Why Writers Can’t Remember Birthdays

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It’s nothing personal. Promise.

I forget birthdays, except a special few. But I remember the red scarf you wore the last time we met in the little café on the corner of Rosewood and Third, how it matched the shade of your lipstick imprinted on the white coffee cup, fingers of steam curling up, grasping at the comfortable silence between us while I watched raindrops cut trails down the window and sipped cinnamon tea.

I forget names, unless I’ve met you at least three times. Three is one of my special numbers, with five and seven. I never could remember how many feet are in a mile, ounces in a cup, seconds in a day. But I remember the rich scent of soil on an April afternoon as I pressed hyacinth bulbs into the dirt with my thumb, the drone of the first chubby bumblebee, the glistening jewels of dew on a spider web thread, the feel of sunshine warming skin and earth and coaxing life back into the barren landscape.

I forget years and ages—how old I was when impacted by a life event, what year it happened, its chronological sequence in my history. But I remember the feeling of the moment, my sense of place, my body. I stare at my hands and remember when they were small. I stare at my hands and wonder where I’ll be when I’m staring at these same hands and they’re wrinkled, my knuckles knobby from years of tapping out stories on a computer. I stare at my hands and am marveled at the dexterity of my fingers, the elasticity of my skin, the complexity of the human body, the shiny pink scars left from my past.

I forget tasks. Some I forget mere minutes after reminding myself I need to remember. Some I recall with a jolt after the deadline has already passed. Some gnaw on my mind from insemination to well beyond completion. Sometimes writing a to-do list helps…when I remember to check it.

I remember so many small things that I often forget the big ones. There’s only so much room for memories in the mind.

In many ways, writers are forgetful people. In other ways, we’re not.

But if I forget your birthday, please forgive me.

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I'm an award-winning fantasy author, artist, and photographer from La Porte, Indiana. My poetry, short fiction, and memoir works have been featured in various anthologies and journals since 2005, and several of my poems are available in the Indiana Poetry Archives. The first three novels in my Chronicles of Avilésor: War of the Realms series have received awards from Literary Titan.

After some time working as a freelance writer, I was shocked by how many website articles are actually written by paid "ghost writers" but published under the byline of a different author. It was a jolt seeing my articles presented as if they were written by a high-profile CEO or an industry expert with decades of experience. I'll be honest; it felt slimy and dishonest. I had none of the credentials readers assumed the author of the article actually had. Ghost writing is a perfectly legal, astonishingly common practice, and now, AI has entered the playing field to further muddy the waters. It's hard to trust who (or what) actually wrote the content you'll read online these days.

That's not the case here at On The Cobblestone Road. I do not and never will pay a ghost writer, then slap my name on their work as if I'd written it. This website is 100% authentic. No outsourcing. No ghost writing. No AI-generated content. It's just me... as it should be.

If you would like to support my work, check out the Support The Creator page for more information. Thank you for finding my website! 🖤