There were ghosts everywhere. That’s what I kept thinking, while standing on Shiloh battlefield. Ghosts.

You could feel them. You could almost hear their fraternal laughter. You could smell their gunpowder.

A ghost is merely a soul who doesn’t want to be forgotten. Beneath our feet, at Shiloh National Military Park; beneath 163 years of gravel and grit, were tens of thousands of forgotten souls.

They were long forgotten boys in uniforms. Men who had families. Who never saw their wives again. Who nevermore kissed their mothers again, or shook hands with their old men, or bounced babies on their laps.

They were just children, really. Boys who once engaged in a great civil war, testing whether their nation, or any nation conceived and so dedicated, could long endure. Fighting for something they believed in.

My friend Bobby and I were playing music for a funeral directly on the battlefield. The funeral was held for the former National Park superintendent, Woody Harrell.

Woody was

the man who made the Shiloh park great. A man who dedicated his life to preserving the sacred ground of the oft forgotten. A man who was recognized on the floor of the U.S. senate for his work here.

There were park rangers galore, attending the service. It looked like a ranger convention. Stetsons everywhere.

I met one ranger who looked like Teddy Roosevelt. He wore a table-flat brimmed hat and green suit, pressed sharply enough to slice tomatoes.

“McDougall’s brigade would have been fighting on this spot where we stand,” he said. “Would’ve been one heck of a fight on this ground.”

We weren’t all that far from Bloody Pond. A country pond where dying and wounded soldiers sought water during the battle. Wounded men would’ve crawled on their bellies toward the water.

The pond became the hub of death. The remains of young men…

I am walking my blind dog in a public park. We are on one of those community tracks.

People exercise everywhere. Joggers. Walkers. Cyclists. One woman is power walking, wearing earbuds, having a violently animated phone conversation with an invisible person.

My dog, Marigold, and I have been walking a lot lately. It’s not easy, walking. We have very few “good walks” inasmuch as walking in a straight line is impossible when you can’t see. So mainly, we walk in zig-zags until both of us are dizzy and frustrated and one of us needs to sit down on a bench and use expletives.

When I near the tennis courts, I meet a woman with a little girl. They are on a bench, too. The girl sees my dog and she is ecstatic.

“Look at the pretty dog!” the kid says.

So I introduce the child to Marigold. Immediately the child senses there is something different about this animal.

“What’s wrong with her?” the kid asks.

“She is blind,” I say.

The child squats until she is eye level with

Marigold. “How did this happen?”

I’m not sure what I should say here. So I keep it brief.

“Someone wasn’t nice to her,” I say.

The kid is on the verge of tears. “What do you mean?”

This is where things get tricky. I don’t know how much of Marigold’s biography I should reveal. Because the truth is, Marigold was struck with a heavy object by a man in Mississippi who thought she made a poor hunting hound.

“She was abused,” I say.

The little girl’s face breaks open. The girl presses her nose against Marigold’s dead eyes. She feels the dog’s fractured skull with her hands.

“Oh, sweet baby,” the child says.

That’s when I notice the mottled scars on the child’s neck. They look like major burns. I say nothing about this, but the wounds are…

You’re a farmer in the middle ages. We’re talking 1000 A.D.-ish. Actually, they don’t call you a farmer but a “yeoman,” which is an antiquated way of saying, “you shovel excrement for a living.”

Maybe you live in Scotland. Maybe France. England, Portugal, Africa, wherever. Either way, your life is unfulfilling.

Sure, you have a great family. You have great friends. You are even allowed to drink beer for breakfast because this is what everyone does during the middle ages, even clergy and toddlers. So that’s pretty great.

Even so, underneath it all, there is something going on inside you. You can’t explain what you’re experiencing.

Centuries later, psychologists will invent clinical names for your feelings. They’ll call it a major “climacteric,” or the “need for self-actualization,” or God forbid, a “midlife crisis.”

