My birthdate: January 17th, 1980.
Congratulations to Wil Dalton for being the first to guess correctly after reading last week’s throwback post. Wil has earned the prestigious honor of inspiring one of my next short fiction pieces with a stock photograph of his choosing*.
I’m also extending this honor to a second reader, Mary S.C., for her powerful deductive reasoning. And because not everyone gets up at nine a.m. on a Saturday morning and starts reading Substacks. Just me and Wil.
They guessed it.
I am forty-three years old today.
Welcome to my mid-life crisis! 🎉
I wish I could say that 43 puts me at “mid-life”, but according to the most recent life expectancy stats NPR sent me, I’m a wee bit past that point already.
So, to all the people who would say,
“What’s the rush? You’ve got half a lifetime ahead of you to make your dreams come true.”
I say,
“HA! Check your facts, buddy. I’m rapidly decaying and have three decades max to make something happen.”
And man, do I want to make something happen.
What should I make happen?
Seriously, I’m open to ideas.
This concludes the “43” segment of this post.
Which brings us to “Me”.
I assume everyone just scrolled to the bottom to read the one footnote I promised at the end of the first paragraph.
No one wants to hear about me.
Or do they? I don’t actually know.
I do know that a lot of Substack writers, early in their enterprises, provide readers with a little autobiographical postlet.
A “here’s where I’ve been, here’s where I am, here’s where I’m going” kind of thing. I know this because I made point of finding those posts from each of the authors I currently recommend to my readers.
Partly to learn more about them. And partly to make sure they’re not assholes.
I did. And they’re not. 😊
But before I pen an exquisite homage to myself and set it before you like a buffet of trivia bites you can’t possibly fit in your brain-stomach, I have two questions:
Are you even hungry?
What are you hungry for?
Okay, I’m not really liking the buffet analogy anymore. It sounds creepy.
But notice I didn’t change it.
I ask these questions because if I was to write such a post, I would want it to feed your curiosity.
I certainly wouldn’t write it for me.
Look at my Substack “bio”.
Sentence two: Terrified of bios!
But I’m doing a lot of things that terrify me on Substack (mid-life crisis), so I guess I’m willing to brave the buffet with you. If you’re hungry.
But you have to plan the menu.
Meaning:
Tell me what you want to know.
Ask me a question (or two or three) in the comments.
Think get-to-know-you, job interview, personality quiz, type questions.
Or ask me my shoe size. I don’t care.
Whatever you ask, I’ll do my best to answer. And by answering, I’ll have the building blocks for a reader curated autobiography, which should tell you everything you want to know, and nothing you could care less about.
Win win.
If no one asks a question, I won’t be offended. I’ll simply understand that you only like me for my stories and have no interest in me as a human being.
And it will save me the time of writing something that none of you want to read.
WIN WIN WIN!
If it seems like I’m asking you to participate a lot lately, please trust that:
A. I won’t make a habit of it.
B. When I do, it’s in an effort to keep a promise about what
needs to do—to keep you reading it.Provide (blank) for (blank) people who enjoy (blank) and love to read (blank).
When you play along. You’re helping me fill in those blanks.
I also made a mad-lib style promise to myself about what
needs to be—for me to keep writing it.By simply being here, reading, and participating, you’ve already filled in those blanks for me.
I’m off to celebrate my birthday. Which means I’m escaping my wonderful family to enjoy a brief solo sojourn to Vermont.
Would you believe I’ve lived in New Hampshire my entire life and NEVER been to Vermont? Just one of many interesting (or insanely boring) facts about “me”.
I promised a footnote.
Happy Birthday! To 43 and many more to come!!
Happy birthday! I’m stewing on questions for you ...