JZ Murdock, who? A brief biography.

Who exactly is JZ Murdock? Who am I and why do I hold the beliefs that I do? How were they formed? Why does it even matter?

Well, it very well may not matter. I won't go into all of it, but perhaps some of it.

I am a writer. Not unlike many of us I have lived various lives, I have saved a few lives. I'm happy to say that I have gotten this far and have yet to kill anyone. Though I have had my moments when it may have been justified.

I am a published author (since 1990) with print, ebook and audiobooks available. I've studied screenwriting at my Western Washington University where I got a degree in psychology and I worked for years at another, the University of Washington. I'm still working on my screenwritings and I've started working again on film productions.

Cover art by Marvin Hayes

I wrote the horror sci fi book, Death of heaven. But why? How does someone come to be so against religions to even write a book titled as this one, where the "h" in "heaven" is lowercase. That "h" actually has more to do with the story than my personal beliefs. I spent the first half of my life surveying, studying, even though a university psychology degree going back into the origins of religion. How it came to be, how it could come to be.

Across the humanities and sciences, across the evolutions of religions, until I found what seemed the most reasonable explanations and I came to find it is simply a form of thought that can be far better achieved for whatever it has offered humanity through other and far better formats not requiring a deity or any consideration of ridiculous and far fetched fantasies.

Religions were invented by men. For all the good that religions have achieved, because of their format and structure they have allowed, at times supported, and overall allowed and put great evil upon the world.

For every point that theists point to how great religions have been, it all could have been achieved in a far more rational, safe and sane way; undercutting those claims of necessity, reality or relevancy by theists. Humankind has been addicted to religion and it's high time we grow out of our childhood mythologies and into our rational adolescence as a whole.

The story I devised in Death of heaven is quite a story and not for the faint of heart or the simple minded. It is a complex and hybrid tale told in a unique way, multi-layered with multiple-dimensions. An unusual book of fiction that I'm rather proud of. Aside from the obvious, there is nothing in that book that hasn't been done to humans or humanity by religions or the religious, at some point through our history.

I am against killing and humans causing other humans misery. Especially if it is through some form of belief, faith or religion. No one should ever die because of a religion. No one should ever die or be maltreated because of a belief system. Especially not one founded in myth and magic.

More Hard Hitting Words From The Dalai Lama About The Mass Brainwashing Of Society

If you've visited my Facebook page you'll notice a certain attitude against terrorists and abuse by one human or set of humans against another and that might make you wonder. How did that ever come to be? I've been very vocal against terrorists since 9/11 to a point that some have worried for me.

But we have to speak out against injustice and ignorance, foolishness and stupidity.

Light kills evil. Silence fertilizers it.

So how did this all come to be?

I had a pretty good but at times rather rough childhood. Partially because of ADHD. My parents weren't highly educated but bright people. Though my father was an electrician. Not a dumb guy but then, I didn't grow up with him after three, I only got his genes for the most part. My mother was kind of flaky at times but a loving if not occasionally somewhat nutty woman, though with a great sense of humor.

I got into trouble a lot. I got grounded a lot. So eventually I found books and the public library, including the adult section in fifth grade and then books by Aristotle and others. Something that was a great benefit to me overall but a great detriment in trying to fit into the 1960s as a child.

Some adults back then started to think I was nuts because I would say things that the world and history has long ago judged correct and brilliant. I remember in fifth grade saying something once and my stepfather, a harsh guy who wasn't my biggest fan, had said was stupid and asked where I hear that from?

I said, "Aristotle." He asked, "Who's that." Somewhat stunned at his ignorance and trying not to embarrass him and in doing so feel his wrath, I simply said, "A guy from 2,000 years ago." To which he responded, "He's an idiot."

Taking a chance and trying to restrain my irritation in  having already read what a boon to humanity Aristotle had been I said, "Maybe so, but people all through history, [I hesitated, then pushed it further knowing I was justified] all around the world have based how we think on his words."

That ended that particular "discussion". From that moment on I realized I was learning more than he knew about and it spurred me on. While he realized from then on I was someone to be even more wary of.

