By the autobiography of Marcus Ampe

You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?

Normally I would not be a person bringing forwards intimate writings made during life or made at a time when I would feel my life coming to an end. Though I do not want to die yet, I must confess I have come to a period of life where I think much more about what I could and could not establish, as well as overlooking the many different events that played an important role in my life I also came to a point where I am not afraid anymore to talk about my life and certain less pleasant events I had to endure.

There have been many events that made a certain impact that I could or can not ignore those experiences. For years I would not have spoken about those miserable and horrible experiences. For sure such life experiences would not be something to be published. Though they were not necessarily intended for publication time passes, and one comes to learn certain experiences that might be interesting for others to know that they are not the only ones struggling with such bad experiences. In the social work I am doing I encountered lots of people with serious problems, and also people who were sexually abused or bullied, attacked or had a serious accident making them paralysed, or having a very serious illness making that person very limited in what he or she can do.

That confrontation with people who have a lot of problems meant that certain things I had experienced myself could be used to help those people. Previously I would not let others know what I had experienced, but now becoming older it is as if the fear and shyness are starting to melt away under the sun.

1995 was the year I got my first personal computer and discovered a whole new world. There was so much to read and so much to absorb I never would have thought I would also once be as active like I then found some very active writers, who now all seem to have disappeared. Through the many web pages, blogs and writers that appeared on the net but disappeared as quickly as they came, one could see how transient everything is too. Sometimes, volatility catches up with us faster than we can think and act.

In the past, I never kept a diary. Only when I started having my MSN Space at Windows Live Spaces and started writing and/or responding to MSN Group people, I sometimes dared to publish some personal notes. Though they were not exactly very personal, like I recently I came to do with those daily prompts.

The ending of MSN Spaces got me choose to step over to WordPress on August 2010 for the religious blogs and for my personal blog in December. Noticing I got much more response in the WordPress pages I started to concentrate more on those. December 1, 2012 Multiply ended its services so 2013 brought me to change over all the articles and made me to go over all the links to make them working again, linking them to the transferred pages. In the end, that turned out to be a hopeless task because there was a multitude of articles and tagging and posting under categories took far too much time. So up to now, I fall short in that regard and hope people will use the search function to look up something they want to read more about.

When one comes to reading autobiographies, the reader hopes to find some more insights into the life of a person and especially about his way of thinking and handling. When reading such a book written by the person in question himself, the reader hopes to find a special kind of biographical truth: a life, reshaped by recollection, with all the recollection’s conscious and unconscious omissions and distortions.

Unlike a book about someone else, autobiography brings one’s own self to the fore subjectively, which may bring a very different picture than a publication about a particular figure. The reader of such an autobiography hopes to find some letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, and reminiscences of a formal book-length autobiography. Not just a 750-word blog article, but an entire biography in which juicy adventures are told.

My story would be one with a lot of ups and downs, nice or good things but also several bad things, even some so horrible that one would never want even the worst enemy to have to undergo such an experience. It would be full of struggles and battles to be won, but also of battles lost, lost pride and broken dreams. But through all the misery, there would still be a thread full of hope and prospects for a better future.

Bringing the (authentic) “self” totally in the public is not my thing. In my early years, I might have not been afraid to expose my body, but to expose the insight or inner being is still one step too far.

So do not expect many very personal writings and certainly not an autobiography from my hands. In my dreams the opening sentence of my autobiography would sound as:

“This is the story of a man who as a child wanted to become a priest or a well-known musical star, and after 45 years having done his best in ballet, concentrated himself onto the work for his church, preaching, social and aid work, plus writing on the internet.”

Find also to read:

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Additional reading

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Published by Marcus Ampe

Retired dancer, choreographer, choreologist Founder of the Dance impresario office and archive: Danscontact-Dansarchief plus the Association for Bible scholars, the Lifestyle magazines "Stepping Toes" and "From Guestwriters" and creator of the site "Messiah for all". - Gepensioneerd danser, choreograaf, choreoloog. Stichter van Danscontact-Dansarchief plus van de Vereniging voor Bijbelvorsers, de Lifestyle magazines "Stepping Toes" en "From Guestwriters" en maker van de site "Messiah for all". View more posts