Once upon a time, a recruiter contacted me about a communications job at a financial services company. I was unemployed and happy to have an advocate, but I returned from the interview with some concerns. My chief concern was my co-workers. They were mostly women, which I thought was a good idea, but mostly a year or two out of college, which I thought was not. Why would they hire someone as old as me?

My recruiter, who was my age, was shocked, shocked, that anyone would discriminate against older workers. “We are not going to play their game!” she declared. What game we were going to play, she didn’t say. Baseball? Battleship? If she had said chess, I would’ve been all set.

I didn’t get that job, but the male founder and CEO was eventually accused of inappropriate behavior toward his largely female staff, so I guess it all worked out.

I was reminded of this blip on the radar screen of my career when I thought to apply last week for a fellowship.

If you’re a writer, your money comes from publishers. (If you’re self-published, your money comes from your friends and relatives and your more generous connections on Linkedin.¹) But you can apply for free money: grants and fellowships. The United States is chock-full of organizations that want to fund your writing.

Most of this money is not exactly free. Even if you outrun the competition, you might then be required to teach a class or organize a community event. That kind of stuff I understand. What I don’t understand, and what stops me, is when they want you to describe your project and provide an artist’s statement.

I am not going to play their game.

Describe my project? Your grant period doesn’t begin for four months or more. I don’t know what I’ll be into by then. What if I finish what I’m doing and start something new? What if I get excited or bored or end up in a cul de sac? What if I follow Hemingway’s suggestion that I start with something I know and go to something I don’t? Hey man, don’t box me in.

My artist’s statement? Does that have something to do with intersectionality or interiority? Using these words makes me feel like a freakasaurus in a clothing store for teenagers and somebody’s mom just spotted me and called mall security.

I like to write! Writing is fun. Sometimes I write something serious. Sometimes I write about my family, or a job, or sex. One of my goals is to write something that includes all three. This paragraph is as close as I’ll ever get to a statement. And I’m choking on the word “statement.”

Sometimes I think these magazines would benefit from a little more oomph. Like…can’t there ever be a murder? Or a sci-fi story? Or just something fun! Like somebody falling in love! Or somebody having an affair! (Naomi Kanakia on The Yale Review)

I’m happy that these arts groups exist. They help a lot of writers. Acknowledgements pages often mention these benevolent institutions. Perhaps if I had spent a chunk of my adult life in academia, I might feel differently about this process, but I haven’t touched the stuff since Watergate.²

Alicia Jo Rabins said, “If you aren’t rejected from 90 percent of the things you apply to, you aren’t aiming high enough.” Rabins wrote a musical about Bernie Madoff, so she’s probably someone we should listen to. I aim plenty high. I’ll let someone else apply for these things. But if someone out there is handing out free money…I hope they’ll think of me.

My title today was of course uttered by Casey Stengel during the New York Mets’ traumatic first season. If Stengel could’ve traded a couple of infielders for some arts administrators, he would have.

Next week: Where my novel is. That’s a game I do know how to play.

1 You indie authors are too easy to pick on. Did you know that half of all self-published books today have been written (I mean, generated) by an artificial inteligence?

2 Just to say something positive about academia, my journalism instructor, Boston Globe columnist Jeremiah Murphy, taught me how to write an obituary and how to meet a deadline, two skills that have served me well in almost every job I’ve ever had.