I have a rich inner life. I’m not sure how often that comes across, at its best, as mysterious or, more accurately on the surface, vapid or like I don’t have much to say or contribute.

While working on my Master’s in Liberal Studies, I took a memoir class. One of our assignments was to read The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a memoir by the French journalist and former editor-in-chief of French Elle, Jean-Dominique Bauby.

I wouldn’t say I like memoirs. I’m pretty picky about them. But what I do appreciate is that they are not the span of a person’s life, just a part, more specific and more significant, analyzed and understood for what it was.