Quotes / The saddest epitaph

But can one achieve some one else’s potential?  It might work as “I failed to achieve MY potential,” but the mixture of first and third person would be confusing and meaningless.

Actually, I really like reylen’s suggestion.  ”His potential” would not literally be someone else’s, but rather the potential that was impressed upon the writer by someone else – the potential that he thought the writer should have (hence it was his).  It adds a much deeper dynamic to the entire story than keeping it completely vague as it currently is.  There is a balance to being too vague and too specific in these, but I really like this idea because it hits the appropriate point between those spectrums.

Not sure what you mean by “I lack a lot of them.”  As far as false is concerned, do you mean in relation to yourself or me? It was my memoir and certainly describes my life.  See comment in response to SMRB.

The truth of the matter is that as a WRITER, I have been fairly successful – I had four thrillers and a non-fiction book published and made a a modest amount of money for a while before being dropped by my publisher.

But I never set out to be a writer.  In my childhood, my ambition was to be a theoretical physicist and to win a Nobel prize.  Instead I dropped out of school due to personal problems.  I wanted to marry a beautiful girl (with a nice personality) – instead I am a Henry Higgins type bachelor.  I wanted to be a millionaire at 20 – I missed that deadline three decades ago and am living in shared accomodation.

Believe me, it is HONEST!

It all sounds so familiar, in a we went to different schools together kind of way.
As Don Adams (Get Smart) always used to say “missed it by that much”, with his fingers spread about a half inch apart. Bright side is you had your 15 minutes of fame and money also. I was a heavy construction carpenter building California’s infrastructure and such for years and never home. Made a good solid living with the house the pool the off road toys the boats and blah blah blah.Thing I was never home enough to really enjoy any of it. so I quit one day , drove 300 miles home,and told my now ex-wife,that I was going open the bbq joint and catering company i had been talking about.Exactly to the day one year later it was open.The first year and a half caused me to sell all the toys just to make house payments.But I was determined and by the third year the money was rolling in due to talking my way into all the catering backstage at the local concerts. The first band was ZZTOP, then Tim MCGraw, Olivia Newton John,and on and on. Suddenley I’m asked to do concerts further away from home then further etc. etc. What started out as a nice little BBQ Dive with horseshoe pits and a mud bog pit out back, with the intention of being home and beig with my family went huge and totally in the other direction. Thus the divorce.Business closed and now I share a house with a buddy I have known for 30 years,so i too had my 15 minutes of fame and wonder why it was all i got. HAVE AN OUTSTANDING DAY!!!