Some adults around that time started asking my opinion in making decisions in their own life as they thought I seemed for some reason to make a lot of sense. But not the family. Never my family who only thought as my sister liked to put it, that I was "weird". I was. I thought I was weird too. And I couldn't figure out why any adult would listen to me. A kid. I knew I must be onto something.

The downside of my childhood were all mostly mental issues really. Berating from those who didn't understand me, from teachers I couldn't satisfy, from a stepfather who according to my mother was jealous of me and found me a pain in the ass.

Having a father who was out of my life from when I was three and we were living in Spain didn't help things. I used to daydream he would come save me from my life.

Our mother picked up this new guy on the way home from Spain who got his jollies for years after in berating me so I learned to stay out of his sight whenever possible. After Spain, after spending a couple of years around our east coast family, our mother dated around and finally settled on this guy and married him.

They had a kid when I was five and brought him back to where I was born in Tacoma, Washington. Even though our mother had been born in Brooklyn, New York. Tacoma for me once we had left, was a place I never wanted ever to go back to. Certainly not after experiencing Spain, Philadelphia, New Jersey and New York.

When we returned to Tacoma in 1960 it seemed even worse than when we had left.

The museum we had visited in Philly had a giant human heart you could walk through the ventricles of. They had a hands on moon exhibit where you could experience what it was like to walk in a lighter gravity. In Tacoma we went to a museum and it was in an old square wooden building with square glass display cases containing artifacts. At first I thought it was some kind of a bad joke. It was light years behind the museum science displayed on the east coast at the time.

We moved each year so I had trouble making friends and got to realize it was useless to anyway as I knew they wouldn't last. Much like a military brat but stepdad wasn't in the military. He just had trouble finding a decent job on a new coast after his having been a big band leader. I always felt sorry for him about that, even though we pretty much hated one another.

Mom had forced him to stop playing music. Who does that? And drinking. She never allowed him to spank us as his anger was too disturbing and she said he didn't know his own strength. I thank her for that. But that meant she was the punisher and would use his belts to whip me with when I was bad. But he's dead now. I recently sprinkled his ashes in the River Liffy in Dublin at my sister's request and against my personal desires.

I got taken down to a Karate dojo in 1965 by my mother because said she was tired of groups of boys beating me up for my big mouth. I'd had a big mouth because I hated seeing injustice and I spoke out whenever I saw it. I can't stand bullies, or people pushing their will upon others. Occasionally I took a beating for it, but it never stopped me speaking out. Not to this day.

My saying "Screw Al Qaeda, screw ISIL, screw ISIS, or screw DAESH", isn't a new thing with me.

They are all slim. Terrorists are scum when they kill, maim and abuse non combatants and they deserve to be called out about it. Their pathetic needs do not weigh a thing in light of the innocents they murder. Just as do the politicians and rich who abuse their status, as well as conservatives, Republicans, or anyone on the other side who abuse through their actions. But then too, there is only so much time in a day. I find I simply can't avoid speaking out when I see abuses.

Something that did however make my childhood... difficult.

I had been taken there earlier and turned down as the Sensei said he didn't take on children. But then we heard he had started to and she took me back. That led to my learning Asian philosophy and to pick up an orientation on how to kill quickly and in so learning that, in also having gained a responsibility to protect others from a confrontation with me to protect them from being killed.

In having gotten grounded a lot I discovered science fiction which opened my mind quite a lot. I'd be sent to my bedroom as punishment but after a while, whenever I got told that I had to try not to look happy about it. Because I would go from being outside or playing in the house where I would get into trouble to going to my room and traveling the universe. I always read only the best and they had good solid ideas to found my young personality on.

I got used to things seldom going right for me. Or of being my own worst enemy in my curiosity or lack of care in being punished for trying new things. I got in trouble in third grade once for repeatedly jumping off the roof of the house. The fall was fantastic even if the sudden stop at the end was a bit of a let down.

In getting poor grades in school I mostly got used to not living up to the standards of my older straight A sister. Years later I heard a CEO give a talk to us in college saying that he preferred solid C students over straight A types. Because he said, when an A student type failed they took it hard, but C student types were used to it and just pushed on through it. That was me.

I got to where I thought outside the box because I had to.

