What do you want to be remembered for?

I’ve already discussed the concept of leaving a legacy in the post A Fight Club Moment, but I wrote that post a couple of years ago. Perhaps it’s time to revisit it since leaving a tangible legacy in my stead seems to be my raison d’être.

When I wrote that post, I hadn’t really accomplished all that much. I didn’t have many tangible proofs that I am alive – a metaphorical “Goldfish was here” carved into a tree, if you will – but now I do. I worked feverishly on my autobiography as I just described in the post How Do I Stay Focused? I’ve worked on many stories that didn’t even exist as germinating ideas when I wrote the original post.

When I finished the first draft of my autobiography, the very first words that popped into my head were “Now I can die.” It’s not that I have a death wish; it’s just that I had finally completed something. The reason those somber, death-wishy words popped into my head is that, if I were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, there would finally be something left of me. I had produced something with my own hand that was wholly original, wholly me. It will be here when I’m gone as proof that I existed. It is a cave painting. It is the instructions manual of me. It is the sum total of my existence. I had worked on and completed a legacy. That is no small feat.

So, when you ask what I’d like to be remembered for, which is a death-wishy question in and of itself, I can point you to my hard drive. On my hard drive, there is a folder called “writing” which contains 134 items. Inside that writing folder are other folders which contain many files for various projects – drafts, re-drafts, outlines, synopses, story ideas, research files, character sketches, short stories, novelas, long-form prose, stream of consciousness – you name it. I wonder just how many words are in that folder called writing, but I suppose it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s not about quantity, but quality. There’s also a flash drive on my bedside table on which everything in that writing folder is backed up daily just in case my computer were to ever stop working for some reason. You can never be too careful.

Maybe I’m one of those writers who will only be published posthumously. That would be fine with me since I can’t imagine ever doing a talk show interview. That would be hell. Maybe I’m one of those writers who will never be published at all. That would be fine with me, too, since the reason I write is not for fame and fortune, but because I have to in order to keep what little sanity I have. Maybe nothing will ever come of that folder called writing, but I keep adding to it every day anyway. It will be there when the human receptacle known as me is gone.