Young Again
Old, but I’m not that old
Young, but I’m not that bold
And I don’t think the world is sold
On just doing what we’re told-OneRepublic’
My life is a musical with a bad soundtrack, But all in all, it does not really matter as i am not the star of the play anyway….and a long string of words in the style of Christian nihilism.
i spent my childhood between the beaches of California and the mountains of Tennessee with a dad who was strung out on heroin (when he was not in prison) and a mother who was going from working class to executive class. .i was the stereotypical ‘board genius’ who, as the theory went’ was rebellious because i was board, not challenged enough. But i would discover two things that would destroy any hope of an academics figure, D&D and Plato’s republic. they would give me something that, at 14, i had never experienced before.
Plato’s Republic fascinated me because it was the first time i read a book in which i understood all the words, but did not understand the point being made. I found the wall of not knowing, that feeling of that kind of stupidity, to be titillation. Give me a mystery to solve, an obstacle to over come and i will enjoy myself.
Dungeons and Dragons was similar but with imagination. it gave a framework for my mind to expand to the possiblities, to create worlds and universes. Though i would find D&D far too limiting, it and ttrpg in general was why i would eventually start studying (just not for school). history, phycology, sociology, math, physics, chemistry, just about everything (except for spelling it seems) is relevant to world-building.
then I rebelled against my workaholic mother and enlisted the navy in May of 89. After boot and Apprenticeship Training i served on the USS Pharris as a deck ape and Hospital Corpsman striker from late 89 to early 91…it decommissioned a year or so after I left.
After Corps School at the Great Lak base, served in the emergency room as an EMT and EVO at the Naval Hospital Lemoore (NAS Lemoore.
Then served as the Jr. Doc on the USS Ingersoll from late 93 to early 97. It too was decommissioned a year or so after I left.
Started Work at Promise Keepers in 97 doing inventory control and also programing cell phones when unified accounts and switched carrier. Would take a year or so off to write The War Foward, and returned to PK in the fulfillment department untill 2003
I would drop ‘off the grid’ in mid ’03 to Dec ’06 as i lived up ‘on the mountain’ (Appalachians) in Reliance, TN, to take care of my grandmother. Then after that next two years, helped my sister with her cleaning biz, in Wamsutter, wy (population 197)
We made the mistake of opening up store just before the Great Recession started (dec 08). It lasted just shy of two years. and spent the next 6 months or so sell off inventory at a swap meet and
The Many Faces of Lumpy
