Looking back to my earliest memory, I think it was when my mother changed my diaper. A lot of the time, she would have to change my twin brother and me at the same time. This time, in particular, was one of those times. While she was changing me, I remember playing with my brother while we were both on our backs. She wrapped my ankles together so that she could hold my legs with one hand and wrestle with my brother in the other hand. I think the reason why I remember this so vividly is because my mom was trying to do all of this while on a waterbed. My brother and I bouncing around was one thing, but then you had mom trying to balance and keep us in control. I remember that it was bright and sunny outside and the windows were open. All you could hear outside was the rustling of the trees, and it was a windy day. For some reason, I think I even remember the pattern of the bedsheet. It was a bunch of vibrant multicolored squares. I actually think my mom was having just as much fun as we were.

I am a little late to the punch with my New Year bloganuary posts, but I am actually really glad I am late because it meshes with precisely what I want to achieve this year. Something that I want to do this year is to recreate myself to be an upgrade version of who I was last year. For my followers, yall know that last year was an extremely hard one for me. Not that I went through the heaviness of healing from an accident that could have easily killed me right before this time last year, but I also went through a divorce, lost my house, lost my car, lost the woman I wanted to grow old with and lost almost all of my friends. Last year taught me a ton of things about the world and most of all, taught me a lot about myself. To explain what I want to achieve this year, I must first tell you what I learned last year. Last year I learned that I am far stronger than I ever could have imagined. I was forced to endure pain that I never saw coming. I was forced to be locked up in my room with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company the majority of the time and it was extremely…

I remember it like it was yesterday. I sent my tactical explosive detection dog (T.E.D.D) out to search a vacant lot, full of empty semi trailers that we used for training. Tessa was her name and she was a beautiful, brown Belgian malinois. When I got her, I knew that she was the one because of how trained she was. She was obedient and responded to all of my commands easily and without distraction, unlike the dog that I was training with prior.  He was a pit bull mix that had an amazing nose and could find any of the training material, no matter where we hid it. Ceiling? Under the sofa? Inside cabinets or in the gas tank of a car? He found it. What I couldn’t get him to not do was try to retrieve it. He would jump on top of the beds, counters and try to dig up anything that we buried, and that’s the last thing you want your dog to do when you are looking for bombs. Tessa was not like that. When she found odor, her change of direction was so sharp that I would always know if she was on odor or lost track of the scent. She obeyed hand movements so that I wouldn’t have to yell for her to know…

A while back, I was going through a very tough time. As in a rough time, I mean I was sleeping in my car every night. During the day I lived in my place of business which didn’t bother me much at all. I worked at a gym cleaning up. Being an employee allowed me a shower so that I never went dirty, had lockers so I had a place to put all of my things and I was able to work out all day and night, as long as I was out before the opening crew showed up. Sleeping in my car did take a toll on me at times and I would find a friend to visit and crash on their sofa. Today was the perfect day to crash my brothers spot. He was at work and said that I was more than welcome to crash at his place and I went straight there after my workout. When I got to his house I was so tired that I didn’t even think about taking a shower. Still in my spandex shorts and my work uniform t-shirt, I jumped straight onto the living room floor and knocked out. I don’t know how much time went by but I heard my brothers neighbors from the building across from his arguing.…

Wanna hear the first time I think I ever saved a life? I was a young and scrawny 17 year old. By looking at me, you could tell that I did every sport known to me at that time, that involved endurance. Always being involved in a sport or stuck home because I was bad kept me from being able to do a lot of things that all of the kids were doing. One of those things were school dances. In middle school we went to all of the dances but that was because my mother was a chaperone. That ended once we hit high school. This was our senior year and I probably went to 1 dance before. Well that night was the night! The moons were aligned or something because everything worked in our favor. We were able to go to our senior homecoming dance. We didn’t even have any pushback from mom. We called up the crew, set the night up and got ready. Before we left, our mom told us the rules and what behavior she expected from us. We knew that we never get opportunities like this so we promised to be good boys. We jumped in my moms burgundy Rodeo on 20’s and just knew we were fly. We get to the dance and…