I also had an older brother, seven years older who we seldom saw but who always questioned things. I learned over the years from many of his mistakes. Things I would have done, that he did first, suffered for it and would share his experience to help me avoid duplicating his mistakes.

Our grandmother taught me to always listen to those older and more knowledgeable and not be like many kids who don't listen to their elders, to people who have done it all already. Why not build upon other's experiences and save myself the trouble, to put me further ahead of those who don't listen? That made a lot of sense to me.

My grandmother, my mother's mother, was a great benefit to me in learning critical thinking. She told me when I started reading to always finish a book once you start reading it. Just be sure before you crack that cover that it is a book you want to read.

To this day I can count on one hand the books I haven't finished reading. And I've read a lot of books though I always seek out the best authors and for that matter apply that to anything I did. I have my mother to thank for always seeking out the best teachers in anything I wanted to learn. Grandma taught her to choose experts wherever possible. And I've had more than few.

From that I learned to finish whatever I started and to learn the best forms available and possible.

In eighth grade I started in Civil Air Patrol. CAP is an official auxiliary of the US Air Force. It teaches its young cadets Aerospace technologies and search and rescue of downed small\light aircraft. I took ground school toward a pilot's license in junior high.

We learned base support in taking care of aircraft that flew to locate downed aircraft and locate survivors. We learned communications in two way and HAM radio in how to run radios professionally. We were taught first aid, first responder training. We learned LSAR, Land Search and Rescue techniques, how to travel in the mountains, to locate aircraft and crash survivors and find your way in and out, how to climb cliffs, and so on.

If my mother knew half of what we did she would have had a heart attack. After my first meeting I was told to learn the manual as next meeting they had just received so many new kids I would be in charge of a "flight" of them, half of that squadron. I taught them how to drill, to march in order.

I was raised in a blue collar Union family, Teamsters, as democrats. We were Catholic. Liberals I suppose. But it was a positive life affirming environment which I've only come to appreciate of late as I have learned what Republicans and conservatives are all about and I find it rather distasteful, based in a strange kind of reality that seems to fit only the rich.

My mother had said I was "gun crazy" as a kid in eighth grade. Which may be reasonable when you are adventure loving, mostly stupidly fearless and grew up watching 1950s and 60s cowboy, military\war and cop shows and films. With Vietnam on TV during dinner almost every night a gun seemed like a pretty good idea, even though I grew up in a suburb.

So mom called the police department to ask what to do about me. They suggested getting me access to burn out on my cravings and to learn how to handle guns safely with authoritative and appropriate respect. They suggested a civilian who had a gun club for kids who reloaded cartridges for the Tacoma Police Department to save them money.

They let him use their firing range downtown for his junior gun club and said he was well liked and highly respected and reputable. He was yet another in a long line of men who were second fathers to me, filling in where both of my "dads" had failed. It was in that club that I got my craze under control and learned how to shoot, handle firearms properly and see them as what they are. Tools, not toys. Eventually I got my high school sports letter from being three years on the Lincoln High rifle team.

During nights in high school I worked at a drive in theater where my step father worked as assistant manager. As long as I kept my grades respectable (no one expected As or Bs), I could keep my job and have some pocket money, and then a car in my senior year. I eventually became snack bar manager and worked the box office. I started there picking up the garbage on the field in ninth grade each day after the previous night's showing.

I had what three neurosurgeons said was a nervous breakdown and ended up in the hospital in twelfth grade. They said from what my mother told them it had to do with the tension in my home life and that I needed either to figure out how to deal with it or simply move out. They gave me a prescription of valiums and sent me on my way. I moved out the week after graduation at seventeen into my own apartment, having started a job the day immediately after graduation.

I was up for that job with another kid. I got the job because he wanted to go to graduation party and I underbid him saying I could start the day after graduation, thus killing my going to the Ocean Shores graduation celebration. I later found out that the kids that did go, got corralled by police for a caravan of drunk kids, hanging out of car windows driving around and their parents had to drive the couple of hours to the shore to get them all. So in the end I pretty much got the better deal.

