Welcome
I'm starting this out for the simple reason that I have something to say and I want people to hear it. This is, after all, the entire reason the blog came into being. Hopefully, I will find an audience and not be speaking to open web-space.
Who am I? I'm just a simple guy with the ability to look at things in a slightly different way. I grew up in rural West Texas and Eastern New Mexico and saw absolutely no way to get ahead there, so I followed my father's footsteps and joined the Navy. Six years later, I drove back to Texas with my future wife and a head full of dreams. I found out that life has its own sense of humor. Better trained than almost anyone I came in contact with, I still couldn't get much better than minimum wage.
Although things turned out badly between me and my first wife, we had our good times. We lived in Corpus Christi and I fell in love with the Coastal Bend. I spent many wonderful hours with my brother, drinking beer and watching our fishing lines bob in the sun. Life, without any sense of humor, took both his wife and his five year old son and I feared that I would lose my brother, too. I still think it was close - probably closer than I want to know - but he's still with us and I'm glad of it.
We adopted two kids and I loved being a dad more than I ever loved anything I did. I put my education on hold and focused my efforts at getting two kids through school without drug problems or pregnancy. I'm happy to say they both made it and are able to take care of themselves, even if their father doesn't agree with everything they do. When I told my grandma about our decision to adoopt, she told me "Being a Daddy is the scariest thing you'll ever do - if you do it right. You'll never know if you did the right thing until long after it's too late to change." Like so many other things, she was 100% right.
We moved to Florida to be closer to my mother-in-law, who was diagnosed with cancer. She got better and we bought a house and then we got divorced. I managed to keep things going long enough to get the kids graduated from high school and myself graduated with a BA in Psychology. I tell people that a BA in Psychology is good for impressing your cousin when they look at your wall. Basically, I learned that psychologists learn to give people tests to determine their IQ and what ways they fail to deal with reality. In other words, they tell people if they are stupid or crazy. I decided I wanted to put that knowledge to use right away, so I applied to the University of Central Florida to study political science.
I finished my MA in Pol Sci (Public Policy tract) and fell in love again. I'm now remarried and living in New Jersey. I am continuing my studies in politics at the City University of New York and hope to someday be done with school. I'm still interested in public policy, particularly how political theory drives policy decisions.
I'm also learning to be at ease with my faith. I grew up in a Church of Christ, moderated as a teen to a Southern Baptist, then as an adult to a United Methodist. I'm also politically a liberal, and find no problem with stating that I am liberal because I am a Christian. I find it increasingly hard to stomach that Christianity is being used as a crutch for hate rhetoric and a restrictive government.
That brings me here. I don't have all the answers. I don't even know all the questions. I do know that a lie, if unopposed, becomes true by default. When I was seventeen, and did not yet know the full meaning of my words, I swore before the American flag and upon a Bible that I would defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I cannot turn my back on that promise.
So here I am.
Who am I? I'm just a simple guy with the ability to look at things in a slightly different way. I grew up in rural West Texas and Eastern New Mexico and saw absolutely no way to get ahead there, so I followed my father's footsteps and joined the Navy. Six years later, I drove back to Texas with my future wife and a head full of dreams. I found out that life has its own sense of humor. Better trained than almost anyone I came in contact with, I still couldn't get much better than minimum wage.
Although things turned out badly between me and my first wife, we had our good times. We lived in Corpus Christi and I fell in love with the Coastal Bend. I spent many wonderful hours with my brother, drinking beer and watching our fishing lines bob in the sun. Life, without any sense of humor, took both his wife and his five year old son and I feared that I would lose my brother, too. I still think it was close - probably closer than I want to know - but he's still with us and I'm glad of it.
We adopted two kids and I loved being a dad more than I ever loved anything I did. I put my education on hold and focused my efforts at getting two kids through school without drug problems or pregnancy. I'm happy to say they both made it and are able to take care of themselves, even if their father doesn't agree with everything they do. When I told my grandma about our decision to adoopt, she told me "Being a Daddy is the scariest thing you'll ever do - if you do it right. You'll never know if you did the right thing until long after it's too late to change." Like so many other things, she was 100% right.
We moved to Florida to be closer to my mother-in-law, who was diagnosed with cancer. She got better and we bought a house and then we got divorced. I managed to keep things going long enough to get the kids graduated from high school and myself graduated with a BA in Psychology. I tell people that a BA in Psychology is good for impressing your cousin when they look at your wall. Basically, I learned that psychologists learn to give people tests to determine their IQ and what ways they fail to deal with reality. In other words, they tell people if they are stupid or crazy. I decided I wanted to put that knowledge to use right away, so I applied to the University of Central Florida to study political science.
I finished my MA in Pol Sci (Public Policy tract) and fell in love again. I'm now remarried and living in New Jersey. I am continuing my studies in politics at the City University of New York and hope to someday be done with school. I'm still interested in public policy, particularly how political theory drives policy decisions.
I'm also learning to be at ease with my faith. I grew up in a Church of Christ, moderated as a teen to a Southern Baptist, then as an adult to a United Methodist. I'm also politically a liberal, and find no problem with stating that I am liberal because I am a Christian. I find it increasingly hard to stomach that Christianity is being used as a crutch for hate rhetoric and a restrictive government.
That brings me here. I don't have all the answers. I don't even know all the questions. I do know that a lie, if unopposed, becomes true by default. When I was seventeen, and did not yet know the full meaning of my words, I swore before the American flag and upon a Bible that I would defend and protect the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. I cannot turn my back on that promise.
So here I am.
posted by Xpatriated Texan | 8:41 PM
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