65) Little Black Book

Been married now for 8 years. It is amazing to think that much time has passed since I first met my wife and started building the relationship we have today. I am not sure I can pinpoint the moment I knew we would be married (probably the moment she said yes) but I remember when I discovered she was the girl for me.


In college I wanted to be a professional writer. I wrote short stories and at some point decided I needed to write my first novel. I had not been through this process before and so did not know best practices for writing a novel. My writing teacher explained to us that chapters need to represent a story within the story and that they should be written with a clear beginning, middle and end. So this is how I decided to organize my first novel. I saved each chapter as its own file on my computer and worked on them individually, not necessarily concerned early on how they flowed together. I got 120 pages into the project, far and away more pages than I had ever written on one project before, when my computer crashed. And by crashed, I mean completely stopped working.

I was devastated. I still remember the anger and frustration I felt in our crappy apartment off of MLK blvd. When L. saw the devastation she immediately took my computer to a friend of hers who worked for the Baylor computer lab. He could not save the computer, but he was able to extract all the files and print all the pages for me. L. then took me to Best Buy where she used her money to help me purchase a laptop. I had not made a big purchase like this on my own yet, and I come from a long line of thrifty (cheap) Japanese tradition and spending this much money on one item made me extremely nervous. She answered my anxiety by saying, "You want to be a writer, right? Well, you need something to write on."

It seemed so simple when she said it like that, however it was not such a simple thing. The issue was courage. I did not have courage or confidence to spend money based on the simple idea I wanted to be a writer. L. not only had the courage to step up, but she had enough confidence in me to purchase the laptop.

My birthday approached a couple of weeks later and L. bought me a leather bound notebook. The inscription explained that this notebook is to be used to jot down all ideas I have for current and future writing projects. I still use the notebook to this day. Can you imagine how many wonderful ideas are amassed within it's leather binding? Let me just tell you there are many. Obviously the present was thoughtful. But it was much more than that. It demonstrated qualities like confidence, support and love. These are qualities worth building a future around.

I now have my little black book sitting next to my bed waiting for me to fill it with ideas. And each time I see it I think to myself how lucky I am for finding someone willing to take this journey with me, even if it means she has to read a bunch of crappy stories I write.