I have so much I want to say. I’ve been thinking and reading and talking with friends about politics, writing, writers, the state of the country, the world, AI, the Constitution, the Civil Rights movement. I write scraps of ideas for posts and essays, but don’t get far with them. I promise myself I will return to them, and perhaps I will. I reworked an essay I started some time ago and really tightened it up—500 words that I thought worked well. My opening line: I’ve been shot only once. The next part: By my brother Gary. With his BB gun. It was an accident, of course. And we were kids—he, at 11, was four years older than me. Once I got to the point where I could stop and read it to myself, I wondered: what is my point? Why am I writing about this? Originally it was going to say something about guns (my brother was a life-long collector) and gun laws (my brother supported safety laws and no one would have guessed how many guns he (safely) stored in his apartment). Am I really adding anything new or different to the topic that so many people have written about brilliantly? Really, I just wanted to tell a couple stories about my brother that I see as connected now that his life is complete. Really, I just want to write out my grief to share with everyone. To say: look at how interesting this guy was and listen to this funny story from when we were kids and how it connects to what I learned about his gun collection after he died and can you believe he died at only 50 years old because sometimes I can’t. I can’t believe he turned 50; finished his bachelor’s degree; received a stage 4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis. It really is the worst.

One thing I did write and get published was a letter to the editor of my hometown paper. Never mind that when they published it online, they included my phone number [insert skull emoji here]. I didn’t receive any calls or anything—I wouldn’t have known it was included if a colleague hadn’t breached the paywall to get a screenshot—but it seemed like a bad idea to have my name and number on their website. So I changed my phone number. My stepdad mailed me clip of the letter. This is what I’ve been thinking about.