LIFE GOES ON

Budzinski offers what he calls “sort of” a memoir about the pursuit of a personal legacy.

In this episodic collection of personal essays, Budzinski explores life’s irones with wit and aplomb, grounding many of his observations in the familiar concept of one’s “permanent record.” Whether it’s guised as an academic file or a credit score, this amorphous catalog of one’s shortcomings haunts children and adults alike. Taking lighthearted issue with such reductive, external narratives, the author punctuates his work with a series of imagined conversations with St. Peter, whom he portrays as the ultimate keeper of record. These frequently funny exchanges depict the author, sometimes referred to as “JB,” as he struggles to understand the complexities of human experience, such as the persistence of inequality: “JB, I sense a bit of hostility,” says St. Peter. “You…want complete fairness and justice. Do you not get it? The universe does not work in such a finite mode.” “Sounds like a design problem to me, Peter,” says the author. Although many of Budzinski’s observations will have readers chuckling, his memoir is deeply thoughtful, calling forth an understanding of life that cannot be conveyed as a simple record of deeds. One’s stories, replete with friendships and foibles, become our legacy, he asserts—a life’s work that can shape the lives of other people even if one never crosses their path personally. Drawing his work to a close, Budzinski conveys this concept of legacy poignantly in an imagined ending to the story of Bill Watterson’s comic characters Calvin and Hobbes, in which an elderly Calvin gives the toy Hobbes to his grandson, Francis, a cynical boy in need of love. Like the wisdom and comfort that Hobbes represents, the author’s words will affect readers long after they finish his work.

A compilation that will leave readers eager for more of the author’s humorous and thought-provoking adventures.