I have been doing a lot of thinking about my legacy lately and I have to say that I am not impressed. In two years and one day I will be 50 years old and I feel like I have not accomplished a single thing of substance yet. What reinforces this notion is that I feel powerless to help my family when it needs me the most. As I approach the half-century mark, my primary emotions are helplessness and worthlessness. That is probably not good.

The best thing I have ever done in my life is marry my wife. She brought along my boy and they have been the cornerstones of my life. But outside of raising my boy and fooling my wife into thinking that I am a good husband, I really haven’t accomplished much.

The problem with me is that I don’t know how to give up. No matter how much deeper that financial pit gets or how often people try to jab my family with a stick, I just keep getting up off the mat and getting back in the fight. I am one of those guys who believes that the Sabres still have a chance to tie the game and win in overtime when the score is 4-1with a minute to go in the game. I just refuse to give up and it sometimes feels like a curse.

I would imagine that it is a huge fear of disappointing my wife that keeps me going because I could care less about myself. I want my wife to be proud of what I do and who I am, and she is. But I never feel like what I do is enough, and that is just not fair to her. She is a living saint and anyone who knows the two of us would agree to that. Any person who voluntarily puts up with the torture of a life that I deal out on a daily basis deserves to be canonized.

The weird part is that I really do not feel sorry for myself. It may sound like I do, but I do not. I find myself strangely motivated to keep on plugging away at some kind of legacy I can leave behind for my son to point at and say “That is what the old man accomplished.”

I write books and I feel like I am just starting work on what could be the best thing I will ever write. But in true me fashion, I don’t feel like I have the talent to do it justice. But I just plug along and put the words to paper in the hopes that it comes out remotely close to what it should be. Only time will tell on that one.

Every day I sit in front of this computer and wonder how every single online customer I have can possibly be on vacation at the same time. But that is exactly what happens every summer and every summer it catches me off guard. I guess my legacy could be that I never learned, but that would not be completely true.

I am an emotional guy who takes everything personally and to heart, whether it involves me or not. I get more angry at stupid people on the Internet than I should and I am pretty convinced that the jerk who cut me off as I was getting onto Transit from the Home Depot parking lot has a personal vendetta against me. This emotional instability does not help when it comes to trying to establish something as enduring as a legacy, but it is a hurdle I deal with every day.

So what will my legacy be? I guess, since I am not done creating it yet, that it is hard to tell. I hope that my son and my grandchildren will tell fond stories of me when I am gone, but I am not sure they will. I have recently realized that just waking up in the morning is not quite enough effort to warrant adoration by your family. You actually have to accomplish something before that happens. That is why I am trying to cram 10 years of book writing into 18 months. You can call it making up for the time I lost not writing books 10 years ago, or you can call it a waste of time. Either approach works for me.

What about you? Do you think about what you will be leaving behind to your future generations? Do you think about your legacy? Establishing a legacy is not something every person thinks about, but it is something every person does. What will you be remembered for when you are gone?

Just remember that, as long as you are still alive, it is never too late to put your stamp on history.

+George N Root III is a depressing Lockport resident. Follow him on Twitter @georgenroot3 or send him a message at georgenroot3@gmail.com. If you find his legacy, please return it to the ENP offices so he can pick it up later.

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