Then I got very sick with bronchitis (something I got about every year) and the doctor required I stay away from the open garage doors of the drive in's snack bar for a month. So I lost my job in a rather underhanded way because the new manager didn't like how my employees listened to me over him. I've received that kind of loyalty from employees ever since, all through my life including in the military.

So that's about it. There is of course a lot more and where I was headed after high school. I've written a biopic, a true crime screenplay about a week in my life after high school where I was a bodyguard for the first (and not last) time, for a stip club waitress who witnessed a mob murder. I have titled it, Teenage Bodyguard. It was a well known murder in 1974. The waitress had a different story that the official one that holds to this day and I may be the only one with the true story of what really happened.

I graduated high school hating my K-12 school experience, because of ADD mostly I suppose. I decided I would graduate and be done with school and never have another thing to do with it. Happily, my life changed, I changed, and I ended up at a university after the Air Force. Eight years to get through four years of college. But then my Vietnam era benefits paid for college, something that otherwise would, could, never have happened.

I was actually talked into going to college by two high school friends who said they could get me into pledge their Zeta Psi fraternity at the University of Washington. But my mother said they simply didn't have the money for that.

There is a wonderful true scene where I spent a night there at the Zeta Psi house in Seattle during the Christmas season so I could take the SATs the next day. There was hardly anyone there, every one being home for the holiday break. The frat Secretary and President knew I was there and found me and pulled me into their room. We sat on the floor and smoked pot and listened to Simon and Garfunkel and talked. In the end I did miserable on my SATs and the UW wouldn't let me in anyway.

So I screwed around after high school from seventeen till twenty, through the nightmare of my little brother's death via cancer and into my engagement to my first wife. But I had no job prospects.

So at twenty I entered the Air Force as Law Enforcement. The other forty nine guys in my flight were from seventeen to nineteen and called me the Old Guy. At twenty, I was being called the Old Guy. Except there was one guy older than me at twenty four who had been a teacher. We called him The Teacher and Crazy for joining at that age. But he said he wanted to teach, in the Air Force.

I got booted out in basic because of flat feet but talked them into letting me stay. Demanded it actually as I was pissed off I went through so much of basic training only to lose my job and my slot. The base foot doctor, a Colonel whom I was bitching to about this liked me for some reason. So he told me to select another job.

I chose Flight Simulator Technician and as backup, Parachute Rigger. I had been a SCUBA diver since 10th grade and started skydiving just after high school. But I just missed the primary job and ended up as a parachute rigger. A field where they were nicknamed, "panty packers". Everyone seemed to have a nickname. "Riggers can pack anything" they told me.

Before I left the military I joined the OSI. That is a book unto itself. And it could have gotten me killed.

I got out and floundered for a year doing nothing, which I now see as a healing period. My older brother whose house I was staying at, talked me into using my military benefits and so I entered college where I found that my teachers believed I had a knack for writing. I had only planned on getting a two year degree but my girlfriend (another long story) wanted to get a four year degree.

So we petitioned universities around Washington state, visited all the campuses and both decided on Western Washington University where we eventually got our B.A. degrees in Psychology. UW turned me down yet again. They said not to feel bad because even straight A students got turned down. By this point I was extremely close to a straight A student, but not quite.

At WWU our Psychology adviser in the department eventually told us we were in the top 1% of the top 1% of all psychology students in the country. The head of the counseling department literally begged me to go into counselling as he thought I had a real feel for it.

I knew I couldn't emotionally handle dealing with other people's problems day in and day out and would eventually kill or drink myself to death if I had to take on other's miseries. And I wasn't a drinker, not after high school. By the time I turned twenty one in fact, I had pretty much tired of bars and drinking.

So yes, I'm a progressive type and have always been liberal in my approach to life, much more fearless than our conservative types from what I have seen, who seem to me mostly to be rather fearful people.

I see life for what it is, a calculated risk. Not something to hide from. Not a venture where you can take from others, or to have much that I don't need that costs others in taking from them, and so on and so forth.

I see this planet as a spaceship we're all riding on.

A world we owe something to for living on it. I don't think I have any right to impose my will on others unless they are harming others, or possibly themselves. Conservatives are like that, ISIS is like that, Republicans lately have been very much like that.

