Past Blind Dating

At what point do we start writing auto-biographies. Whatever that poiint is, I think that I've reached it. I have a collection of colorful friends, each of whom deserve a story or book of their own. I love making these people immortal by including them in my story which having been published may be discovered by others even now or well after we're all gone.

At first, we're too young to write autobiographically as most of our lives are still in front of us and although we've all done some amazing things, modesty prevents us from sharing them as we realize that our lives aren't that noteworthy.  Everybody does amazing things. We're just punks and we don't need the attention. We're gonna be around forever and nobody's ever heard of us. We're not celebrities nor millionaires.We're not in the major leagues. We're ordinary people leading ordinary lives, yet we see something extraordinary in the ordinary which we keep to ourselves as we are not worthy.

Five years ago, I was writing my usual essays. I told a friend of mine that I was writing regularly. He asked me what it was about. I suppose most people say that when they hear that we are writing, they expect us to respond with a plot. "I'm writing a revenge story that takes place on a pirate ship. Oh and it's gonna be a trilogy."

That sounds great.

I don't go there.

I write about the extraordinary moments that I've observed and participated in during my ordinary life. 

As I was thinking about what to say to my friend when he asked me the dreaded "what's it about" question, I realized that buried within all these writings there must be a story in there someplace if someone had the patience to unify them into that story.  The last couple of years, I've been doing just that and discovering the thread. The result is  what has become an autobiography.

It snuck up on me.

Last week, somebody asked me what I was writing about and I said, "I'm writing about me and my friends and my love story with my wife."

I expected them to laugh and say "Oh, yeah, EVERYBODY'S gonna want to read THAT."

Turns out they don't say that at all. They seem interested. Maybe they take a look at me and think "well, this guy's old and he's been married a long time and he's obviously got those "tiretracks on his back" plus he's kinda funny and pretty weird. He must have some good storiesmaybe even some advice.

I'm closing in on 400,000 reads here at ABC tales alone so I must be interesting to some folks. See when we're young, we can't write about being old but when we get old, we can write about being young as well as about being old. We don't have to imagine youth as youth has to imagine old age. . We can remember.

Pretty sure my writing "dates" me . That's what it should be doing. I got around. Growing older is no longer a blind date. Growing older is a gift that I'm grateful for each and every day. Today for sure is a salad day because I've never known more than I know today which helps me realize how little I know but how precious is humilty before the divine. Today is yet another miracle. I'll never be this young again and not only am I putting footprints in the sand, I'm leaving a trail behind me. 

Here's the latest "book".

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09W1734YB?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

It's ordinary which makes it extraordinary.

Like all love stories.