I think I’ve picked the wrong line of work.

Listen, I’ve always wanted to be a writer of some kind (any kind, that is, except tabloid journalism, because we all know what that’s about). My great aspirations were to be a mildly successful fiction writer. Not hugely successful, I mean I wouldn’t mind not having a bestseller, but I just wanted to be able to do what I do — what I like to think I’m at least mildly capable at — and get paid for it.

I’ve recently discovered that I may have made a mistake.

A friend of mine happens to work in the radiology department of a local hospital, and at this hospital she processes something like ten “nuclears” every day. I don’t know what a nuclear is, aside from the fact that they inject you with something radioactive (which sounds lovely), so I won’t bother trying to describe it. She told me, though, that for every nuclear that is performed, the attending physician — who isn’t even the person that does the thing — automatically pays himself $1000.

A thousand dollars? Ten times a day? That’s… that’s like ten grand a day!

Ten thousand dollars per day.

Yeesh!

It dawned on me that, instead of wasting my time building up a reputation, working my ass off to get my early junk published, writing this nonsense column, complaining about distribution and bothering with copyrights, I could have simply gone to medical school and made a lot of money. Then I could use my silly “Andy Rooney on stimulants” writing style to detail things in medical journals which, as everyone knows, is where the real money is.

I could have, in short, been very rich dealing with sick people and then writing about it.

Had I gone down that path, I could (theoretically) right now own a multi-million-dollar house in Beverly Hills or next to Britney Spears or something, with a Jag in the garage and a Caddy in the driveway. I could be married (or at least illicitly seeing) some unreasonably attractive woman who is there purely for “Thursday Night Bently” money. I could have a striking Mediterranean housekeeper who verbally abuses me and an elderly tuxedo’ed butler that does my taxes. I could eat pizza off brain-janglingly expensive plates from the Ming Dynasty and… you know what? I could even own an authentic reproduction of the Mona Lisa.

Er… I mean, I guess I could own an authentic reproduction of the Mona Lisa now, too. But… but I don’t, and that’s the point.

All that could be mine, but it’s not. Instead, I continue to spend my time being rather sparsely paid for whatever this is that you’re now reading, justifying it to myself by using the old “I don’t care how much they’re paying me, I’m doing what I like to do” excuse. I don’t have the Caddy, I don’t have the Ming dynasty plates, and while my editor Allison is verbally abusive a lot of the time, she is neither Mediterranean nor my housekeeper, and she absolutely refuses to do my taxes or wear a tuxedo.

I wonder if it’s too late to enroll in medical school. So I can’t do algebra to save my life, and I can’t remember the Latin phrases medical types use for some reason when they’re writing dosages. I may not know the lingo, but I can prescribe Prozac with the best of ’em!

And then I can write about it.

AJH