After plagiarizing animal stories in grade school, a teacher told me I must really want to be a writer, but I wanted to be a musician. My early songs were deemed suicidal, so I got high, chased men, and took up gardening. When botanical promiscuity wasn’t enough, I became an inventor, baritone soloist, and choir director with a drinking problem.

After destroying paintings and surviving a stint in graphic design, I wrote musicals. My resume called me a “multi-disciplined creator” – my parents called it failure. When reality show judges mocked me on national television, I wrote America’s first reality musical. A producer suggested I should’ve killed myself instead, so I spent the next decade singing in nursing homes.

My Facebook posts worried friends. While others shared politics and puppy pictures, I howled at the moon. Self-deprecation earned likes, and I became a Pavlov’s dog for empathy. Some suggested I had a memoir in me – perhaps hoping I’d leave their feeds – but I kept posting for fifteen years.

Now partially blind with a heart condition, I’m not interested in isolating myself to write a tome. As Facebook algorithms scatter my friends, I’m moving to this blog. Dementia patients taught me to sing from the heart, and Facebook taught me to write, so why not build this blog in real-time?

Ignoring professional advice, I’m making it public while editing posts and a memoir simultaneously. Can I handle criticism? Has fielding judgment made me strong or turned me into a fragile narcissist? I’m not bulletproof – I like writing about spectacular failure and dubious self-mastery while flying near the sun. Blogging makes my bullshit pretty transparent, and that might be the point..

Anyway, comment freely, but know I consult old friends and ghosts before posting. and change names to protect innocence – the quality I cherish most in people. Even the dead deserve stories everyone can live with.

~Jed Wolf 4/19/23