"The Old Gringo" by Carlos Fuentos is a good short book, about about the possible 'fate' of Ambrose Bierce in Mexico. No one really knows what happened to Bierce [disappeared there] but... This fiction book includes an American woman, a general in Pancho Villa's army, and Bierce. Good read, 199 pages. Eng. 101-type book.
"Grendel" by John Gardner is short and a quick read, though because it's also pretty violent, etc. by the end of an actually-thoughtful book, am not sure how you can relate it to your own life [if that's what you mean]. I could, I know, but I don't know you... A good book, English 101 style, 152 pages. I still read it often.
"Juicy Tomatoes" [a change-up here] is 200 easy-reading pages, yet could be good for some kind of comparison to you as seen through your own eyes, though as the blurb on it says, it's written by a journalist [in 2000] who writes "Plain truths, dumb lies, and sisterly advice about life after 50." The author, Susan Swartz, may be a journalist [lots of great writers are/were] but that style adds to the spice, and ease of reading.
If you can find it, or any collection by him, Damon Runyon is a writer who was/is very much fun to read. I have a collection of his short stories from 1949: "Runyon A La Carte" coming in at 192 pages.
It caught my eye again because I just read an article about his genius for the spoken word of his era on Broadway [it's in The New Yorker], where he said his real genius as a writer was to be 'purely sedentary.'
I have done the same, just sitting and listening, to research for a play I wanted to write about neighborhood bars where the patrons were the same people, night after night.
The play was a success, but not even close to the success Runyon displays in his short stories about NYC gangsters and Broadway folks.
ADD: Suggest you write your short story on MS Word. Use default margins, a header for your name and the date, a footer for page numbers, use Times New Roman font size 12, double-space all of it [center title and your name] and you'll see that a 12-page story isn't long at all. You may find it's not long enough. That set-up is the one most frequently used for short stories. [Said only if you don't already know.]