Some people have asked me why I started writing. What possessed a stay at home dad, who hadn’t written a piece of fiction since his eighth-grade creative writing class to just write a novel one day? Looking back, it was a long time coming. I had ideas for what would become my book series for years. Ideas that, while drastically different from the finished product, had at least something in common. Years ago, maybe even ten, I actually started and had a page or two. What I wrote, while it could potentially be put into a future work in the series, is sitting somewhere hidden on my computer. Hidden so well that it would take me a while to find it. I was afraid that someone would stumble across it and, well laugh at the fact that I thought I could write fiction. As I look back over the last few years I found three things came together to put me here: my job, my lack of a job and a trip to Ikea.
For me working a job I hated because it was a perfect storm of being extremely dull, incredibly stressful, and unfulfilling all at the same time, made my mind wonder regularly. Over time, the vague ideas incubated, grew and changed during the decade I spent as a workman’s compensation insurance adjuster. They were things that sounded entertaining, and exciting, and that I would like to read. I often thought that I should try writing all of it down, but I never believed in myself enough to start. On top of that I was frankly too exhausted between working full time, a plethora of church responsibilities, then having a baby to ever do more than scribble a few loose ideas on a piece of paper occasionally at lunch.
That all changed with the birth of my son in January 2015. For the record I never thought I would or could be a stay at home dad. It sounded awful and until my daughter was born in 2011, I was ambivalent about having kids. Seven years of running your church’s youth group for fifth to twelfth graders will do that to you.
Then when we got to October of 2012, after the worst year I could remember. In about six months’ time as a family we dealt with cancer, job loss, crippling anxiety from work stress and raising a newborn. Looking back I truly have no idea how I even made it through that. Things were dark, really dark for a while.
Then Lord was gracious enough to bless us with an amazing new job for my wife. One that basically tripled our income and came with a free luxury car. After all of the years of grad school and a post doc that often felt like one defeat after another, my wife’s time in school had paid off. By the time we decided for another kid we were in a much larger house and position where I could stop working if I wanted to, and I REALLY wanted to. The years of unending work stress had taken a toll on me and my family. While I would have liked to find a lower stress job, that meant a much lower paycheck and with the cost of daycare for two kids and a wife who often travels for work, my staying home made the most sense.
Though there are days where I feel like I want to run away from the two kids and three dogs who seem to be working in concert to drive me insane, I’ve enjoyed it. There is also the side benefit of me being far more pleasant and my wife actually liking me again. Despite the positives, I eventually grew kind of bored, like I do with pretty much everything. The boredom wasn’t terrible, and definitely not enough to make me unhappy. I also had an X-box One to keep me company, plus a house to run so it was never enough to be a problem.
Then in the early summer of 2016 for a combination of Mother’s Day and our anniversary, I offered to get my wife the built-in book cases she had wanted for years. The weekend before our anniversary we made the pilgrimage to the suburban mecca that is Ikea. Several hours and hundreds of dollars later, we left with a SUV filled to capacity with enough book cases to cover an entire wall in our front living room.
With the book cases all installed our downstairs closet now devoid of the dozen or so boxes packed with books we were actually quite shocked with just how much free space was left. That much open space just couldn’t stand and necessitated a trip to a book store.
I am going to stop here for now because it was at this point that things took a decided turn. It was one of those times, which I’m sure we have all experienced, when a seemingly innocuous event has far reaching consequences that we may never truly be able to grasp. Hopefully, you are interested enough to come back next time for part II which I hope to have ready shortly…
