Rise Today and Change this World
Hey parents, did you know today is the beginning of Children’s Book Week?
I bet your kids do. As an author of a children’s book of my own, Misadventures of Princess Sydney, yes shameless plug, I wanted to call attention to this special week in my blog post. To be completely fair, my wife notified me about the event. She is AWESOME and I’d be lost without her. We started to talk about the upcoming week and she asked me about my favorite children’s book from my youth. I remember reading part of Charlotte’s Web but primarily the animated TV movie from the seventies. My wife was able to rattle off several but found it odd that I didn’t have many to reference. You may need to sit for this. I have trouble with reading. I did as a child and I do to this very day.
It all starts with my eyes. I’ve worn glasses since I was four years old. Since I’m sharing, I was held back in the first grade. Yep, I had trouble in school grasping basic concepts when it came to reading and processing information. Imagine if the signal isn’t coming in clearly on your TV screen and it turns out one of the cords isn’t connect just right. In that scenario, you would adjust the cord and be able to view the details. For me, this is somewhere inside my head. It’s not that easy. It’s actually very difficult. In what people now call their tween years I learned about an eye diagnosis called Nystagmus. It’s an involuntary eye movement. The doctor explained it as a blind spot in the back of my eye. Consequently, my eyes move back and forth trying to compensate. During junior and high school it became harder and harder to keep up with my reading for class. First, it was hard to follow the words on the page. I sometimes found myself reading the same line several times to just process it. Second, I didn’t read very fast. Third, on occasion I had to get up and read excerpts to the class. I had trouble, was nervous and my fellow classmates made sure to remind me how I did. This wasn’t a good combo for processing homework either. Needless to say, I didn’t feel very good about myself. See future blog post about high school in general.
Something changed for me as a junior/senior in school. In my English class I was given an assignment on creative writing. In the past I tried to just keep up with the reading. Now I was being asked to express myself on pen and paper. For any little ones reading this, you can Google these ancient forms of communication. My teacher liked what I did and encouraged me to continue. For the first time I felt like I was excelling, in my own way, at school. Like anything you do, you need to practice. I did for that entire year and actually looked forward to class. If only I could have figured out a way to harness that creativity. However, life sometimes gets in the way and your path leads in a different direction. I wouldn’t be the man I am now typing this blog if not for that unknown path. All the ups, downs, heartache and pain led me here.
This is just a pit stop. The journey goes on and I’m thankful for each day. Along the way I met and married the woman of my dreams. She is so much more than those visions I conjured in my head. She is the love of my life. It was through her I found my way back to writing. I also want to extend a special thank you to my mentor, Tess Thompson who kick-started the creative juices that lay quiet for way to long. I’m blessed to have such beautiful ladies in my life. Now, mid-way through my forties I find myself as a published author, see paragraph one. I find myself working on my second book. Do I still have trouble reading, yes? Do I still read slowly, yes? It’s something I will work on for the rest of my life. However, it hasn’t defined me. I just take a little extra time. Sometimes I still read out loud to myself, when my wife’s not around. It’s easy to let the negativity in and feel like you can’t continue. Guess what, you can and you will.
I saw something on Facebook via my favorite IndyCar driver’s page, Tony Kanaan. It was a picture of TK working out and behind him on the wall the words read, “If it’s humanly possible…I know I can do it.”
Challenges are part of all our lives and show themselves in many forms. It’s what we do with those challenges that shape our lives. Find your path, never say never. One day you could end up a New York Times best-selling author…and why wouldn’t I.
