Joseph Jarrett

Mishaps & Mistakes was my debut story. In a way, it was also like my debut in the world. By the time I released my book, I was no stranger to the world. I had thousands of Instagram followers. I met an infinite number of people while working as a flight attendant. I had friends and family in nearly every major city across the United States. But the vast majority still did not know me. They didn’t know Joseph.

            My life always felt like a movie, which made it so easy to write about in my journals over the years. The details that unfolded in my everyday life were so drastically different from those of my friends back home in Jacksonville. Back then, I saw it as mundane compared to my exciting life. Now, I want what they had all along.

            I had to mature to realize that there is a major difference between living a good life and portraying a role. So, when it came time to sit down and write out Mishaps & Mistakes, I knew I wanted to accurately display everything I had been through. I wanted to do it in a way that was honest, showed my messy side, and seemed fun. What I did not want was for my story to sound fictional. In the first completed draft of the book, it seemed like a script for an HBO show more than it seemed like a memoir. While I was proud of myself for getting it done, I was not truly proud of what I produced. I knew it needed changes, but I needed other people’s insights to help me get there. Now, I am a broke college kid. I do not have the funds for an editor, so I was going to my friends and family to do this for me. Boy oh boy, was that a choice.

            In the first draft, something that started off very different was how graphic some of the sex scenes were. The only word that can describe how those scenes sounded in the beginning would be “smut.” It sounded more like gay porn than it did a real-life story. The more horrific part was that my mother served as an initial editor. She read all of those parts. But it was her feedback that helped me get on track and get to the point I wanted to be at. Mom told me, “Think about the future. When your nieces and nephews are older, when you have kids, is this what you want them to pick up and read about you? Is that what you want them to see you as?” It was the most real and honest feedback anyone had ever given me.

            I immediately began scaling back on the details in those scenes, but I did not stop there. I also edited out things that were so emotionally overdone that not even Shonda Rhimes would buy into it. Shonda and her writers know how to evoke real emotions. That initial draft was not going to cut it. After I rewrote everything and read it back, it finally felt real. I no longer felt that I had made my life into a film script. I had made it into a story, one worth sharing. It was a story I was finally proud of.

            Life can be entertaining, and it should be. It should feel like a movie, especially in the big moments. But we live in a time where performative behavior is always present. We see it around the clock on social media. We also see it playing out at events and in normal conversations. Now, I genuinely despise resolutions, but one of mine was to be more real and less performative in 2026. This is something I want to build into a habit. Being candid is not a bad thing, despite what the internet wants us to believe. I’m messy. I’ve always been messy. There’s no reason to pretend I am not. So be messy with me. Leave the show life behind and start embracing life as it is.