This Old Notebook

In 1993, I was a sixteen-year-old kid trying to fulfill this domineering illusion of becoming a small town’s basketball hero. It was also at this time I was journaling into notebooks, scrawling away about my dreams of becoming the top high school basketball player in the land. Nothing else mattered. No money, clothes, cars, stereo equipment, not even girls could lure me away from the basketball courts and my deep passion for the game.

Sometime thereafter, I’d discovered books and poetry. I found my passion for basketball fading and being replaced with my new obsession with the written word. I began writing my thoughts and feelings and ideas into the notebook pictured above, which ultimately gave me the strength to carry on and face personal demons that had already reared their ugly heads into my young life. Poetry and notetaking also presented me the courage to walk away from the game that I once loved. Many narrow-minded people looked down on me for quitting basketball, but the words captured in this notebook said to follow your heart.

Now, almost 26 years later, I’m still writing and scrawling away in notebooks. Along the way, I’ve written a few books and many short stories, some of which have sold copies all over the U.S. and other far off places. I feel extremely fortunate for that.

I love this old notebook. I look at it and read what’s inside, on the yellow-stained pages with faded ink and smeared pencil, and think back to a young bedroom poet who had dreams of becoming a famous writer. I’m not famous, but I am a writer, and I'm glad that young man from long ago took a chance and followed his heart.