But in the middle ages there are no psychological doctors. There are only doctors whose entire medical practice consists of drilling holes into people’s skulls in hopes of curing a runny nose.

Still, you

can’t explain this pulling sensation inside. It’s tugging you somewhere. But where? You keep wondering whether you were made for more than just paying bills. Weren’t you were made to be more than just a serf?

And isn’t life about more than just pleasure and fun? Having fun is great. But fun doesn’t exactly make your cup runneth all over the placeth.

You have a few options for spiritual guidance. You could visit your local monastery, but the monks will just instruct you to say 25 Hail Marys and call it a day. Likewise, you could visit the doctor, who just bought a new cordless drill.

Then, one day you hear about this place in northwestern Spain, hundreds of miles from your home. It’s a cathedral, built upon the grave an apostle.

People from all over the world are traveling to this sacred…

I haven’t always been a morning person. God knows. When I was a young man I was anti-morning-people. Morning people were insane. My mother was a morning person.

As a boy, I’d awake to find my mother already in the living room, snuggled beneath a lamp, where she’d been reading for hours. The cat in her lap would just stare at me with moral disapproval.

“There will come a day,” Mama would say, “when you won’t sleep as good as you do now.”

My mother evidently put a curse on me. Because I get up early now. I didn’t CHOOSE to begin rising at 4 a.m. every morning. I have no reason to awake early. I am not a farmer. But my brain decided, years ago, that no matter what time I go to bed, I’ll be up with the chickens.

At first I resisted early rising. I did NOT want to be the kind of dork who got up at 4 a.m. to water ferns and take

inventory of his commemorative Dale Earnhardt stamp collection. But there you are.

Thus, each morning, my wife arises at 8:30 a.m. to find me on the porch, tapping away on a laptop. The cat on my lap just stares at her.

Also, I’m not sure when I started cooking, but I do that now, too. Lately, I’ve become the interim cook in our household. I’m not a great cook, mind you. My specialty dish is something my wife calls “chicken sushi.”

But I’ve found myself enjoying the culinary side of life. I read cookbooks for fun. I watch cooking shows and use words like “al dente” with a straight face.

Last night for supper, I made chicken and dumplings. A few nights before, scalloped potato casserole and banana cream pie.

My wife—God love her—who actually KNOWS how to cook, is gracious with my gastronomical…

Wake up early. Saturday morning. Leap out of bed. Oh, the bliss.

You sprint to the television set, racing your sister.

Last one’s a rotten egg.

You are still wearing Superman pajamas. Beneath your Man-of-Steel PJs, you’re wearing Batman skivvies, which is a slight conflict of interest, but you make it work.

You slap the power button on TV. The old Zenith console warms up. The television is cased in a faux wooden cabinet, with warped oak-grain veneer from a bygone Dr. Pepper someone once placed atop the television, even though this someone’s mother told them to NEVER set ANYTHING atop the TV, not that we’re naming names here.

So anyway, you’d sit on the floor, before the old tube, criss-crossed, which we used to call sitting “Indian style.” (No hate mail!)

Cartoons blared. It was undefiled rapture. Until your mom yelled from the other room, “Don’t sit so close to the TV or you’ll hurt your eyes!”

But you HAD to sit close.

They were playing all the greats today. Bugs, Daffy, Elmer, Porky, Marvin the Martian.

Yosemite Sam growled, “Say your prayers, varmint!” Speedy Gonzales would be chirping, “Ándale, ándale!” Wile E. Coyote and the bird were hard after it.

Then came Yogi and Boo Boo, “Smarter than the average bear.” George, Jane, Judy, and Elroy. Fred, Barney, Wilma, Betty, and Mister Slate.

After cartoons, you’d eat a wholesome breakfast of Rice Krispies. Rice Krispies had the same dietary value of No. 4 Styrofoam packing pellets. But it was okay. Your mom increased the nutritive value by topping your cereal with liberal spoonfuls of refined white sugar.

Next, it was time to go outside and play.

