOU
I was hoping for Julia Child. Did not disappoint.
Finally, I could retire from my job with the CIA!
……… I’ve said too much.
Don’t worry, many years from now we’ll get information on your shark repellent work once it’s declassified!!
We’re SO CLOSE. (shakes fist)
I didn’t know that JK Rowling was 30 when she wrote the first Harry Potter book! That’s so young! I only have four months to complete a project that brings me universal success and acclaim if I want to be like her!
This was so uplifting and upsetting at the same time?
Whooo….hooo?
I’m hoping more for a whole “Van Gogh successful after you’re dead” thing so I don’t have to deal with the crap that comes with modern fame.
Okay but I NEED these late-bloomer articles to survive, so this was just mean. I’m gonna write a thinkpiece about it on Medium.
Right, but will you ACTUALLY write a think-piece about it on Medium, or will you just carefully note this on your list of things to pitch and/or write about on Medium, and then fail to ever work on any of the things on the list?
#definitelynottypingfromexperience #nope
Lol, my aspirational “freelancing” folder
I’m unemployed! I have all the time in the world to write! *cries and reads job ads*
I came here to have a good time and I’m honestly feeling so attacked right now.
(jk but also let’s be honest, Medium thinkpieces are basically masturbating into the wind)
And somehow I can’t even figure out how to make time to masturbate into the wind….
:\
; )
What a, er, lovely image. Thank you.
Why do I feel like this was making fun of me? D:
Samesies.
Because literally no one ever has ever wanted to be anything like Rodney Dangerfield. (or maybe that’s just me).
He still can’t get no respect.
No regard, neither.
You’ve made my day.
This piece didn’t land for me at all. Is it making fun of me? Is it making fun of Chasing Your Dream? Is it mocking ambition in general? And it’s tagged as humor and yet….not funny
Ok, I was wondering if it’s just because I have a cold and my brain is fuzzy. I’m glad I’m not the only one who isn’t sure she’s getting it.
I very much read this as poking fun at *pieces* about “late bloomers” (which I believe was the author’s intent as well), not one ABOUT actual late bloomers (30 is NOT late!), and did not think it was intended to make fun of any person specifically or readers generally. That was just my individual read though. You guys are welcome to email me about this or anything else if you want; I am always really glad to hear from you.
That makes sense, thanks Nikki. I guess the problem is that I haven’t read many pieces about late bloomers, so I don’t recognize the genre conventions.
You should spend more time reading the detritus of the internet and less time working on your actual goals (JK)
I thought it was clear! I see those pieces everywhere–I guess not everyone does, which would make it hard to understand this. Going by headlines and facebook summary lines, they are full of weird ideas about what qualifies as “late” and defining people by their most well-known achievement, hence the poking fun.
yeah, I can see the confusion if one doesn’t see these lists. I have seen so many of them.
It’s making fun of at least two things simultaneously, as far as I can tell. (and i am pretty bad at this, not going to lie).
Some people seem to think about lists of late bloomers as justifications for why they can get All The Things They Want without actually having to work at them– Yes, you can get your first novel published late in life, but you still have to actually write it first.
And, also–
Some people labeled “late bloomers” really aren’t. Sure, Julia Child couldn’t cook very well for a long time, but she had a career in the Office of Strategic Services prior to that. While some “late bloomers” were try to do a particular thing for years before they managed special success, many people were doing perfectly lovely things. By calling them a late bloomer, you are sort of suggesting that what they were doing before was unimportant, and especially when it’s “raising kids”, that’s not super cool. (there was some recent piece out there about/from some musician I haven’t ever really listened to about this, iirc).
OH! and there’s also a layer of making fun of lazy listicle creation, and not actually being familiar with the topic, including people you haven’t done due diligence upon, just to get something written.
I found this explanation very helpful.
Hi! Yes, thank you, that is better than I could ever explain it to myself.
Originally I just wrote this to beat myself up. (I self-medicate with “late bloomer” lists to excuse myself for being lazy about my career.) Then Mallory gave me some better ideas, and Nikki made a lot of crucial edits to turn this from therapy into content.
I had to choose between narrowing my focus to one point, and not being tedious. I wish I could do both, but I am not yet that skilled.
Now that I know Late Bloomer Listicles are a thing, this makes more sense to me: I needed the context for it to land, which is certainly not your failing.