As the Examiner.com put it:

"Average Americans need to be more informed about what is going in the country, but also where to get their information. The argument isn't about holding a liberal or conservative ideology, it's about facts that are based on truth and not information based on twisted logic. Americans need to learn to dig a little deeper to find honest reporting, not just believe something that falls in their lap at the expense of a billionaire funded think tank or news organization."

I think we owe it to ourselves to be as honest as possible, not to lie, even if it is at the cost of our beliefs. If your belief is wrong, why are you holding onto it? Let it go.

We have many who don't care about the truth, just twisting things into their benefit. Sadly many of them don't even realize they do that. Critical thinking has become a victim.

I grew up testing myself. I've had plenty of opportunities to.

Someone once said if you run from your fears you'll run all your life from them. So I've tried to discover them and face them down. I also got the testing of myself out of the way at a fairly young age. Something I've seen adults doing sometimes late into life, much to their detriment and that of others around them or under their control.

A good man knows his limitations I was told and I've found many times in people making mistakes in life where they simply didn't know themselves, don't know their limitations. They incorrectly, over or under expect failure or success.

What I've found is many times, most of the time, when I go up against what I'm afraid of or when I take a (calculated) risk, it nearly always seems (against all reason sometimes) to work out in the end. If you have an accurate assessment of yourself, you can achieve great things. But one has to balance life and family, quantitativeness with qualitativeness.

If you give in to your fears you never find out what you can achieve.

Therein for me lay the defect in conservative thinking.

Want some irony?

My older brother has become a conservative and a small businessman. From having been a1960's hippy type, I have no idea how that happened. Other than he was mostly raised by his own father. Of my four siblings, we all had different fathers, except for my one still living younger brother where we have different mothers but grew up separately. He's the genius artist in my family. We didn't grow up together but I'm happy to say now we are great friends.

I think that gives you just a small idea of who I am and where I get my attitude and orientation from. I was raised Catholic, I was head altar boy at one point. I'm now what some would call an atheist, a humanist, perhaps a pantheist. Since the concept of God came after one not existing, I object to being called atheist as it means against something and one cannot be against what wasn't there to begin with.

I have learned that Aikido (I'm on the board of directors for our local non-profit Aikido dojo) and the Buddha Dharma (Buddhism for Westerners) has helped me a great deal. I'm not a ritualist though and I reject any religious orientation in my Buddhist thoughts. I became a Freemason years ago to see why my grandfather was one as well as a Shrine. Getting a degree in psychology has given me free therapy and helped me achieve a kind of cohesins in life. Raising two kids also gave me a wealth of reasons to be alive. To see them grow and become artists, musicians and free thinkers themselves.

I spent much of my twenties being bitter about my childhood until I realized to simply let it go (though there was nothing simple about doing so). To see things in the right light, makes life so much more worth experiencing. To want love over things, is so much more worth the effort. And to leave a positive legacy, such a rewarding pursuit over that of wealth, power or notoriety.

In the end I have only this to say to you all. Do your best in life to do no harm. To leave things better than you found them. To know that religion is never a good enough reason to kill but to kill those killing for the purposes of their religion are sometimes necessary. That killing is seldom necessary, though sometimes it is in order to survive but if you avoid it as best you can and still survive, you should have no guilt, only regret in not having seen a better way sooner to have avoided it.

May prosperity seek you out in many ways and may you deserve any gifts it bestows upon you.

Cheers to you all! Sláinte.

Life is risk. Calculate it. Risk it. Live.

Miserable or Happy? Is the Tempo of your Life exceeding expectations?

More people should be concerned with the tempo of their life's efforts.

Some people, should consider less.

Living, shouldn't make you so stressed out that it destroys you, those around you, your relationships, or through your actions (as we see with many politicians and corporate leaders), your community.

What do I mean by "tempo"?

The dictionary defines tempo as either: the speed at which a musical piece is played or sung, or the speed at which something moves or happens.

I am of course referring to the latter part of the definition. But then you could consider your life a kind of musical piece played with its highs and lows, successes and sadly, its tragedies.

Another definition indicates chess and is where I first learned of the concept as a child in learning to play chess.

