Hi, I’m Matt Hirst, founder of Inked In Time. Here, I write memoirs – sometimes mini-memoirs – that work to keep your loved ones alive for generations to come.
I’ve spent most of my corporate career in automotive e-commerce. While it’s done me well, I’ve always pursued other things on the side. Be those adventures in the world of digital agencies or e-commerce, the one thing that remained constant is writing.
It was my senior year at Oklahoma State, and I was lost as to what a Management Information Systems major meant for my life. What was I going to do? Who was I going to be? I didn’t know, and I had far-fetched dreams of being a writer, in some way. So, I started writing anyway I knew how – for myself, for an NFL sports site, for a satire blog that catered to a college-aged audience.
After graduation, I pivoted to more serious writing: freelancing for Dallas-area newspapers and a PR agency. I realized I didn’t like news much, but I loved the people I met – sheriffs, businesspeople, random individuals with stories to tell. That lit me up: learning about people and sharing their stories.
There are so many different things people do in their vastly different lives. How they started, how they got there, what their cause is, how they persevered. I was looking for who I was, and through examining others, I found myself. Vulnerability, something I’ve struggled to find in others and felt like I had too much of myself, became a form of power. Laying yourself bare – in life, in romance, carefully in business – leads to conversations you’d never expect, sometimes with people you don’t even know. For connection and storytelling, vulnerability is perhaps the most important arrow in my quiver.
It’s funny to look at my life and realize how time I once felt was wasted has come full circle. But the realization didn’t come without loss. Within the last 18 months, we lost my mom’s father and my dad’s mother. The count is now down to one grandparent, since my dad’s father died back in 2001.
I grew up overseas, only moving back to the U.S. in the late 2000s. Sadly, the precedent of rarely seeing family was already set. We all had our lives to live. I never got to know my grandparents like I wish I had. Now, stories of my grandfather from Vietnam will be hearsay, if they even exist at all. Stories of my other grandfather are gone with the wind; I hear he worked in intelligence. Stories of my grandmother’s life in Panama during the Vietnam War, before moving back to Guatemala, will be hard to gather. I wonder how she felt. These realizations are hard for me to reconcile.
Inked In Time was born within that sadness and recognition of our need to celebrate life. Our blood, while not limiting in who we become, is the foundation of who we are. Let’s make sure to celebrate them while they’re still around.
Thanks for being here,
Matt Hirst