Synopsis (from Amazon):
This is a book about being alive. The stories are real and reflect moments when we feel fully alive—but perhaps are not aware of it, unable to take time to appreciate or recognize these unexpected gifts. I call them Damn Good Things, and they’re easy to see once you know how. When you do, you might just improve your day, learn something about yourself, and even change your life.
The Origin of Damn Good Things
My book Damn Good Things was inspired by a rollercoaster ride I took with my Dad. The funny thing is, after it happened, I completely forgot about it for 20 years!
I was 21 and heading to London to be an assistant teacher in a writing program there. My Dad’s a professor and he was on sabbatical in Copenhagen, so I stopped to see him on the way. My Mom was there too, but she was out of town at the time.
Summer in Copenhagen is absolutely beautiful. My Dad and I walked all over the city, talking about this and that. Somehow we wound up at Tivoli Gardens, the grand old amusement park, and somehow we wound up going on the rollercoaster. It was a fun visit, and we had a good couple of days together.
After that, I went on to London and taught and got on with my life.
Twenty years later – now married with children and moving into our second home – I was going through some boxes and I found an old journal. I sat down and started reading through it, and there was this entry about Tivoli! By this time I’d completely forgotten about it, but here was this great entry about Dad and me going on this enormous rollercoaster, and how we did all those rollercoaster things – shouting and laughing and waving our arms as the roller coaster climbed high hills and then roared down them and thundered around turns with everyone screaming and having fun.
The last line of that entry was, “What a damn good thing for me and my Dad to do!”
It was so fun to find that, even more so because I still had no memory of it. But I loved that phrase “damn good things” and I started wondering what makes a good thing into a damn good thing. I eventually hit on the idea that there are certain moments in life – very brief moments – when we feel completely alive, and that’s what was going on with the rollercoaster ride. I liked that idea, so I started looking for more of these, and eventually collected a bunch of them into this book, Damn Good Things.
It's funny to think that journal was sitting in a dusty box somewhere for 20 years, like it was waiting to be found. And I’m so grateful I finally found it!
Peter Andersen has been writing since he was a kid. In his professional life he’s worked as a journalist, writing teacher, newspaper editor, manager, freelancer, and technical writer. He spent 30 years producing technical documentation at Microsoft and other software companies. These days, in addition to writing about Damn Good Things, he conducts life story interviews with the residents of a local retirement community.
The idea for Damn Good Things came about when he found an old diary entry about a rollercoaster ride he once took with his father. The entry described how fully alive they both felt in that moment, and ended with the words, “What a damn good thing for me and my dad to do!”
Inspired by that diary entry, he began to research and write about the moments when we feel completely alive. He soon realized that this is what he’d been writing about his whole life. This is truly the lens through which he sees the world. Whether it’s an aging, half-blind pug tearing across a wood floor to get to her dinner, the distant whistle of an approaching train in the night, or a memory-filled relic from a childhood home – he’ll show you how all of these are Damn Good Things.
Website:
https://peterandersen-author.com/
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61568941315689
Amazon
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222083322-damn-good-thing
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