Who Am I?

The dude behind the Book

Writing is a bit of a new thing for me. Prior to writing, I was content to be working with technology. I was given my first computer at age 6 (Windows 3.1), installed DOOM on it, and I've been fascinated by computers and games ever since. I got my first job in computer repair - the Geek Squad - when I was in my early-to-mid 20's. After that, I did some IT services on my own, then I got hired by a locally owned IT company in my small town. After several years of that job, I moved on to a Telecommunications Engineering company. I loved the engineering work and my background in IT just helped me to learn the engineering side faster.

Before all of that technology stuff though, I was a teacher. I taught Jr. High and High School P.E. and English, after studying under an English Education Major for 2 years in college. Admittedly, I had no clue what I was doing with the P.E., but I enjoyed teaching English (you can all call me irredeemably crazy now, I know). More importantly, I enjoyed trying to be a positive impact to the kids I taught. It gave me a sense of purpose.

After a rather eventful and traumatic few years of life, I'm left managing my anxiety and making my living as best I can. I'm more informed and have a deeper understanding of my own mental health because of therapy. Now, after nearly 3 years of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, I personally think a therapist should be just as standard as a family doctor.

A huge stigma that I see everywhere around me is that "Only mentall ill people need to see therapists." I would like to challenge that idea and say that therapy has preventive value, even for "healthy" people. Therapy helped me deal with insecurities, biases, and misunderstandings in addition to the acute anxiety and panic attacks that I originally went in for.

My First Book!

It is here! Finally! This first book has been about 2 years in the making. I'm sure my wife is just as glad to see it as I am. I have had no clue what I've been doing, and my editor really straightened me out at a few points along the way.

At first, I decided to start writing a memoir because it was somewhat therapeutic to bring some closure to a period of my life now defined by loss and grief. And while it was therapeutic, it was also an opportunity for me to get vulnerable and be visible. A lot of times, we instinctively want to hide our hurt and be ashamed of feeling it. Alternatively, let it be a learning tool.

My goal with this first book is to inspire others that it's okay to hurt, and no emotion lasts forever (good or bad). In fact, it's perfectly human to hurt. While we can't always control the hurt in our lives, we can control our response to the hurt.

Why read my story?

My story isn't so crazy that it's unrelatable. In fact, I think my book highlights a lot of things that many of us experience, but never talk about. Problems at work pile up, we lose family or close friends, relationships change, and our emotions have something to say about all of it. Sometimes our emotions scream loudly, reverberating around the entire psyche. Sometimes they are quiet. We're never in any single state for too long.

We're emotional beings as humans. We relate to our entire world emotionally. There's nothing wrong or right about emotions - it's simply a mechanism that we function (or... dysfunction) by to differing degrees. That emotional framework can be unsettled in so many different ways. Being able to recognize when your emotional framework has been unsettled isn't always so obvious or easy to admit. We don't want others to lose faith in us.

Being able to partner up with a therapist to work on my mental health was the single best choice I made for myself and my family. It helped me sort through and identify my emotions so I could then choose how to respond to them.

Anxiety, depression, and all the other negative emotions we have won't ever disappear. Traumas cannot be reversed. We must find a will and a way to become functional as we move forward with these emotional experiences. We have to have a healthy way of dealing with them when they arise. But my specific healthy way isn't your healthy way. We each have to find our own healthy way forward. This is where I cannot recommend to find a good therapist enough.