A tempo in chess is the movement of a piece which is part of one's own plan or strategy, forcing by means of "checking" or "attacking" an opponent's piece, making them move a piece which is their best move possible albeit of little or no use for them and therefore, the initiating player gains a tempo, while the opponent loses a tempo.

Looking at it another way, one player achieves the same result in fewer moves using one approach over another. And so it is in life.

We don't usually consider that when we make a move in life, it affects another negatively because there are so many people and so many options. And yet, energy is never created out of nothing, or disappears into nothing.

Consider that when you unburden yourself of a secret that affects another, there are many times where although you may feel better in the "unloading" of some issue, you are not dissipating it but displacing it onto another.

A prime example of this in relationships is when someone has an affair. Having ended it or not, after a while it weighs heavily on the moral individual. Having an affair where only one person in a relationship knows of this going on outside of their relationship, is unethical. If there is an open relationship, that's different, but so often as not, that is not the case and so the realization of the harm it could cause the other eventually begins to weigh on the person pursuing the external relationship.

If that person finally unloads that burden in telling their primary relationship partner, they do tend to feel better. And yet all they have done is to take that "energy" if you will and moved it to the other person, mostly reasonably, unfairly. Because although they now feel better in relieving themselves of the secret, the other person now has to deal with it when they had not done anything to warrant their having had this bombshell dropped on them.

The perpetrator might in-genuinely rationalize the other person had done something to warrant their behavior, such as having ignored them in the relationship, or some other slight however grievous, but in the end it was their decision to handle the slight by doing something unethical. Then they rationalized a need to "come clean" and dump this information on the other ignorant person in their relationship, effectively, further causing harm while selfishly attempting to absolve them of their actions.

In this case, gaining a tempo, and in a "Zugzwang" type move, taking a tempo from the most important person in their life. One has to wonder, what would anyone be thinking to have gotten into that kind of a situation in the first place, and why would they do further damage in thinking it was the right thing to do to transfer their discomfort from themselves to the other. It points to a very self-centered individual.

It points to a need for therapy. Better it is I think to get the therapy before the bad behavior, than after when nothing may be able to be salvaged. If the destruction is what is "subconsciously" desired, it is still better to end the relationship on a good note than this bad one, thus gaining a tempo for all involved. Including the outside party. Sadly, many will still go ahead with this type of behavior merely for the juvenile thrill aspects of it.

I find it is instructive to look at etymological forms of a word, where and how it developed over time.
Consider the form, tempus.

From Proto-Indo-European *tempos (“stretch”), from the root *temp- (“to stetch, string”), whence also templum (“shrine”) and tempora. Originally the word meant "what is stretched, stretching" → "stretch (of time)" → "time, occasion".

Essentially it is about a dilation or contraction of progress.

In our lives we have a speed at which change occurs. Some of that (too much for some) is haphazard and happens around us as if we are merely observers to it. Some of it is change through our thoughtful actions and conscious intentions. I would argue, that is the better way to go through life.

If we attend college as opposed to say, sitting around working at a very low level job, perhaps just drinking or getting high in the off hours, allowing life to pass us by, we would achieve a level of existence. Some might argue that there are other more productive forms of living similar to that level, such as being an artist or activist, or living a natural life in growing your own food and living off the grid. So the same type of life can be very different and it is the quality of choice that assigns the tempo to those lives. 

Some of life's tempo is by one's definition of one form over that of another. What is after all, being productive?

That is not what I'm concerted with here, however. I'm talking about what your view of your life is. Hopefully, you do have a view on it and if you do not, well, that is another topic altogether.

I'll give you an example from my own life as I have several of them.

When I was going through my K-12 school years, I had challenges such as my capacity to sit still and learn, the quality of my schools and teachers, our having moved every year or so and all that entails, and the education level and dynamics of my nuclear family.

However, I graduated high school at seventeen.

I got a job, an apartment, moved out, paid on my car that my parents had paid half of, and my own car insurance and upkeep (gas, oil, repairs). I was lucky to have healthcare through my job. I knew when I graduated high school that I was a year or two ahead of my fellow students. Most of them were eighteen or nineteen. So I was a year or two ahead of things in my life, from most of my friends and acquaintances.

