My son is eight. Every day, he comes home from camp and asks me if the library called yet. He is on the waiting list for "Henry and Ribsy", and he can't wait to read it, especially after he loved "Henry Huggins" so much.

Beverly Cleary's much-beloved book celebrated its 50th anniversary this year, which would make third-grader Henry 59. Can you believe that? Talk about a series that aged well! Sure, most kids no longer have to go through the torture of going to the fabric store to look at patterns, but they still wonder where Mike Mulligan went to the bathroom and they aren't quite sure what a dawnzer is, although it does give a lee light.

But here's the thing that gets me the most right now: Beverly Cleary was 40 when "Henry Huggins" was published. I'm 40 right now, almost 41. And some days, I pick up the paper and see that one of my classmates from college or business school is doing something really spectacular, and I get really bummed. My alumni magazine just profiled a 24-year-old who had a story in the New Yorker last year (a good one, too) and novel coming out now, and my first thought was raging jealousy. Why can't that be me? Am I completely washed up?

And then I think about Beverly Cleary, who is 90, who wrote a book 50 years ago when she was 40, and I think about how much my son loved the adventures of Ramona and Beezus, Henry and Ralph S. Mouse, just as I did as a kid. And I realize, once again, that the world is very strange and random, and that more good things will happen to me, even though I am 40.

And good things will happen to you, too.

This little essay isn't about freelancing per se, except that we're all working alone in a competitive business, and that's hard. It's really easy to get down on yourself. I do it a lot. I am not optimistic by nature. I can't devote my life to my art, because I have to do a day camp pick up at 4:30 and then make supper. So that's why I like stories of people who did great things on their own time, and I like stories of people like Beverly Cleary who have created so much happiness from their writing. This is a hard profession, but a good one.