There was nothing to tell. I had nothing to tell anyone. I had no story, and people told them all the time. It wasn’t like I didn’t live a life worth talking about. Far from it, on most days. Yet, I didn’t have what it takes to tell a story, you know?
A great war, a great tragedy, a great issue, a great struggle; I didn’t have anything. I was just a guy who had learned to string two sentences together. That was it. I was the guy who wrote, but I wasn’t a guy who was for something, anything.
I had no story to tell. There was a semblance of the classic tropes from rags to riches, to the great romantic tragedy, to the valley boy in the big city, but they were all lukewarm; I liked lukewarm, too. At least, when it came to my coffee. You could hold the cup from any side if it was lukewarm. That’s how I held my life too—not too strongly, not too tightly, and not too carefully. I liked it lukewarm.
I didn’t have a burning passion or a story worth telling. I was just a guy who had learned to string two sentences together who took a walk every day. Then, came home and wrote about it. There was nothing to tell, and all I had told already was all I would ever tell anyone, and that meant never telling a story because if there was a story in me, it was in the untold.
I was less than any of those who came before and those who will come after. That was my greatest disappointment—to somewhat know how to write, and have nothing to write about. They had so much to talk about. Everyone around me had an agenda. And here was I, sitting in a café by myself, looking at a cup of coffee and reading a book, thinking about nothing of significance.
That was all I wanted to do, and all I would ever do. I had just learned to put words together. I was the wrong person to have done that. Thousands were better than me. There were millions of them with their stories. I had nothing to tell anyone, and yet, I was the one writing.