Let me ask you a question…

When you look in the mirror, and I mean really take the time to focus on what you see inside and out, do you recognize the person staring back at you?

If you haven’t taken a close look lately, or you tend to avoid the mirror all together, I urge you to take a moment right now and take a detailed inventory of what you see in your reflection. Yes, right now. Drop what you’re doing and find a mirror.

What do you see?

Is it a reflection of the person you imagined yourself…

Our country has gone mad, or maybe it always was, and it just wasn’t as obvious before. I don’t mean mad as in “Mad Hatter” mad either; I mean mad as in Norman Bates in “Psycho” mad.

I keep searching for the right words to describe how utterly disappointed I am in so many of my fellow Americans, my race, and even my gender.

It feels like everything I believed about us was a lie. There were always thousands of hidden antagonists hiding amongst the kind and generous people of our country.

People are attacking each other because of who…

Sexual Assault, Self, Mental Health

The crickets outside that bedroom window knew. I imagined them trying to warn me with their harmonious stridulating. The deafening sound of silence in that small room made them seem like they were the only living beings awake in the world other than me.

I slept on my belly when I spent the night at her house; something I learned to do during my first sleepover with her when I was 11 years old. I knew it was the only chance I had at being able to hide my face when he would inevitably enter the room. …

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.” — Albert Einstein.

Red vs. Blue, Left vs. Right, Republican vs. Democrat, Liberal vs. Conservative; whatever you want to call it, there is a systemic divide in the US that has been threatening to tear this country apart for decades and even more so now as the values of both sides have continued to shift and, in some cases, reverse.

This deep-seated wedge of division is no longer just a petty battle between government parties. This is now quite literally…

Nothing but myself.

Lately, I‘ve spent more time focused on putting as many words on the page as I can. An iPad has been glued to my hand like an extra appendage during every waking moment. I only allow myself to release it once I have completed my writing goal for the day. My goal is to turn my writing into an actual daily habit; to push past my ineffective standard of only writing when convenient.

I understand now that no one is going to raise the bar for me, so I have to do it myself if I ever…

In just a little over a week from now, hundreds of thousands of writers worldwide will be taking part in one of the most significant writing events of the year; National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo).

The goal is for each writer to write at least 50,000 words by the end of the month. …

I’m ANGRY

I’m DISGUSTED

I’m HEARTBROKEN

I’m ENLIGHTENED

And I’m SINCERELY APOLOGETIC

No excuse can make up for what’s transpired since 2016, but I feel that you deserve an explanation from at least one of us.

So, here goes nothing…

Short version; red state since birth, southern baptist raised, public school history lessons, police officer family, and raised in a small town.

I grew up in a very southern, very controversial, and very red state. The history I knew came directly from my worn-out public school textbooks and, of course, whatever I heard from the adults around me.

I had…

Like thousands of other people globally, I am quite literally addicted to social media, Facebook, especially. I spend far more of my time scrolling through feeds and debating politics with people during the day than I do anything else. It is my Achilles’ heel.

Did you know that psychologists believe that an estimated 5 to 10% of Americans suffer from social media addiction? Social media's dopamine effect triggers the brain’s reward system reaction just as chemical drugs, such as cocaine, do. Need a quick fix? Just grab your phone!

I am definitely included in that 5 to 10%.

My phone…