About twenty-five years ago, I embarked on a journey to achieve several goals. I aimed to become and stay debt-free. Getting a degree in journalism was another goal. I also wanted to publish a book. I took a few unexpected turns. Somehow, I found myself in my forties and realized one thing. I left some unfinished business on the table. It needs my attention now!
Let me take you back to 2001. I began my journey at a four-year university without any guidance from family members. Some attended college, but these were distant relatives I didn’t know. I wanted to get my degree in Journalism until I fell in love with a male barista at Starbucks. Dumb, I know. I’ll take some accountability here. It was mostly my fault for skipping classes to be with him. I missed crucial information that would’ve propelled me a lot faster.
Several years later, I left Chicago and moved to Detroit, then Houston, and eventually back to Chicago. While in those two cities, I worked in the world of fringe politics within the Democratic Party at the time. I made some great friends. One of them was a young woman with whom I immediately connected. Unfortunately, the group I was part of had no wish for outsiders. Especially former members, they did not want them to come in and disrupt their activities. When I came back to Chicago, I was exhausted and drained, ready for a fresh start. I searched for work and attended community college. I worked at a daycare center and graduated with honors. During that time, I wrote for the school’s newspaper and honed my craft in fiction writing. I started considering establishing an online presence through a website or a YouTube channel.
As soon as I graduated from community college, I ended up homeless. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have my own place. Without a steady income, I didn’t want to live with anyone who would’ve wanted me out for some tiny infraction. I met someone in the shelter, and admittedly, we got together way too fast. I got a job and began working at a factory. While at the factory, I noticed a change in myself that made the guy I was dating jealous.
Fast forward to when I had a girl, and I still hadn’t finished what I started. I dusted off an old notebook and found fragments of stories I began writing. I started a website, joined writing communities, published some short stories and an ebook, and stopped to take a break. I didn’t want to exhaust myself, now that I was no longer in academia. Academic writing does kill your creative writing. The irony lies in the fact that your educational writing must be innovative enough to avoid plagiarism detection. I shared a two-page short story I wrote with a friend who has had books published, and he dared me to expand it. I wrote a 5-book series by accident. The novella is 65% complete, and the first book is 75% complete. The other books are currently in fragments until I determine their place in the series’ overall scheme. I have a few diabolical scenes I can’t speak on, but they involve a kidnapping, a cemetery, and cops turning a blind eye to a beatdown of a notorious drug and gang leader. My goal is to get the first book published next year.
That’s it for now. More things are unfinished, and I’m eager to share them once everything is in place. I’ll see you tomorrow!
