I Did It Anyway

Sometime during the Spring of 2019, I began writing my first book—a memoir named The Other Boy about my journey as a father through childhood cancer and special needs. I thought it would be fun, challenging, and a million other things, but I didn’t really want to write it. I didn’t really want to traverse time into the debilitating bubble of emotion I once knew in order to relive something that turned my soul into swiss cheese—but I did it anyway.

Nothing I’ve ever done in my life felt simultaneously as good and as bad as writing The Other Boy. I often used the terms painful and cathartic when speaking about writing the manuscript during the process. Not surprisingly, this emotional mixture boosted my healing and shifted my direction away from resentment and toward gratitude. I still have bad days and rough moments, but now I’m able to be more sympathetic to my family because I understand their suffering much more than before.

Maybe it’s my nature, or maybe it’s nurture, but so many times in life, I’ve just gone for it. Sometimes I regretted it, but usually I was glad I went for it. Now that I’ve got this 350+ page, 70,000+ word memoir in front of me, I’m simply awestruck at the journey within the journey. It feels surreal. More so than anything I’ve accomplished in my life, this ranks at the top of the stack of satisfaction, and all because, when I thought I couldn’t… I did it anyway.