Today I read an article from legendary film critic Roger Ebert. The article, here, hit me pretty hard. It’s not because the thought that the world will eventually come to an end, and that everyone I know will someday die, either. I’ve been hearing a lot about the end of the world this past year. My own father has become one of those conspiracy theorists who believe the world is going to end on December 21st or 22nd of 2012. I struck a deal with him, that if and when that happens, I will listen to him when he says, “I told you so.” But on December 24th, 2012, if we’re still alive, I will gladly yell, “We’re still alive! Now be quiet… and Merry Christmas!”

But no, the article is so compelling for another reason, possibly illuminating a far more narcissistic side of me. You see, I’m a dreamer and a writer. I love what I do, and I plan to send out my very first novel to publishers in the coming year. I truly hope that someday, people across the country, maybe even the world, will read this story. And in my own mind, I’ve always thought that that would truly make me happy. I would feel invincible, I would feel like forever if only I could be immortalized in a novel. After all, books are forever, aren’t they?

Of course, I knew that books have been burned before, and that many books that don’t sell well are discontinued, the extras shipped back to their publishers, never to be seen (or read) again. But surely, I thought, that would never happen to me. I thought that, truly, all I needed to do was to write something strong enough, something that might touch people’s hearts in some way and I’d find my name along the cloth spine of a book, somewhere on the shelf before Salinger and Shakespeare, and all would be well. I would live forever.

Until the conspiracy theorists started to dream up grander and grander visions of an apocalypse, in which human beings are not only killed, but every last record of us are burned along with our bodies, and sooner or later there will be no trace that we were ever here. All of our skin and bone will turn to dust. The buildings will grow weak with age, the stone will weather and fall. The rivers will rise and swallow cities whole. And along with them, every word of every book will someday fade. And even if the world doesn’t all burn into a cinder, someday, maybe, books will become obsolete. As illiteracy grows in this country, rife throughout inner cities, as newspapers are growing weaker with every apathetic reader turning to likes of O’Reilly and Limbaugh to do their thinking for them instead, maybe books will die long before humans ever do. And what then? What of my own selfish legacy, my quest to be remembered? How will I find meaning then?

For the past two years, I’ve devoted my life to a story called VALENTINE. I feel passionate about it. Just thinking of scenes and phrases of the book still makes me smile. It makes me feel euphoric sometimes. It even makes me cry. I desperately want the world to read it someday. But I’ve learned a lot of things about myself while writing this book. One such thing I’ve learned is that not everyone in the world from now until forever has to read and fall in love with this book that I’ve written in order for me to be satisfied. I don’t expect people to proclaim me the best writer since Shakespeare. I don’t expect pictures in magazines of crowds of people clutching the cover to their chests to still their thumping hearts. Because the truth is that I love the story that I have written. I hope that everyone else who takes the time to read it enjoys it as much as I do, but I know that many won’t. And that’s okay. Because I realize now that my name doesn’t have to be remembered to everyone, because even if I don’t get a world full of fame from this story, I did get something that I think might be far more important and precious instead: I got to tell a story that was deeply personal and close to my heart, a story that I’m devastatingly proud of, that not only could show someone who I really am inside, but has literally helped me to realize my full potential and guided me to a happier, better place in my life. To be quite honest, it has made me a better person. And while I know that the chances are slim that it will ever even be published, and that even if it was, the words would someday blur or burn, I’m quite content knowing that what I got from this story will last, at least, for the rest of my life, however long that will be.

And that, truly, still makes me quite happy.