Nick Hahn's Blog, page 5

Nick used to watch the cars and trucks go by on the interstate and think to himself, ‘if I drop dead this moment would a single person even blink other than to curse the traffic backup after I hit the bridge embankment’.

He used to think that time was eternal, a never-ending compendium capturing the sparks of our existence and glowing forever, that was years ago, this is now. As he approaches his eighth decade, he knows the glow will fade and extinguish, not all at once, but one spark at a time.

This book is a way of keeping Nick’s spark glowing a little longer, perhaps less brightly than in the past, but able to light the flame that has kept him interested, interesting and alive all these years.

Nick’s life has been fire and ash, burning with passion and wonder only to flame out with the residue of reality.

If you see a little bit of yourself here, we (Nick and I) will have achieved our goal and maybe scratched a spark in your life, a flame you had long forgotten.

The beginning is the hardest part, the ending is easier, so let’s start there.

This is not memoir or biography, this is a story, Nick’s story, creative non-fiction, a narrative laced with places, times, events and characters that Nick experienced but also with a novelist’s imagination for storytelling.

I’ve known Nick for 79 years, by any measure, a long time. I know his failures and successes, his passions and desires, his loves and hates. He is a complicated man, at once brimming with creative energy while suffering a terminal lack of confidence. There is no schadenfreude in Nick, he takes no pleasure in another’s misfortune, he is a man preoccupied with himself, no one else. He has spent a lifetime trying to look, act and sound, if not be, someone he’d rather be than Nick.

The tides and storms of life are like the ocean they move us back and forth with unfailing regularity. We can’t control the tide, nor do we control our lives, we take what we get, the good, the bad and the detritus of living.

If you recognize a bit of yourself in this story, be thankful, you’ve had the ride of a lifetime.

I’ll skip over the formative years and get right to the heart of the matter; vanity, confidence, empathy, exhilaration, depression, and love. The big six driving one’s life, especially Nick’s.

This is his story.

Chapter-1

Vanity “the trait of being unduly vain and conceited; false pride” (Webster’s)

For most of my life, I was preoccupied with **********

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Published on May 29, 2019 06:14