The Parts I Didn't Put in the Book
On Grief, Ethics, and Marxist Liches
In 2024, after years of false starts, I finally sat down and wrote my memoir. I called it Half Life, and it detailed a life split in two; one half as part of a pair of twins, and the other having to reckon with the grief shaped hole where my twin used to be. Along the way I explored the lessons I learned on the road from gut wrenching anguish to eventual acceptance.
Coming in at 137,000 words and dealing with topics like grief, childhood abuse, poverty, and trauma, it’s not exactly the most commercial work I could have chosen to launch a writing career. I’d like to tell you it’s hitting bookshelves soon, but several literary agent rejections say otherwise.
But you’re probably not here to hear me complain about the difficulty of breaking into publishing as an unknown author with a heavy memoir about a life you may not care about. You’re here, I hope, for the things I didn’t say in that overly verbose tome of therapeutic release.
Things like a moral philosophy developed not in a classroom, but through a life marked by adversity, and occasionally, by the kindness of others. Commentary on topics profound, mundane, and profoundly mundane.
Because if nothing else the writing of my memoir opened the floodgates of my overthinking mind onto an unsuspecting OneDrive.
What do we owe each other?
How do we strike an ethical path forward in a world full of compromised systems?
What does it mean to know who we really are?
Also: a science-fiction fantasy mashup about a tentacled alien and a Marxist lich. I contain multitudes.
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On a weekly basis, I plan to lay out my formalized moral framework, Ledger Ethics, how I developed it, how it relates to the world we live in, and how I wrestle every day with the questions it raises. I will expound on surviving grief and trauma, class and identity, and how to find your place in the world when you feel irrevocably broken. And an occasional diatribe about cats, why I love them, and how each and everyone is amazing and I want to boop their little snoots… even the big tigers at the zoo…
Especially the big tigers at the zoo…
Whoa. Got carried away there for a moment. Irreverent absurdity. Such is nature of the world and of life. The truth is no one knows what they’re doing, we all are trying the best we can, and a little bit of grace for that goes a long way.
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