The year ends and with it ends an era, an age unlike any other in my life and one that is destined to change. It will change because that is life. If it were to stay constant and consistent, it wouldn’t be a life worth living.

But it doesn’t mean it can’t reminisce and recall the past. The glories and triumphs. The mistakes and errors, only hoping for forgiveness from them in time. It is a sad state and a happy one at the same time, since what was thought to be dead will rise in the new year.

OK, that’s a pretty way of teasing that I found my lost story and have scheduled it to be the first thing published from this forum in 2018.

It’s a short story, but one that has captivated me since I released it onto the page. It wasn’t the only story that I’ve written. Frankly, the story I came up with about chess players in downtown Boston for a paper in 1997 was probably better crafted and more believable. Especially since I got no less than a B on that paper.

 

But it was figuratively dead because my writing had died. And maybe that’s a victim of age. I would write to fill free time at night or when the mood struck me. It wasn’t anything that felt forced. It just was whatever I put on the page and left it at that.

But as time moved on and my location and direction in life changed, so did what was put down in the books. When I was by myself, I look back and can see the loneliness and feel the yearning for someone. It wasn’t necessary the opposite sex, but someone to share life with.

Granted, this was also before the cell phone became an extension of our hands. The easiest ‘What If?’ game for anyone in my age range, anyone who watched ‘G.I. Joe‘ and ‘Transformers‘ after school in 30-minute blocks or remembers Anthony Anderson playing basketball on ‘Hang Time‘ and questions what happened to Ms. Bliss at Bayside High School.

I remember a pager being a big deal, the prevalence and importance of pay phones to contact your parents and hanging from a tree on the Charles River Esplanade when my alpha-numeric pager flashed that Princess Diana had died.

How would social media affected us? How would it have reformed and shaped my life differently if the InterWeb was up and running when I first walked on Commonwealth Avenue. Better yet, when I first stepped foot in The Castle on The Hill?

Would I have created a podcast featuring high school Highwaymen athletes? Written blog posts about the new music I was getting for WTBU? Posted pictures on Twitter of all the stupid things that took place in that 3rd floor suite in Myles Standish or anything inside 24 Highgate in Allston?

The point I’m returning to is lost, or could be considered dead by some. However all of this is a preface to announce something that I did earlier. The rest was memories and filler and that’s the truth.