A man, A Husband, A Father

All the things I am, and then some…

Where to start.

I came to my adulthood in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Growing up in California near the beach, I enjoyed the surf and skate culture, but I was never really good at either. I played high school sports, but there were much more talented people on the teams.

I went to college for a while. It was really an in-the-front door and out-the-back door experience. Frankly, it was boring, and I wasn’t learning anything that either I didn’t already know or could learn on my own more quickly.

So, I started working.

Eventually, over time, I but a fairly successful career in Information Technology. I learned quickly, synthesized solutions to complex issues, building out new processes, and refined them. I became a leader, learned more about people, and started to enjoy that role as well.

Along the way, I found the love of my life. We got married and started our lives together. Seven years later, our son was born. Then we moved out of state, leaving everyone else behind us and staking out on our own.

After 12 years of living in New Mexico, we are looking to move someplace else, but not until our son graduates high school. Not sure where we will land, but we have some ideas.

The biggest change in my life came at the end of 2020. I was diagnosed with Stage IIIA prostate cancer. Talk about a game-changing event. In an instant, my life changed.

A few months earlier, I had decided that I needed to get serious about my health. I had stopped drinking a few months earlier, mainly to prove a point to my wife (that I could stop anytime I wanted and that she was an alcoholic that needed help – a story for another time, but she did 90 days in a recovery program). I continued not to drink while my wife was away and started walking on a daily basis and lifting weights. I decided that our son deserved parents that were going to be around for a while. At the end of October, I went for a physical with my doctor, who did some bloodwork. I got the results a few weeks later – my PSA was 46.6. I had an appointment with a urologist the Monday before Thanksgiving; he confirmed that it seemed like prostate cancer and scheduled a biopsy just after the first of the year. The biopsy confirmed that it was prostate cancer. Something that we could treat, but I would never be cured of.

I continued my focus on my health and decided that it was time to pick up some hobbies that I hadn’t made time for in the past.

And here we are, almost two years later, and now starting to document my fun.