I have heard so many jokes about why you shouldn’t piss off an author. Everything from, “because they’ll write you into one of their books and then kill you off in some unique and interesting way,” to, “you just never know what their imagination will produce.” I always found it rather humorous that people had so much faith in my ability to be vindictive or seek revenge through my writing. But the ultimate irony is that those same people never seem to realize: they are the author of their own story and have far more power over that than I ever would writing them into mine. (more…)

“It’s better to be prepared and not have an opportunity, rather than missing an opportunity because you weren’t prepared for it.” – Les Brown.

That struck a chord with me when I heard it while watching a short video of Mr. Brown that I found in my morning social media feeds. It immediately made me remember times in my past where I prepared for… something, even though that “something” wasn’t on any immediate horizon. It made me see opportunities I was able to take advantage of, and that some of my coworkers had taken advantage of, simply because we were able to when the time arose; when the opportunity presented itself. It also reminds me of a statement made by Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson: “When you walk up to opportunity’s door… don’t knock on it. Kick that bitch in, smile and introduce yourself.” (more…)

A while ago I wrote an article that brought great response about how some training circumstances and tools used by our military services today may actually be teaching our soldiers to die. What I mean to say is that the training may be conditioning them to expect their own death. In recent months I’ve been studying instances of violence where American citizens didn’t fight back; didn’t defend themselves; essentially were willing victims. As I’ve examined these instances I noticed somewhat of an age cap on the “willing victims” and I saw a link to our public school system and some policies that were developed in the late ’70s and early ’80s. This is a topic I’ve written about before, but I felt I needed to do some further study, and in this article I’m going to share some of that newly gleaned information with you. Additionally, I’m going to share a story about a thirteen year old 8th grader who, just in this past week, observed a set of circumstances in her school that led her to believe something might not be right. She shared her story with her father and he became VERY alarmed. We’ll discuss why. (more…)