For those of you that know me (which I’m assuming most of you initially reading this do), I appreciate you taking time to look at this. For those that do not and have happened upon this, I have no clue what to tell you. “Proceed at your own risk” might be the most appropriate thing I can say.
Let’s start with a summary of my life to this point. I was born on December 19th, 1976 in Olean, New York; I was also raised and currently reside here. This was not my original plan, but has ultimately worked out best for me in the long run. I came from a two-parent family, and both had civil service jobs at the Cattaraugus County Department of Health; my mother was a public health nurse, while my father had a myriad of responsibilities involving a job in environmental health. Both of them are very intelligent and were well-respected for their knowledge in their fields. They pushed me hard academically, as they valued education and identified it as the key to long-term success. They also encouraged me to be involved in as much as possible; I was a three-sport athlete in high school, which was aided by going to a small Catholic high school, but explains a significant part of my overall interests.
I was the only child for the first decade of my life; my brother came along just before my 11th birthday. My brother is a wholly good person.
I have had a long and winding path career-wise. I started at Canisius College (now University) in Buffalo, New York as a biology major, with the idea that I would eventually go to medical school; it took one semester to decide I was more interested in the physical sciences, and I transitioned to being a chemistry major. In my junior year, I got mononucleosis, lost the fall semester and subsequently was not healthy enough to begin the spring semester; during this time, I also decided science was not my thing at all. Given all of my friends were a year from graduation, I transferred back home to Saint Bonaventure University, and finished with a degree in business management in 2000. Admittedly, I was not very fired up about a future in business, either; I think I had reached the point that I simply wanted to be done with school.
One of my lifelong passions has been music, and I dabbled in college radio at both Canisius and St. Bonaventure. I ended up getting a job as an on-air personality at the local Adult Top 40 radio station during my final semester of college, and worked there on-and-off for 14 years. I also spent my mid-20s working as a teacher at the Catholic high school I graduated from. Radio was great, but nowhere close to lucrative; teaching was interesting, but again, not my thing.
In 2007, I took a civil service test for the Allegany County Department of Social Services to be a caseworker. I did not necessarily have a passion for the idea of working in the field; honestly, it was an opportunity to have affordable insurance and a decent salary. I slowly fell in love with the field, and eventually went back to school to get my master’s in social work from the University at Buffalo, graduating in 2017; in 2020, I transitioned into being a mental health clinician, which is my current vocation.
I met my wife Kim through my job at the county; she worked for a nonprofit foster care agency at that time that contracted with the county. We went on our first date in December 2007; we married on February 13th, 2010, and, luckily, she’s still around. Divine intervention, if you will. She is the best outcome I could have ever imagined. We have two children – Benjamin (more commonly, Ben), born on January 5, 2012; and Eloise (Ellie), born September 3rd, 2014. They are theater kids, taking after their mother in that regard, but by no means does that define them; they both have a wide variety of interests, and I find them more enjoyable and fascinating every day. I love the three of them above all, and I am very blessed to have a family that makes me feel complete.
My home life is pretty conventional; there are two parents, two children, two dogs (Goldendoodles named Miley and Max), and two cats (Oscar and Cleo). We have a two-story home in a somewhat quiet neighborhood, and both Kim and I have first-shift jobs with weekends off. (They’re not 9-to-5 by any means, but we are usually home at night.)
I find my greatest joys in life to be my family (I’ve labeled us “The Core 4”) and my work. You’ll hear plenty about my family as time goes on. It’s taken me a while to get to where I find work as a major part of my happiness, but in my current job in the foster care arm of a large nonprofit agency that spans throughout Western New York, I get to affect lives directly, in particular the youths that have reached their interaction with me due to a bunch of traumatic experiences. It may not be the future I ever envisioned for myself, but I see my work as essential and important, and that is why it ultimately brings me fulfillment.
There’s a lot more in life that brings me joy. I still get to see my family consistently, as they live a five-minute drive away. Kim’s family is also very important to me; we see them less frequently because they live almost an hour away, but they are integral to our lives as well. I have a great group of friends, some of whom I may see more than others, but all are important in their own regard. In terms of possessions, I want for little, yet have a lot to appreciate.
My mind has had a lot going on in it lately. We all hit inflection points in our life, and it currently feels like one of those points for me. Sometimes you see them coming from a mile away; other times, they happen unexpectedly. This one I’ve seen coming from a mile away for numerous reasons; in part, my 50th birthday is coming in just over nine months. There are other things as well that I’ll get into as part of this blog, but deserve their own space to breathe, rather than a paragraph or two.
I’ve decided that blogging is the right way for me to do what I need to get my thoughts out. In my work, I’ve seen the effect of using different types of media, including videos, songs, and journaling, to get thoughts out so they can begin to work on them. This is not me trying to do self-led therapy; there are plenty of professionals that can lead me properly in that direction. Instead, this is about me speaking my thoughts about a variety of topics to life.
This project is probably inspired by my original supervisor at Allegany County Social Services, as he would occasionally offer a story about things he had encountered in life and offer a great life lesson in the end. I still have them to this day, and will look through them occasionally; they are an insight into the remarkable person he is.
