Every moment holds the key to a story

Like everyone I know, I've had some tough life lessons. Financial troubles, COVID-19 quarantine, despicable bosses, awful jobs, a nerve-wracking emigration, health issues, and losing people I loved. The singular thought through all of it: how do I use this to create something beautiful?

After my mother died suddenly, there was a period of shock. The hammer-fall of a sudden death was like an earthquake tearing the world down around me. Thinking past the grief was almost impossible. But then, after a few months, I began the process of sifting through the wreckage. Though I was yet to write my first novel, I had a sense that I would need to access all those meaningful conversations and simple mom moments for a story I would tell at some point in the future.

Before my father died, I placed a voice recorder between us late one night and interviewed him. It was a cathartic experience for both of us. I cannot speak for him, but the hug we shared after the recording stopped said a great deal. For me, capturing his voice and hearing his stories was a way of keeping him close, even after he died. It turned out I was able to offer him something akin to a new life in the pages of my work. My father and mother both feature in my first collection of autobiographical short stories, called Barking at Dogs.

In the end, life is simply a long string of moments that we can choose to use to create beauty and knowledge, or step over blindly.