I write for a living, but it’s corporate-ish writing, so I often feel like a fraud when I’m around artists, musicians, or other creative types. In order to fit in, sometimes I’ll casually mention that I’m writing a book about my life. Which is technically true, but also kind of a joke because I started writing it almost 30 years ago.

Does it take 30 years to write a book? I can assure you it does not. Part of me believes it shouldn’t take more than 30 days, but certainly no more than a few months. You know, if you can afford to just sit and write for a few months and don’t have to do another job for a living.

But having to work for a living is not why my book still isn’t finished after 30 years. I think it isn’t finished because I don’t believe it will be of interest to anyone, including myself.

Like many writers, I often wonder who could possibly care about anything I write. Especially something autobiographical. I get caught up in thinking there’s no point in finishing a book about my life as a musician since I was not a famous or even successful musician. I was just one of millions who once played for a living and now doesn’t.

But success or lack of it hardly matters because, over time (30 years, remember?), the book mutated into less a musician’s story and more a personal memoir. And now that’s what hangs me up. Because who cares about my memoir?

Insecurity is a bitch. Because I know my story is at least mildly interesting. Everyone has a story. If you think someone doesn’t have a story, just ask them a question. A question about anything. Odds are, if you give the answer enough time, your question will lead to a story worthy of a book.

But we lack perspective when it comes to ourselves. I can sit around thinking my life hasn’t been much to write about (because I lived it, so I don’t consider any of it to be such a big deal), but if I list a few things and look at them objectively, I’m kind of like: Damn, I’d read that book!

• Mom and Dad split before I was a year old.
• Dad was a truck mechanic, bar owner (he called it a “beer joint”), and drunk, not in that order.
• Occasionally, I’d spend a Saturday with my dad, and if he had to bartend, he’d take me to the bar with him for his shift. I was 7 or 8 years old at the time.
• Stepdad was a wildly unsuccessful gambler and a firm believer in any fringe belief or pseudo-science that crossed his path.
• Mom left the family when I was 9 or 10 years old, waitressed at a private club wearing Minnesota’s version of a Playboy Bunny outfit, and wound up in a psychiatric hospital receiving electro-shock “therapy.”
• Stepdad eventually gambled away our house, so we lived in a relative’s basement for almost a year.

That was all before I ever picked up a guitar.

If you and I were sharing a glass of wine or a spliff and you told me even half of that, the first words out of my mouth would be, “You should write a book.”

So, I guess, here I am.

I’m glad I didn’t finish the book 30 years ago because it would have been awful. I wasn’t a very good writer back then. I don’t say that to suggest that I’m a good writer now. Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. But I don’t care about being a good writer anymore, which means, I think, that I’m much closer to being a good writer than I ever have been.

When I started the book, it was only about my life as a musician. I wasn’t out as trans because there was no such thing. I didn’t know who I was, and what I knew, I took great pains to hide. But a good memoir shouldn’t hide anything, should it?

Anyway, I’m glad I wrote most of the musican bits down when I was younger because I barely remember most of it now. Sometimes, I question whether any of it really happened. But it all happened, I think, and I suppose I’ll finish the book one day. Then, when it’s done, if any living people still publish books, they can reject it.

But I will have written it; I’ll no longer be writing it.

Check back with me in a decade or so, and maybe I’ll have a story for you.

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN