Published Weekly - Thursdays at 10 am. Next issue: May 14, 2026
🕯️ About R A Murphy
The person behind this newsletter and why he built it.
I spent more than fifty years in information technology — as a programmer, a trainer, an IT director, and eventually a university instructor. I have spent the better part of my adult life helping other people understand systems: how they work, why they fail, and what to do when the manual does not cover the situation you are actually in.
I am a Vietnam veteran. I am a writer. I am a poet. I have been writing poetry since my teens, which is a long time ago now, and I still believe that language — the musical, rhythmic quality of spoken words — is one of the most powerful tools a human being has access to. I live in Atlanta with my partner Sherrie, who is a visual artist working in cyanotype and abstract landscapes, and whose relationship to making things has quietly influenced everything I do.
I came to this project — the Leaving a Legacy newsletter and the memoir-writing work that goes with it — the way most people come to things that matter: sideways, and a little late.
I have a son. I have grandchildren. And at some point not too long ago, it occurred to me that the people I love most in the world know surprisingly little about the life I lived before they arrived in it. Not because I kept it from them. Just because it never quite came up in the normal flow of things. The war. The early years. The decisions that shaped everything afterward. The people who are gone now. The places that no longer exist in the form I knew them.
That realization is uncomfortable in a specific way that I suspect you recognize. It is not grief exactly. It is more like noticing a door you meant to walk through a long time ago, still standing there, still open, but not going to stay that way indefinitely.
I also happen to know a great deal about the technology that makes capturing and preserving a life story easier than it has ever been. I know how these tools work. I know which ones are worth your time and which ones are not. I know how to explain them to someone who did not grow up speaking the language of software and applications and platforms — because I have spent most of my career doing exactly that.
So this newsletter is the intersection of those two things: the personal urgency of a story that needs to be told, and the professional knowledge of how to tell it without the technology getting in the way.
I built this for people who have a life worth documenting and have been waiting, for one reason or another, for someone to show them it is actually doable.
It is doable. I am going to show you how.
A few plain facts, for those who prefer them:
R.A. Murphy is a retired IT director, writer, and content creator based in Atlanta, Georgia. He served with the Americal Division in Vietnam. He has written and produced content across multiple formats — newsletters, audio, video, and long-form essays — and has spent decades teaching technology to people who did not consider themselves technical. He is the creator of Old Is Fun, a humor and how-to platform for older adults, and the Leaving a Legacy newsletter series. He is currently at work on a guide to memoir writing using current AI and production tools.
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