Author Update #22

Here’s the update part:

My new publication at The Key Reporter! Click here to read it. I provide an overview and look at the critical reception of Christian Gauss Award nominee, Read Dangerously by Azar Nafisi. Read Dangerously is a must-read for literary scholars, especially those who love creative non-fiction, epistolary novels, and/or memoir. You get all of those! Check it out.

Here’s what’s going on for me today:

I know that all of my questions will be answered in time. But, man, I wish there was some way to gaze into my future and see what it holds for me. I think my biggest fear right now is all my hard work to be for nothing, and I just return to being a stay-at-home parent. In a personal favorite movie, Interstellar, the character (played by Matthew McConaughey) says he understands what his late wife meant when she said something to the effect of “now we’re just ghosts for our children.” It is quite an emotional message for the movie, but in practice, it’s pretty depressing. I understand that after I die, I will just be a memory in my kids’ heart. However, in my life, living like a future memory seems like a prison. I want to continue to provide an example for my children more than I want to spend every moment I can with them. I want to be a memory with great depth. Maybe that seems selfish, but I raise my kids in the knowledge that we are, each of us, individuals. That means I have personal goals, needs, and desires as much as they. To go back to being only their ghost would be such a tragic loss of myself. I think that I really have a gift that is only just beginning to bear fruit. Now is not the time to abandon it because no one believes in it; I pray that someone does.