Older and Wiser

It has been suggested in several individual reviews of Between Expectations that the book might be better, my narrative (and my role of narrator) more sympathetic, had I written it ten years from now, or maybe even twenty. I would have had a more mellow and less jarring quality to my observations had I aged them or let them breathe like a left bank Bordeaux.

Maybe I'll write that book as well. I hope that I get to.

But reading the pages of my own book, one I wrote only a few years ago and continued to edit until the middle of last year, it is like reading about things that happened to a stranger. I am already a wholly different person. I have already left that small, frightened intern far, far behind.

So I hope you'll forgive me for having written this book, one that takes place at the beginning and not the end of my learning, and appreciate that it contains much that I would have lost had I waited, had I tried first to make sense of each experience instead of capturing the confusion and uncertainty that permeated those years.

So stay tuned. When I become a sage and a savant, I'll let you know. Until then, I'll continue to do the best that I can.