Writing Lifetime Stuff

The Ego Feed

I like to write.  Always did.  Not make-believe, fantasy, dragons, spaceships, or murder mysteries.  Real stuff. Real people. Real experiences.

In recent years it has been mostly a hobby and a way to stay in touch. That's me—the man of many selfies—curating Facebook posts for friends and loved ones, sharing stories, occasional pearls of wisdom, and reflections about my own brief shining moments and challenges.

We humans can be a bit full of ourselves. Honestly, my ego eats it up. Just sharing a yarn, I can read my own stuff over and over years later. 

I usually post first on Facebook News Feed. Seems more people read and respond directly there— rather than my blog.  Folks  don’t trust clicking outside of  their digital safe space. I understand. Click bait annoys.

So  we converse  within The Ego Feed! 

A Facebook "Like?"  Wonderful. 

A thoughtful comment?  Now we're talking.  

Someone sharing my post?   That's practically a standing ovation!

Or at least that's what I used to think.  Over time I learned something. The feedback wasn't just feeding my ego. It was feeding something much deeper.

It was healing me.

Hell Getting Old

I especially like sharing the real voices of  family and loved ones. It seems I quote my father  a lot. That’s odd. He was a man of few words. Quiet, reserved. Unless I caught his ire.  Then he could be articulate!  

His wisdom was shared in casual moments. He was getting in the car to buckle up in the driver's seat. He reached to close the car door and I heard him moan, “Uhg!” 

It was a heavy sigh.  Perhaps a bit exaggerated.  I called him on it: “Jeez, Dad, what’s with you— did you hurt yourself?”  I will never forget his reply: 

“No. Just aches and pains. It is hell getting old, Bri.”

And then he never got the chance.  He died at age sixty-one.  There is a family history of early demise. Especially the men. I never knew either of my grandfathers. Both died when my parents were children. My Uncle Jimmy and his son, my first cousin James, and my older brother, Michael all taken far before natural time. My mom and sister Bean too. 

Between Me and Beyond

Echoes of my Father’s  wisdom closing the car door  from forty five  years ago  resonate today— it haunts me to tell you the truth.  I am the oldest surviving male in my immediate family tree.  No male of my immediate kin has made it to age sixty-five— not even close. 

No family man  between me and the great beyond. 

And truth be told, it’s amazing, damn near miraculous that I have made it this far, given my adventurous lifestyle and  occasional bouts of reckless stupidity.  I have dodged some serious bullets, especially in recent times. 

Overcoming self-created debacles has been my  stock in trade!  But you don’t get away with it unscarred. I hail from a family of gentle, good, honest law abiding peeps who sacrificed everything for their own kin. The injustice freaks me out. 

Reading their obituaries doesn’t cut it. 

Sharing their stories, recollections about them when they were here and prospering, is far more satisfying. Obituaries do not tell their best stories.

Digital Tributes

The most beautiful tributes  are scribed by loved ones in their social accounts on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn,  X / Twitter maybe.  First person glimpses of my sister Bean and brother Mike's story are  in their own Memorium accounts.  

It helps  me to read their testimony in their own words and as seen through the eyes of their loved ones. It heals even more to be their scribe who writes about them, then yearns for those Likes, Comments and Shares that repeats and expands their story  in digital yarns for posterity.  

Many of us regularly post reminders of loved ones on their milestone dates — happy heavenly birthday is a popular comment.  I refurbish and share  posts year after year— it brings them back. 

 It heals me.   

Wounded Warrior

That realization  from ego gratification to healing didn't arrive all at once.  It started in 2011. That was the year profound hearing loss entered my life.  Nobody sends you an instruction manual for that.

My shooting career star fizzled at its zenith. I lost the corporate six figure job and bonus and never got another. I was scared. Angry. Frustrated. And more isolated than I wanted to admit. When life changes dramatically, people often withdraw. I certainly did.

But in July of 2011, I started writing. At first it was simply a way to process what was happening to me. A way to make sense of the confusion.  A way to preserve my own thoughts before they slipped away. I wasn't building a business. I wasn't creating a brand. I wasn't chasing followers.

I was trying to survive. 

Then something unexpected happened. People responded. Complete strangers wrote to me. Friends reached out. Readers left comments. Many of them were emotional. Some told me they cried. Others told me they felt understood.

What surprised me most was that very few of them were writing about hearing loss. 

They were writing about loss.

• Loss of health.

• Loss of relationships.

• Loss of careers.

• Loss of dreams.

• Loss of certainty.

The details were different, but the emotions were the same. For the first time, I realized that when we tell our stories honestly, they stop belonging only to us.  They become mirrors. People see pieces of themselves.

Those comments, messages, and shares did more than encourage me. They reminded me I wasn't alone. The validation wasn't simply "Hey Patrick, good job."

It was something much more powerful.

It was, "I understand."

And during one of the most difficult chapters of my life, that understanding helped heal me. I persevered. I discovered that sharing the journey made the burden lighter. 

Stories Today 

That experience shaped how I think about stories today. We all have one.  Every single one of us. I believe every life has a story worth preserving and sharing. Those canned obituaries rarely capture much of anything.

Mark Twain is often credited with saying:

"I have never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure."

Funny line. Turns out Twain never actually said it.  But he did write about obituaries and argued that a person should write their own.

"Of necessity, an Obituary is a thing which cannot be so judiciously edited by any hand as by that of the subject of it."

I think he was onto something. Who knows your story better than you?

Today there is an enormous industry built around memoirs, biographies, personal brands, life stories, family histories, and now AI-assisted storytelling.  ChatGPT does a decent job at market research.  It banged out my business plan for Captivating Memories in a snap! 

The market is booming. The tools are getting smarter. Anyone can generate words.

But stories are still deeply human.

You Want to Hire Me?!

I am currently jobless, early retired on disability.  My body complains more than it used to. I am still recovering from serious bullshit.  I survived the pandemic, but not unscathed.  My sister Kathy told me that kids call Covid the “Boomer Remover”.  Damn. Poets  in the generation after mine are  cruel!  During the pandemic I suffered a badly detached retina requiring multiple surgeries and found myself in yet another bounce back phase for several years thereafter. 

The combination of vision impairment and hearing loss resulted in very difficult side effects concerning balance, an inexplicable  fear of falling and  heights, and yes, for a while there,  I could not  write or even fill out a web form. That was another Hell Getting Old experience— add them up. I succumbed in weak moments to the folly of self pity– and, lesson learned, that is not the way to be.  

At 65 years old this year of our Lord, I am able to walk, talk,  breathe and write!  I am grateful to be alive for my final journey  even when I  can’t hear anything or see clearly where the hell I’m going sometimes.  I just got new eye glasses and contact lenses and bladder medication. I’m fine. Energized even. I am hobbling mightily down new roads in aging-life on the final stretch faster than a Zoomer Wheelchair. 

My resume looked a lot more impressive ten years ago. Executive titles. Awards. Achievements. Buzzwords—all the right keywords. But when I look back now, those accomplishments are not what shaped me most. The experiences that changed me rarely appeared on any resume.

• Loss.

• Fear.

• Failure.

• Loneliness.

• Resilience.

• The occasional flare of breathtaking stupidity.

Those became my greatest teachers.

So, why should you hire me to help write your story?

Because here I am.  Still standing. Still writing. Still sharing stories. You don’t have to buy anything to see my words. Just read them.

No subscription required to read my stories.

Thanks for letting me share.  

B. Patrick Jensen

Captivating Memoirs