Mainly, we played Army Man. We used imitation firearms, pump rifle BB guns, and Andy’s dad even had a real bayonet from World War I.

We used these items…

Q: Sean, what your views are on politics, so we know where you stand?

A: My thoughts are, there is nothing more terrifying than waking up and realizing that your high-school class is now running the world.

Q: Sean, who are your literary heroes?

A: Gary Larson.

Q: Do you believe that all denominations will go to heaven?

A: When I was a kid, the Sunday school teacher said that when the Lord returned, with the last trumpet, all the Baptists would be raptured, and I would remain here on earth.

“You don’t want to be left behind, do you?” my teacher would say. “You’d be stuck in a world without evangelicals. Doesn’t that sound awful?”

“Yes, ma’am,” I’d reply. “Just awful.”

Q: So Sean, what DO you believe?

A: I believe I’ll have another beer.

Q: Dear Sean, are you rich? I looked your net worth up on the internet and it said you were several million dollars.

A: Pardon me while I laugh so hard ramen noodle soup comes out of my nose. I am

not rich. I am a writer.

Q: So you’re saying writers don’t make much?

A: What do you call a writer with health insurance?

Q: What?

A: Married.

Q: Dear Sean, I too want to become a professional writer. It has been my lifelong dream to earn a living doing what I love. I am looking for a field of specialization (fiction, non-fiction, etc). I wanted to ask you, in your experience, what kind of writing pays the best?

A: Ransom notes.

Q: Hi, Sean. I am wanting to get into writing. What is it like to be a writer?

A: I can’t put it into words.

Q: I’m an English teacher, and I wanted to ask you what you think of the current state of our country, when it comes to reading and literature. Fifty…

Today is a big deal.

If you don’t read any further, just keep repeating the above sentence in a loud, clear voice until it sinks in and your spouse begins to wonder whether you’re clinically insane.

Because you’d be insane NOT to realize what a big deal today is.

Today is a massive deal. A huge deal. A ginormous deal. A colossally, titanic, herculean, humongous, astronomical deal. With cherries on top. This is the most important day of your life.

Before you quit reading, you should know that you’re not reading some clichéd motivational speech from your high-school counselor whose wardrobe consisted of corduroy jackets and Just For Men hair color.

This day, you see, contains Right Now. Which is this exact moment. This micromoment of nowness. The little space,lying directly between what just happened and what’s about to happen. These current nanoseconds of nowness are flying by at breakneck speed, and you’re missing them by reading a crappy article.

Even so, I’m grateful you’re reading. Because I am here

to remind you that “Right Now” matters. Right Now is not trivial.

“Now.” What a word.

What is Now? Hell if I know. I’m not smart enough to define Now. Maybe Now is a physical moment. Maybe it’s a single breath. Or perhaps Right Now is a little patch of real estate in our metaphysical universe. A tiny portion of geographical space and time which allows you to be Here.

Either way, definitions don’t matter. What matters is that Right Now is all you have. Now is all anyone has ever had, but we were too distracted to notice.

You know why we were probably distracted? We were likely too busy thinking about Later. Or worse: Before.

But Later isn’t real. And Before doesn’t exist anymore. Right Now, DOES exist. And we can work with Right Now.

Namely, because…

Five years ago I was in Huntsville when the world shut down. Five years. Almost to the day. I’ll never forget it.

I remember what life was like at the time. I had spent the previous year working on a book. A memoir about my dad’s suicide. I put a lot of myself into that manuscript.

At the time, my wife and I were living in a junky fifth wheel trailer with two dogs roughly the size of NFL running backs. Our mobile-home toilet did not work; whenever anyone used the restroom our dwelling became uninhabitable.

Which is why my wife and I—this is true—started performing our morning necessaries outside on our rural property. There were posthole diggers in our outdoor bathroom area. Also, a stack of little neon-orange flags for marking landmines.

So anyway, when my book was published my publisher sent me on a multi-city book tour. After several cities, we landed in Huntsville, at Randolph School.

