The Character With My Name

I didn’t intend to write two memoirs; writing about “my life” was something I’d never considered.

I wrote and published a book about living out of a van for year (No Signal), but that was more about an experience—

And then my father had a stroke in early 2025.

I started thinking about the past and then a few months had passed and I’d written several hundred pages.

I was writing about my life…but I wasn’t—

I was witnessing this character with my name who did things I remember doing but I was observing him as an outsider.

With that distance came perspective; I lost all preciousness about the experiences captured in See The Stars They’re Shining Bright. 

I no longer saw myself as some “romantic victim” or whatever, I could see my mistakes including my own selfishness—

My own immaturity.

The second memoir, as much as it is a love story, it is a learning story.

The Bad Kids was about being an out of control juvenile delinquent. The new book begins with high school; I just wanted to fit in, even went by my middle name: 

David is a safe, bland name, right?

It took me three years to see that I am an Izaak, not a David.

Isn’t that adolescence, though? It’s like someone sets off a dirty bomb inside you: 

You’re changing so much, you seek independence but you’re still a child, 

You have this ideal of yourself but there is a reason why ideal starts with the same letter as illusion—

Our teenage years are like walking through smoke, believing we’re getting somewhere while really walking in circles.

There were no YouTube videos taking you through things step by step; all we had were John Hughes films.

But I feel fortunate to have grown up in that time, there was an innocence that has been lost.

Writing these books I have learned that I took those simpler, innocent years for granted. 

Now I am old, crusty, and closed off, missing the innocence I had in my youth—

Maybe you understand; you have to close yourself off, protect yourself, that is also a learning experience—

But what we lose could fill a thousand books.

I couldn’t have written this book twenty years ago or even ten. I had to get far enough from my 14 to 33 year old self to be able to own my mistakes—

I was a selfish boyfriend and husband.

It wasn’t as simple as I was some “nice person who got dumped—“

I wanted affection---to get laid---but never stopped to think about the other person’s perspective.

This was the hardest thing to learn: Whatever “heartbreak” I experienced, I didn’t just walk into it, I dove into it like a cliff diver who only sees a sparkling blue sea and not the rocks below the surface.

I deserved to crawl out of the ocean bleeding and broken—

I not only see that now, I accept it.

Writing See The Stars I learned that life is not shaped by one or two big events, but by a thousand tiny ones:

Buying a book on your lunch break that changes how you see the world.

Filling out a resume and ending up at a job where you fall in love with someone.

Getting coffee in a break room, running into a co-worker, and agreeing to be the drummer in their band.

Your brother calling to tell you that your father is in the hospital.

See The Stars They’re Shining Bright is one of those events.

https://www.amazon.com/See-Stars-Theyre-Shining-Bright-ebook/dp/B0H73QB7YS?ref_=ast_author_dp_rw&th=1&psc=1&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.W0c1usllOozrmiEcxm1yYNJRdYU0Cc6VMF2VMIw4GFgm4psCDghR6Sxo0hG9zEU7sj606o91ICQvdYP90Osq9m7Wi-3wJslH8rQ_uDQlSruInGsmkrX2wQ0nqvz5OTv8SNek5E1mN82MCM8gOLVwLLC7hj6HGqwe3vwNCC1H5YHQICh5N19TuHH6EoRvPjZdTooWQMDgHCuLyHoluDTAjxXgzAdYVwjtTNb6lAPX-J0._zqZfMVW3aaJPX_MXh8fIZjG9n1UGbxV9wIzCt1oxCA&dib_tag=AUTHOR