The idea for this blog has been ruminating in my head for a few months now, and it has reached the point where I’ve figured out that it needs to happen. A couple weeks ago, I sat in my car while waiting for Domino’s to make my order and started writing ideas in my phone’s notes app; in the 20 minutes I waited, I typed out over 30 different things I would like to put my complete thoughts to. The list is currently at 48 topics, and only two of the first five posts I have planned actually focus on them. I’ll probably add and subtract to the list as time goes on and things become either more or less important to me, but this is definitely not a stream-of-consciousness concept from me.
There are a ton of different directions that I plan on bringing out in this venue. I plan on writing a bunch of entries on my interests, which include several genres of music (R&B, hip-hop, EDM, classic rock, and four-and-a-half decades of pop music); sports (my particular favorites are hockey, football, and basketball); things I see in the different media we absorb; and the communities I live in, work in, and visit. I also want to share my thoughts on all sorts of different aspects of the culture we live in. There will be posts involving the various levels of society, from the individual to the masses. There will be all sorts of random cultural references, from the overdone to the completely obscure. Some things will be injected with my oddball, goofy sense of humor. The site will involve my experiences with people I’ve run into during my life, whether it is someone I personally know or someone that is known to broader society that I find interesting. Some of the posts will be about topics with a lot of weight behind them; others will read like they were an idea from a pop-culture obsessed tween.
A major theme I plan on exploring is how my upbringing, experiences, and beliefs intersect to explain why I think and feel the way I do. With all of the different academic disciplines and work experiences I’ve had over the years, the one thing that has intrigued me the most is understanding why people think the way they do. It is why I find my work so important and fulfilling. It is not a simple science, by any means, yet it provides endless content to explore.
I’m going to try and center my thoughts around several major themes that are important to me in my life. In no particular order, they are:
- Everyone has a “dare to be great” purpose in their life.
- Humans are social creatures, and everyone has their own place in this world.
- “What is” and “what if” are both important.
- Culture and chemistry can make or break relationships.
- No living person is a finished product.
I do not plan on making this into a research project of any sort. Most of it is going to be based on my feelings; I’ll make sure I’ve got my facts mostly straight, but I’m not doing this to create a website full of position papers.
I don’t take myself very seriously. There will be some heavier topics discussed, but by no means do I think I have any of the answers. This is mostly a series of opinion pieces. We all have opinions, and there are usually good reasons for them. I do not see my opinion as better than others; that being said, it is mine, and this is my chance to put it out there without getting people to mute me on Facebook because they find me ridiculous. I much prefer to use social media to focus on the simpler things in life, rather than joining the sector of people that think their opinion (usually littered with insults towards those that do not agree with them) is going to change the way other people think.
Also, this is not about me building a consensus with others based on what I say. I used to just rattle off thoughts without really considering the topic in its entirety – especially people’s feelings around it. I now like to give an effort towards considering things with all of its nuances, rather than the absolutism that seems to be way too common in our culture. I recognize that people have their own thoughts and feelings, and they are usually legitimate. I do not believe my thoughts are universal truths, and I am willing to reconsider my beliefs based on new evidence; I think it shows more intelligence to change your mind after giving a topic more consideration, rather than further entrenching yourself in a belief when things fly in the face of it. If you have something meaningful to state about my thoughts, feel free to comment, because you might be able to help me move forward. My writing is going to be a lot longer than a blurb; someone that wants to argue in a meaningful way about my thoughts will have to put effort to see my whole point. I do hope that what I say gives you a chance to think about your own position on the topic, whether it further entrenches you in how you feel or makes you reconsider someone else’s point of view.
I know that society is mostly focused on soundbites and video – the shorter, the better – but my ultimate goal is not to make money, become an influencer, or change minds by creating this; instead, I want to be able to work through what is on my mind.
To give you an idea of what you will be seeing in my posts, I’ve plotted out a few different things to begin, which are literally all over the place thematically – a new pop song by an intriguing singer-songwriter that has a sample I’ve been anticipating since the 1990s; a YouTube video I found in 2016 of a duo of musicians on a side stage at a major music festival that were unknown then but were about to become massive music stars; my view of the impact Mark Schmidt had while he’s been the men’s basketball coach at St. Bonaventure; our society’s tendency to use confirmation bias to reinforce their thoughts; and the reality of taxes in our lives. In other words, in this space, anything goes, regardless of how absurd it may be.
As a warning, I plan on bringing up people I know as part of this. It may be directly by name at times; in other instances, it will be evident to some people who know me the identity of the person. However, I’m not going to be intentionally negative about people, and if people are going to be named, I will definitely be getting a thumbs-up from them before I directly post about them. I will also be bringing up people that are known to a larger audience; I’m not planning on getting clearance from them, nor do I feel the need to do so. Don’t expect them to be hit pieces or insider information; I am happy with my place in this world. They are my observations, particularly ones I’ve seen that have impacted society.
I have some hope that my kids will look through some of the entries at some point in their lives. I don’t need them to see this as a series of life lessons; instead, I hope they can look at it and say, “Yep, that’s my dad.”
My goal is to see this through to the end of my original list of topics, and if that is all, so be it. I just want it to make some peace with myself.
To do this right, it is not going to be an overnight effort. Here’s to sticking to it.
The Power Blog 
Leave a comment