And so this week’s moment of happiness, despite the news.
There are times I am phenomenally grateful that I’m a Waltons fan. I can recite every episode along with the actors. I’ve visited the real Waltons Mountain, which is in Schuyler, West Virginia. I met Earl Hamner’s sister, who happily showed me what a trailing arbutus is. I corrected the museum tour guide. Earl Hamner himself friended me on Facebook, before he died. I own the Waltons Barbie-esque dolls. I own the lunchbox, the game, the books, and on and on. And I met Richard Thomas, who played John Boy, a few years ago, when he came through playing Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird. I own the book of poetry he wrote while he was still on the show and he signed it. I gave him a copy of Hope Always Rises.
Yes, there’s a point here.
This week, today, in fact, I got slammed with a shock. About a month ago, I received a letter from the Social Security Administration. After Michael died, I was stunned to find out that there is something called survivor benefits. Basically, a widow or widower receives benefits from the spouse’s Social Security. I’d never heard of such a thing, and I’m grateful to the funeral home, who informed me of it. I visited my local office and was amazed and grateful to find out that it’s a real thing, and so I began to receive benefits.
Because I own a small business, my income is up, down, and all around, at best. Now that I’m totally self-supporting, having this help means a lot.
Then this letter came. I earned too much, it said. I have to pay back almost five thousand dollars.
What?
I figured it was a joke, but I made an appointment and went in to the local office again. A very nice, and sympathetic, woman explained to me that I have a cap as to what I can earn, and I earned just under five thousand dollars too much. We went over my taxes and my profit and loss statement.
And so, well, yeah. Gotta pay it.
And the kicker? If I was 67 years old, instead of 65, it wouldn’t matter what I earn. They no longer insist you only make so much.
I staggered out of the office.
This was combined this week with a discussion I had with a non-writer. We were talking about the goals I’ve had in my life, and I told her that my number one goal, for pretty much as long as I can remember, is to be on the New York Times Bestseller List.
When I was a kid, you really weren’t taught to read until the first grade. So I read Dick and Jane and Sally and Spot and Puff, and then immediately zoomed upward in ability. I was reading at an adult level. My first grade teacher used her lunch hour once a week to drive me to the high school library to search out books that would be at my ability, but wouldn’t have topics that I wasn’t emotionally ready for yet. Mrs. Knuti was amazing. So was the librarian at the public library, who helped me search out the same thing. Because of reading these books, and the authors’ bios, I was only six years old when I learned about the bestseller list. I began to write and dream, and that list became my lifelong goal.
So now I’m 65 and I haven’t yet hit that goal. I think about that and sigh a lot. The non-writer reminded me that I have 16 books published, #17 will be out in early 2026, and #18 is sitting on my publisher’s desk, waiting for an answer. I’ve won awards. Yada, yada, yada.
I shrugged. Shrugged!
The non-writer asked what percentage of writers make it onto the bestseller list. I didn’t know, and so I did a little research.
To be on the bestseller list, you have to sell 5000 books in one week. Of the published hardcover books released each year, .5% (that’s POINT 5 percent, not 5 percent) will land on the bestseller list. Of all the books, from all writers, all genres, and all methods of publishing, of the 3 million books published each year, less than 6240 will land on the bestseller list.
In other words, it’s next to impossible to accomplish this. And I’ve been holding it as my lifelong goal for, well, just about sixty years. All but the first five years of my life.
It was the first time I staggered this week.
After I stumbled home from the Social Security office, counting dollars and cents in my head, figuring where this almost five grand was going to come from, I sat down at my desk and stared at my computer. I turned in my chair and I looked at my shelf of my own books. They stand proudly between the A to Z bookends that Michael gave me for Christmas one year, after I told him that I coveted the bookends featured in Dr. Bob Hartley’s office from the old The Bob Newhart Show, where he played a psychologist.
Just above this shelf is another shelf, holding the photograph of me with Richard Thomas, the signed poetry book, the Waltons board game, and the Waltons lunchbox.
And I remembered an episode of the Waltons. It was called “The Prophecy”. In it, John Boy is in college, and a professor stops to talk to him, asking him what else he’s planning to do besides write. He tells John Boy that, at that moment in time, there are 10,000 unemployed writers in the United States. John Boy is stunned. Kinda like I was today.
He comes home and sits on the front steps. With a stick, he writes 10,000, in the dirt. His youngest brother Jim Bob comes up, reads the number, and the following conversation takes place. (Yes, I own a copy of the script. I have several.)
Jim-Bob: Ten thousand what?
John-Boy: Ten thousand unemployed writers in this country today.
Jim-Bob: That’s silly.
John-Boy (exasperated): What’s silly about ten thousand unemployed writers?
Jim-Bob: Just because you’re nineteen years old, doesn’t mean everyone else is dumb.
John-Boy: I never said you were dumb.
John-Boy: Well, the way you tell it, a writer is somebody who’s supposed to be somebody who thinks things up and puts ’em on paper.
Jim-Bob: Well, what’s that got to do with anything?
John-Boy: Somebody like that is working for himself, isn’t he?
John-Boy: Of course he’s working for himself, he has to work for himself.
Jim-Bob: If he’s working for himself, how can he be out of a job?
John Boy looks into space for a moment, and then kicks the number 10,000 into oblivion.
I thought about this episode, looking into space, just like John Boy just did. And then my eyes dropped back down to my book shelf.
16 books. 8 novels, 2 short story collections, 1 essay collection, 5 books of poetry. Another book already on the way, and hopefully, one more.
And what can’t be seen: all the short stories, poems, and essays in magazines and anthologies.
Maybe, maybe, maybe I should kick the New York Times Bestseller List into oblivion. Maybe. Some habits are hard to give up. Some goals are hard to give up. And sometimes, you just have to look at a problem dead on and take care of it.
Do I still have to pay Social Security back? Yes.
Am I on the New York Times Bestseller List? No.
But I feel better.
Thank you, John Boy. And Earl Hamner. And Richard Thomas.
And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.
