Consider this a work in progress. Not that I am unfamiliar with blogs. I have written them before although it has admittedly been awhile. I have had blogs off and on since 2003 but they were hidden from most prying eyes and posted quite anonymously. Can I tell a good story? Only you, the reader, can judge. Regardless, I do have stories to tell.
What prompted me to write another blog (is this the fourth or fifth now? I have lost count) is that I self published a book earlier this year. My book “One Nation” is available on Amazon and I encourage everyone to buy a copy. I also need to learn more about marketing strategies. I thought I was well armed with marketing knowledge based on my few experiences in the corporate world but that turned out not to be the case.
So here I sit at my local bar in Plano, Texas writing my first blog post on a WordPress account I created just a few minutes ago. This bar has been crazy all day about the Texas-OU game (spoiler alert – Texas lost). While everyone is engaged in the game I have spent the day here writing, researching and now blogging. Believe it or not I can concentrate easier in this surrounding chaos than I can at home.
What about me? I have spent the last sixteen years in the corporate reseller industry (the first two in computer hardware and the lastfourteen in software). In 2013 I was dissatisfied with work and where it was going and decided to make a change. I have been writing on and off since I was a kid. I enjoy telling stories and decided that I could write and self-publish my own book. That was how “One Nation” was born.
I was watching the news three years ago when someone opined that the the next president who would be elected would be the most hated president in history. I thought long and hard about that. We have never been so divided than we are right now. I imagined an America where we want to give up so many of our freedoms and seek to be taken care of by our political masters. I conceived of a tumultuous 2016 election that leads to a Second American Revolution and the rise of the fascist Freedom Party. The Trump and Clinton candidacies only help reinforce my predictions.
My book was released in May and I have been struggling with marketing since then. I have gotten good feedback from my readers who have been surprised that I can actually write and tell a story.
I have also had other struggles this year as well. My “day job” keeps me busy. I am working a lot having to manage several security product lines. I had a breakup with a girlfriend earlier this year who I am still very fond of. We are still friendly to one another and she has been somewhat supportive from afar. The biggest struggle has been since mid-summer. In July I was admitted to the hospital for persistent nausea and lack of appetite. I had lost ten pounds in the space of a week. It turned out that the CT scan revealed tumors in my pancreas and liver. I was diagnosed with stage two endocrine pancreatic cancer. I started chemotherapy almost immediately and will continue through the end of the year. This, along with diabetes, severely complicates my health. I am very well aware that I have a foreseeable expiration date. Rather than letting it get me down it motivates me instead. I feel like I need to get everything done.
Despite everything that has occurred this year I still feel good about things. When people ask how I deal with cancer I tell them with action plans. I know I have cancer, I need a plan to combat it, I will follow the plan and if something changes I will revise the plan. In the meantime I am going to keep doing everything I need to do to with that ever present expiration date well in mind.
This post was meant to be quick and dirty. I wanted to get something up quickly. Please forgive me if you see any typos or misspellings. And remember, this is a learning process for me. I have to get used to Word Press. 🙂
