Mark Wilkins, 52, has been reassured by his parents that his well-paid, stable career in finance is merely a temporary diversion from his true path in life—writing a novel about a sad man in a café.
Despite working as a senior investment strategist for 27 years, earning six figures, and owning a four-bedroom house, Mark’s mother, Janet, 76, remains confident that he will eventually “grow out of this financial services nonsense” and return to his real calling as a writer, a passion he last pursued in 1994 after reading Catcher in the Rye.
“We all go through these little detours,” said Janet, rifling through his childhood sketches for evidence that he once wanted to be an artist. “One minute you’re selling your soul to corporate greed, the next you’re scribbling away in a Parisian attic, truly feeling things.”
Mark, who currently has a wife, two children, and a mortgage, confirmed that his parents regularly remind him that he “used to have such an imagination” before “falling in with the wrong crowd” at HSBC.
“I keep telling him, all it takes is one spontaneous road trip to Tuscany,” said his father, Brian, 78, who once watched Eat, Pray, Love and now believes all life’s problems can be solved by dropping everything and moving abroad. “Mark could be writing brooding poetry about autumn leaves while sipping espresso by now if he hadn’t got so caught up in this whole ‘having financial stability’ charade.”
When asked for comment, Mark sighed deeply and revealed that he has, in fact, been secretly working on his novel for the past 15 years. “It’s about a disillusioned banker who quits his job to find meaning in the world,” he admitted. “So far, he’s spent 200 pages sitting in a café thinking about quitting his job.”
Mark’s parents remain hopeful that, any day now, he’ll “come to his senses” and abandon his financial security for a life of artistic struggle. “It’s just a phase,” Janet insisted. “He’ll grow out of it.”
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