Thanks for popping in to explain, Nick. I think this piece did work for a lot of people, so do not beat yourself up any more, just get to work on that novel or whatever.
I got the humor, but STILL found this comment a pristine explanation of WHY I found it funny, A++ commenting, would read again.
Ditto, a lot of the people on the list are inspiring, but then throwing in Arnold Schwarzenegger and Martha Stewart kind of undermined it for me, since they had already achieved significant successes which they then parlayed into their eventual fields…. kind of like calling Obama a late bloomer because he didn’t become president until he was in his 40s.
Too bad, since I was really hoping for a pick-me-up about my age/success anxieties and this was not it.
My answer to the question “what wouldn’t you do with lots of money?” is: “I wouldn’t be afraid of failure anymore”.
I think you know why I’m putting this comment here instead of other there.
TOO REAL. Stop it.
I’M SORRY FRUMLOSA BUT MY HEART IS BROKEN
“probably your dream is to be Rodney Dangerfield.”
HOW DID YOU KNOW
Background: I listen to a lot of public radio, including the SF bay area jazz station.
Related: I am slightly hard of hearing (this is a thing that happens in my family), and it has become more pronounced over the past year or so.
Confession: I had no idea that this jazz musician’s name was Thelonious. Somehow I thought that this amazing gentleman’s name was Felonious Monk, and always thought that was an awesome but confusing name. Monks do not commit crimes! #internationalmanofmonastery #maybeineedanewtwitterhandle
It is actually the awesome name of a comedian/contributor on The Nightly Show, so you aren’t the only one with those instincts.
Probably my favorite Pratchett pun ever, not least because I read Soul Music a dozen-odd times before I got it:
“Who’s the most famous horn player there ever was, Glod?”
“Brother Charnel. Everyone knows that. He stole the altar gold from the Temple of Offler and had it made into a horn and played magical music until the gods caught up with him and pulled his…”
“Right, but if you went out there now and asked who the most famous horn player is, would they remember some felonious monk or would they shout for Glod Glodsson?”
Whoa, I never caught that! And all this time I was feeling good about all the other puns I finally got after my fourth or fifth reading.
Mark Oshiro just got to that pun recently and it was a joy.
Speaking of late bloomers, is anybody here watching “Younger”? It’s a fun clever escapist fantasy of being 40 but able to pretend to be 26 again, especially if you look like Sutton Foster.
What really bugged me about all the Alan Rickman tributes after he died were the comments about how he didn’t break into film until late but we all still love him, isn’t that amazing? Because before that he’d only been acting on stage which is TRASH for LOSERS who couldn’t make it in Hollywood.
For anyone else struggling with the fear of never “making it” – and finding that your personal definition of making it is being unbelievably, stupidly, incontinently famous – I have a tip. A small, really helpful thing I’ve found is to keep a list of people I love and adore and who no-one else really gives a crap about. There are three or four freelance writers I follow on twitter whose work I like an awful lot, and because they post sporadically anywhere and everywhere, they may get a lot of views for individual articles, but no real following except maybe five people. Or people like Frank Sidebottom, who are stubbornly and proudly small and parochial. Do you know Frank Sidebottom? Or my mum! Do you know my mum? You should, she’s absolutely fantastic.
Anyway, if this is all insultingly obvious advice, then take comfort in knowing you’re way ahead of me. I’ve only just realized my way of thinking about personal success is super unhealthy.
I plan to be the latest bloomer of all, I am going to be a world-renowned fossil. Future humans will be amazed at my miraculous state of preservation, “This specimen must have eaten nothing but preservative-laden food,” scientists will marvel. “Were early humans really that slouched and misshapen?” museum patrons will ask, and the docents will explain, “No, that is probably due to the distorting effects of the surrounding sediments, combined with postmortem bloating,” and the children will point and cry, “It looks like it’s laughing,” and their parents will console them, but my dried misshapen skull will continue to laugh and laugh.
I am also hoping to fall into a peat bog and become perfectly preserved, in order to scare schoolchildren… (high five)
Very well, I suppose I am willing to share my site of anaerobic repose and subsequent glamorous anthropological spotlight. We can be a duo act. They can call us Peat and Re-Peat.
Or Peel and Re-Peel.
One of the things I would do if I were both rich and influential is be that asshole who insists my corpse has to attend the board meeting or whatever in perpetuity, just to be an asshole in death as life, and for the sheer Southern Gothic of it all.
I truly, truly want to be your friend.
I loved this, especially “probably your dream is to be Rodney Dangerfield.” I cling to these factoids too–George Eliot is my standby–but have increasingly been realizing they don’t mean anything. My life/career is going to happen on the timeline that I can get it to happen on, and Julia Child is lovely but she can’t promise me success at 49 any more than I can promise myself success by next week.
Love it! I turn fifty this year, and my hero right now is Angela Lansbury – 90 and still going strong. I’m tryin’ to stay healthy and follow the dream.
Martha Stewart will never retire. Or die. Or visibly age.
I feel a “If Martha Stewart” were your girlfriend piece coming on, in the key of Gwyneth.
OH LORD YES
(If anyone needs me, I’ll be in my room.)
I once wrote a women’s studies paper about wedding cake designs from Martha Stewart Weddings, and as part of my research, I took a biography of MStew out of my university library. In one section, it said that Martha Stewart has had so many pictures taken of her that have yet to be used that she could retire without the public noticing for ages. The author then went on to say that despite these many photos, her company probably could not successfully keep her death a secret should she die suddenly. And then he said something about how they would probably still do a better job of pretending she was alive than Mao’s people did when he died. I have forgotten a lot of things that I read at university, but this stays with me.
Cause she’s a witch, duh.
(In the very best pro-witchy-way.)
Know what other genre I hate? The “you can TOO quit your job full of drudgery and travel the world and live an adventurous life” articles. Because pretty much everyone featured is a white male between 20 and 30 and there’s never any mention of student loan debt or medical expenses or any of the things that people like me have to worry about. It’s not always about bravery, stupid website lists!!
Oh man, I hate hate hate those. I read one one time where the (white, upper middle class, young) woman who wrote it said that people waste a lot of money on buying fancy shit, but really you can eat off, like, $5 a month if you just buy a jumbo jar of peanut butter and the cheapest bread every week.
Ummm…well all the medical issues you are going to have to pay for due to the results of intense vitamin deficiencies are going to cost you a hell of a lot, but at least you got to travel, right?! I mean, sure, you didn’t get to try any of the local cuisine, but travel is really about taking photos and telling people you were there!
Yuck. YUCK.
Is trying new and local food not the best part of traveling?!
I hate these too! You know what else is never mentioned? Things you might like about your life at home! Like friends and romantic partners and pets!
(I know I’m late but I really do hate that genre.)
Wow, this article came at the perfect time in my life! I’m 38 and I recently quit my day job to follow my dream…. Press on, creative folk, press on!
Annie Proulx was in her 50s when her first book was published. I hold onto this, even though that decade gets closer every year.
Supposedly Julius Caesar got really depressed when he was thirty and saw a statue of Alexander the Great, and realized he was now at the age when Alexander had conquered the known world, while his own political career wasn’t really going anywhere.
So cheer up! There’s always time to get your life together and make your name synonymous with ‘ruler’ for the next two thousand years!
Just, ah, maybe skip the whole ‘betrayed and murdered by your best friend’ bit.
COME ON, everyone knows that Danny Aiello was Johnny Cammareri in Moonstruck!!
At least everyone with an Italian family who is obsessed with that movie.
I know, I was like, "wait, 30 is LATE???" I thought 30 would just be 'bloomer', not early or late! >:(
Martha Stewart has had so many pictures taken of her that have yet to be used that she could retire without the public noticing for ages. This is so great and I'd love it if someone did this as a post-mortem joke. Well, not LOVE it, but I would admire it.
This took a bit of a dark turn.
This was cruel and very satisfying.
“David Sedaris first came to fame at 36 on public radio, sharing hilarious stories from his life of odd jobs. You will start a blog about your life as soon as you think of the perfect URL.”
TOO REAL
(jk this article ~speaks to me~ . I’m glad there are other people who look up “late bloomers” to feel better and then, kind of, don’t. Thank you for this!)
Ira Glass didn’t start This American Life until he was nearly 40. Before that he cut tape, taught driver’s ed, and wrote grant propositions on the side for extra cash.
Bahahahaha ‘Arnold Schwarzenegger was first elected to public office at age 57 and who really knows what he was up to before then?’
I found this so thoroughly hilarious. Also I love that The Toast readership is so generous that someone thumbed up the above spam for children’s games. I’m going to miss this place