A Pirate('s Fan) Looks at Fifty
On September 2, 2022, I turned 50-years old. As with most of my birthdays, but perhaps with some added urgency this year, I find myself wanting to reflect, to take stock, to consider all the blessings, tragedies and triumphs dotting the landscape of my five decades of life. Over the years, I've started and stopped memoir projects several times. It's not that I think the stuff of my life would be of particular interest to others. Rather, it's more of a personal endeavor: a way to take stock of my life, to give some narrative to the grainy snapshots of memory, to process tragedies and celebrate joys. In short, it's my way of trying to bring order to the chaos of life, to give a more formal structure to the random musings that make up my journal entries, social media posts and other random scribblings in various media. To the degree I can understand my motivations, my goal is, if not to necessarily make my own life more interesting to myself, at least to make it more