I am married and a proud father of two beautiful children. I was born and raised in rural America, and into an Amish family. My family left the Amish faith when I was young. We remained in a mennonite type of sect until I was around twelve. We left that religious sect as well, however remained very conservative in both religion and politics until recent years. I grew up on farms and I loved enjoying the great outdoors. Even though I helped on farms from a young age, I began working full time in high school as a construction worker. Building homes and general construction work was a family trade of sorts, and that was the natural place to start. I enlisted in the military in 2003 shortly after graduating from high school. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time and I viewed it as my duty. I was a healthy young man of prime age for the military, and my country was at war. It seemed like the natural thing to do. I served three years in the U.S Army and deployed to Iraq in 2003. Since then, my career paths have moved from construction work as a hired general laborer, to being an owner of a small self run remodeling company. I moved out of construction in recent years and moved into the sales profession. Even more recently, in the last year or so, I began dabbling in writing and discovered my love for it. My recent personal journey has led me away from preconceived ideologies and handed down religion, and led me down a path of questioning everything. It has not been easy, and there have been many lonely and just overall emotionally dark times along the way. This seemed especially difficult because all of my life I believed I had everything figured out. I was very religious and thought my religion provided me with all the answers. I even thought I was part of the correct political party, which also contained all the right answers. It is very difficult to break free from those systems when I had based my whole life around them. I gained my very identity in those things. Recently I seem to have broken out of those tough times and I am very happy to say there is beauty and life on the "other side". Even though difficult, the journey has been very rewarding despite the tough times. My path of questioning and general practice of thinking outside the box has led me to peace and happiness. A whole new world has opened and I couldn't be more excited to see where life takes me from here.
The links to the left under my photo will lead you to my articles that I write on Medium, as well as the websites where my books can be found. There will also be a link to my book's facebook page. Thank you.