Joseph Jarrett

You would think that finding the title to your life’s story would be oh so easy. Wrong. I had spent months thinking of a title, changing my working title on a nearly daily basis. I wanted to be absolutely positive that I had the right words to describe how I’ve lived my life, how I felt through all of my adventures, and how I’d share the central theme of my story all in one. It was draining. Nothing felt right. And then, it finally hit me.

            I was sitting at my desk on a hot summer day, blasting “Greenlight” by Tate McRae, contemplating whether I should even go through with publishing my memoir. Was it too soon? Was it too vulgar? Was it just right? I was doing anything other than working on the final chapters of Mishaps & Mistakes. I just couldn’t get the words out of me. I turned behind me and looked at my reflection in the mirror. I questioned my alternate self, “What if this is a mistake?” My eyes went wide. Oh, my lanta. Had I just figured it out? It made total sense. For years, I had been asking my friends if I was making mistakes in romance, if I was at fault for all the things that had gone wrong in life and love. My title had been lingering in those conversations for years and I never saw it. Now, I did.

            I immediately spun my blue fabric chair around and opened the Word Document that had been saved as “Memoir – Life Story” for a number of months. I bumped all of my writing down a page in order to make my cover page come to life. For every disastrous experience I had in the realm of love, I knew I had found myself in some mishaps. For every life-altering event that I survived, I knew I had made mistakes that I wanted to fix so badly. To sum it all up, I was giving back to people the lessons I learned from everything. That sum came out to Mishaps & Mistakes: What I’ve Learned (So Far) as a Young Gay Man. I knew my story was not complete, but rather a work in progress. I wanted that to be utterly clear. I needed anyone who picked up my book to understand that what was kept in those pages was just part of the story.

            In a few weeks, I’ll be twenty-six years old. I’ll be more than a quarter of the way through my life. That gives me three more quarters to live, to love, and to learn. Don’t fret, though, I don’t feel like waiting a quarter of a century to give my readers the next set of adventures and lessons. And deciding on a sequel title has to be easier than setting the original one, right? Right?! I hope that the next book is full of memories that I am not ashamed of, but instead, I hope those pages are filled with stories of incredible people I encountered, adventures I never thought were possible, and so much more. Maybe a love story that is true and everlasting. To all the Mishaps & Mistakes I’ve experienced so far, the ones I have yet to see, and everything left in the Messy Middle, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

(And because I don’t like to gatekeep music or not give an artist their flowers, here’s the link to listen to “Greenlight” by Tate McRae!)