Of pools, procrastination and prophecy

I have a heap of science fiction books that I keep in a box in the furthest corner of our basement.
I keep them there out of an irrational fear that one day one of my former English professors will pop by and, were said books on a bookshelf, find out that I've read nothing but crap since I finished college. 
I would try to placate them by saying I've been working on various novels since I got my degree. But I graduated nearly 14 years ago, and nothing has been finished or published, so I doubt they would be impressed.
"I wrote a column that reached 25,000 readers each week for several years at a local newspaper," I would plead.
"Did it win any awards?"
"Uh, no."
"I see ..."
Accusatory furrowing of brow would follow.
Someone actually did stumble upon my treasure trove of what my professors used to call "airport literature" last year.
We were having our pool redone. An aside here, never buy a house with a pool. Buy a house near someone who owns a pool, and leech off of them.
Anyway, the pool crew had an electrician (it's scary how much electricity is involved with water when it comes to a pool) and he went down to the furthest reaches of our basement to check our breaker box. Just so happens that's where the books are.
As we were walking back outside the sun-hardened, scraggly-haired guy lit a cigarette.
"You like science fiction?" he asked.
"Yeah, I do," I said.
"I thought so. I saw all of those books down there. Do you write any?"
"Yeah, but it's not really science fiction."
"I love it," the guy said. "I write all the time. I wrote a book called 'The Stonehenge Prophecy.'"
"You did?"
"Yeah, I had a few thousand copies published, but they all sold out so now I just tell people to order it and it gets printed on-demand."
Son of a bitch.
Here I am, always talking about the university I attended and all the knowledge I attained there, all the while holding on to the narcissistic idea I am one day going to pen the book to end all  books, and the guy who is working on my pool is a published author of an actual novel.
I'm not trying to hack on this guy in any way, it just struck me how much time I had wasted.
Authors will tell you to write every day, no matter what it is you write. I don't do that. I write in long cycles for a period of hours or days or whatever, and then I never come back to that work for several months.
Columns were a good fit because they simply require a quick burst of inspiration and energy. 
The encounter with the electrician, quickly followed by the publication of a book of poems penned by one of my best friends, in addition to the fact that three of the people I either work with or used to work at my current newspaper all have published books, fired me up.
For about two days.
Then I sank back into the routines of life.
But it's all one big circle.
A few days ago we tried to open our pool, and the electricity wasn't working. So who should show up to fix it but the author of "The Stonehenge Prophecy."
"Don't talk to him about books," my wife said under her breath.
I didn't.
I don't know what's going to happen with the books I'm working on. Maybe they'll be discovered after I'm dead and I'll be appreciated after my time. Or they'll be incinerated as the world falls ever closer to that of Ray Bradbury's (R.I.P.) Fahrenheit 451.
Or, I could actually work on something with some sort of energy similar to focus and see what happens. And I need to before someone else just writes the same thing I'm writing. I'll never forget one of my college friends talking about how he was going to write a series of novels about a school for wizards.
"How's 'Harry Potter' sitting with you?" I asked him a few years later over the phone. The question was not appreciated. 
So, it's back to the grindstone.
First I have to watch game five of the Stanley Cup Finals, though.