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General Posts, Ramblings of Thanks

Sunday Afternoon Ramblings- Thankful #21

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I’m thankful for my passion.  In all facets of my life, I’m a passionate person.  It’s what makes me a writer and a teacher because my passion for language drives me to share it with the world.  It’s what made me a decent football player.  I wasn’t the most physically gifted person and was certainly under-sized for a lineman, but my passion pushed me to lift weights and run mountains and push my body to its limit to be the best I could be.  Passion is what makes me a good father because the love for my children fills up my heart and spills over the edges.  There’s no containing the passion I have for my sons, and I’m thankful every moment of every day that I have gotten to experience that level of pure love.

Of course, being a passionate person does come with a few disadvantages.  It’s not something that can be turned on and off at will, so when I’m upset, the passion amplifies my emotions and I get really upset.  It sometimes makes me hard to be around because I get so consumed with whatever I’m doing that the rest of the world disappears.  And when I get hurt, the pain is deep and enormous because it too is amplified.  Those things sometimes make being a passionate person a difficult burden to bear, but I wouldn’t trade.

I don’t do anything half-heartedly.  When something sparks my passion, I’m full throttle, head down, no-looking-back 110% going for it.  That doesn’t mean I always succeed, but it does mean that anytime I fall short, it’s not from lack of effort.  In every aspect of everything in my life, I am passionate, and to me that is one of my strongest positive attributes.  I live my life to die with no regrets, and a major part of that comes from allowing my passion to stir me.  I realize that some people who don’t know me very well may be surprised to hear me describe myself as passionate because I often come across as so laid-back and mellow, but underneath that calm exterior is a highly emotional person who squeezes every drop I can from life.  Still waters run deep, and I’m thankful to be such a passionate person.

www.thirdaxe.com

General Posts, Ramblings of Thanks

Saturday Morning Ramblings – Thankful #20

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I’m thankful for Red Sky at Dawn.  That book was written under some of the most difficult conditions possible and turned out to be a pretty good book.  It was written one to two pages at a time each night between 2-4 AM after I had put in at least a twelve hour day at work.  Some nights, I had to pinch my thighs to stay awake long enough to hit my page goal, but I knew that if I didn’t at least get the rough draft finished before Finn was born, the odds of me ever finishing it would have been slim.  I learned a great deal about my threshold for pain and endurance with it.

I also found my voice with that manuscript.  The narrative moves swiftly, barely allowing readers time to catch their breath between intense scenes, and some of the intimate moments with the characters are very powerful.  The Battle for Hard Hope is one of the best fight scenes I’ve ever written, and the chapter arc where the captain saves Master Sondious is one of the best pieces of prose I’ve created.  I have noticed a few typos and minor errors in the manuscript, but I’ll chalk that up to the time-frame in which the book was edited.  When all five books are complete, I’ll polish out those mistakes for the next edition.  Personally, I feel like those minor flaws don’t take away from the book, but they do bug me.

Overall, I’m grateful for Red Sky.  It’s a strong work from the opening page to the final scene, and I am proud of if as a literary work.  I’m thankful that it will be one of the legacies I leave behind for my sons.

www.thirdaxe.com

General Posts, Ramblings of Thanks

Friday Morning Rambling – Thankful #19

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I’m thankful to be a Tennessean.  Yes, we have our issues, just as every place does, but overall, this is a pretty good place to live.  Our summers aren’t too brutal; winters aren’t too harsh; and fall and spring are beautiful.  The natural beauty of this place is still breathtaking.  The mountains, the rolling hills, the stone-littered fields, the rivers, and the lakes are simply gorgeous.  I’m four hours from Nashville, Atlanta, and Charlotte, so if I need to experience a city, it’s not that difficult.  I’m eight hours from both the Gulf and the Atlantic, so the beach is also an easy escape.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, I’m an hour from absolute and utter isolation, so when I want to escape from people, and for me that occurs much more frequently than the other, I can disappear into the mountains and get away from the insanity of humanity.

There are things I’d like to fix about this place, like the education system for starters, but the older I get and the more I learn about the nation as a whole, the more I see that the issues here are part of the bigger problems with the United States, so the state can’t be held solely to task for these issues.  Still, at this point in my life, the low crime rates, natural beauty, and low population density far outweigh the negatives.  Yes, I’d like more opportunities economically.  Yes, I’d like a better infrastructure, but both of those come with a trade off that I’m simply not willing to make.

I love my state.  I’m thankful for my state.  Even though technically speaking I was born in Florida, make no mistake about it, I’m a Tennessean.  My family on both sides has deep roots here, going way back, and my Scots-Irish heritage is deeply entwined with the Appalachian Mountains.  I’m also grateful that I got to attend college on the other end of the state in Memphis.  The Delta is part of me, too, and I’m thankful to have lived my life and given my service to the Great Volunteer State.  Tennessee: Agriculture and Commerce.  Tennessee: America at Its Best.