There, I performed my show. Played some

music. Told funny stories. It was a gracious audience, some audience members even stayed awake.

After the performance, I was in the lobby, hugging people, signing books, kissing babies. I was meeting other suicide survivors like myself. It was a meaningful night. Perhaps one of the most meaningful of my life.

That night, I remember a random older lady came through the line. I had never met her before. She hugged me and said ominous words I’ll never forget:

“Don’t waste today, sweetheart. It’s all you have.”

That night, in our hotel, I couldn’t quit thinking about her words. I felt as though her message was a mystery. I’d spent the last four hours hugging so many people that my skin chafed, why had the lady chosen to tell me this? Of all things.

Then I turned on the TV.

The newsperson said,…

I remember my first cellphone. I felt like one bad hombre.

I was in my mid-20s. The cellphone retail salesperson outfitted me with a state-of-the-age phone about the size of a residential General Electric refrigerator.

And, boom, just like that, I was Billy the Buttkicker. Whenever I wanted, I could whip that sucker out and call—I don’t know—time and temperature.

MODERN CHILD: What’s time and temperature, grandpa?

GRANDPA: The original Siri.

You had to call time and temp back then because, of course, there was nobody available to call since only a few of your friends even HAD cellphones. And all your friends were away from landlines, engaging in various activities such as, gainful employment.

Over the years, phones kept getting more advanced. Each day: a higher-tech phone. It seemed like you were always buying a new phone.

Eventually, phone retailers switched to the current sales system still used today, offering complimentary wastebaskets after sales transactions because, after you pay, your phone is obsolete.

Over the years, phones became able to do more. First came text messaging. Then your phone could receive emails. Then phone cameras. Apps. Mobile internet. Phone GPS. Video. Social media. Voice assistant. Paying with your phone. Fingerprint recognition. Face ID. AI.

Pretty soon, my phone was capable of doing everything except scrubbing my backside in the shower. Although, that never kept me from taking my phone INTO THE SHOWER where I could conveniently browse Amazon, watch YouTube, and most importantly, drop and break my phone.

But that’s okay. I just went to the phone store and upgraded to the most current device.

PHONE SALESPERSON: Our latest model of phone has a built-in bikini trimmer.

I was INSANELY addicted to my phone. I could not leave home without it. I could not use the bathroom without scrolling, sometimes for long periods, sitting on the toilet until…

The young woman sits in my truck passenger seat. She is 19. Her hair is red. Scottish red. Luminously red. People always comment on her hair first. 

Today she attended a presentation I gave at the library. Everyone at the library asked about her. They noticed her red hair and assumed we were related since my hair is also red. 

At first, I explained that we weren’t related. Then I’d tell the story of how we met, when I first wrote about her, some years ago. But after a while we got tired of explaining ourselves and we started calling her my niece. 

The young woman attended my presentation because she is very supportive of me. Although heaven knows why. We come from different generations. She’s a college kid in a sorority. Whereas, yesterday a salesperson enrolled me in AARP to save 15 percent.   

Currently, as we drive through Birmingham traffic, my “niece” is using her GPS to navigate aloud for me. She is better at using phones than I am.

She is

tranquil and collected, delivering important driving instructions as I wage battle with the homicidal motorists of Jefferson County. 

“Turn here,” the girl says calmly, using the same tone a driver’s ed instructor might employ. “Go past this light.” “Use your right blinker.” “The lady in the left lane is flipping you off.” “I believe she is using both fingers.”  

The child is well-mannered. Smart. Polite. Talented. Thoughtful. And I don’t think I’ve met anyone with more genuine optimism. 

It’s her optimism I marvel at the most. 

She lived in the hospital for nearly 230 days last year. For nearly a decade, she has struggled with an itemized list of medical issues that would make most grown men crumble. 

Paralyzation. Vision impairment. Diabetes. Relearning to walk. Twice. She lives on a feeding tube. She hasn’t eaten solid food since June. And yet she smiles. 

Our young heroine…