However I had academic issues that held me back. I was talented at writing but not very good at math and avoided it at all costs. I'd had music training (playing guitar) in second grade. Music training early on helps with math skills but I'd had trouble with the music training and so quit after second grade. I wish now my mother had forced me to continue as my life would had been drastically different. Not that I would have become a math genius but I do suspect I would have become a musician. 

Overall I felt when I graduated high school, that I had a tempo ahead of many of my fellow grads, but there were plenty of other kids in my town who had a life tempo beyond mine. They had gone to better schools, they were going to college after high school because their parents had the money (mine did not), or were simply smarter than I was and got scholarships.

Still, I felt I only had a few years in order to make something of myself before all my cohorts passed me by. Some possibly never would and I knew that and now in hindsight, they never really did. 

I floundered for several years watching as that free tempo was wasted and I fell behind many of these others until I was twenty. Realizing I had to do something to either catch up, or force my way into a more productive life, I joined the Air Force. Although I had been for the Irish Republican Army (in being half Irish) while in high school and being ready to go to Vietnam, I grew out of those feelings.

I felt I was going nowhere and the military would at that time (as I went in under Vietnam era benefits), give me school benefits (which I never planned to use as I hated school by then), and it gave me a chance to grew up, to learn new skills. It also gave me a very controlled place to force me into a mold I wanted more to be in. In some ways it kept me out of trouble and helped me mature through my early to mid 20s.

What I didn't foresee was it also gave me an environment where I could excel and be rewarded for it with certificates and a Good Conduct medal. Something I blew off receiving until one of my Airman friends pointed out, none of our friends had received. It also gave me an environment that showed me explicitly that I could achieve pretty much anything I wanted to.

I had always been a leader, as much as I didn't want that designation. An adult once told me in junior high that I needed to make up my mind. Would I be a leader, or a follower? I said I chose, follower. He smiled and said he was sorry but it was quite obvious to him that I was a leader and I might as well accept it and try to work on it. Work for it, not against it.

The military was good for me, for about two years. Then it simply felt like prison. Worse because in prison as my friends and I commiserated, you were physically restrained from leaving but in the military you had to return each day of your own recognizance, which was soul crushing in some ways.

Still, I gained tempo in life by joining the military. Then I started to lose it as I saw it, about half way through. I got out, lost my wife, I couldn't find a good job of equal stature to what I left behind as there was no use for someone who could work around survival equipment or nuclear weapons at any McDonald's or Radio Shack store. Two jobs that I was frustrated about applying to, but applied for anyway as I was growing desperate. I tried at Boeing but they had two parachute riggers which I was qualified for, and I was told those guys wouldn't leave those jobs until they retired.

I was highly trained with no appropriate jobs that fit my skill set. Still, I had skills. I had been a supervisor, I had trained people and I had learned to dressed appropriately, be on time, keep good records, all things that worked well for you in most work places. But it took me time to realize all that. In fact it wasn't until someone at the state unemployment office explained that all to me that I started to realize I had more potential than I had considered.

After four years in the military, having been responsible back then in late 1970s dollars, for over a million and a half dollars worth of equipment, as well as people's lives. PJs (Air Force ParaRescue or Parachute Jumper) types, who sky dive or repel from helicopters into firefight, war type situations to extract the wounded, jumped parachutes I packed on a daily basis.

Having had a secret security clearance for working around weapons of mass destruction, having been given awards and certifications, I still couldn't find a good civilian job. I finally understood why so many stay in the military, return shortly after getting out, or simply shoot themselves for having seemingly lost all respect from people on the outside of the military, which they once received on a daily basis from those within. This, has gotten better after Desert Storm ("Thank you for your service", rather than looking at you like some kind of loser).

Once again, I found I was losing tempo in life.

I moved into my older brother's loft in his garage and spent a year just having fun. Finally one day he came to me and gave me "the talk". Why would I continue to do nothing when I had free college available. College where I could be around attractive coeds, parties, smart people, learn new things, then in the end, walk out with a college degree and more access to better jobs and pay?

It was a good argument. He painted a pretty picture.

I'd suffered through the military who taught me along with the rest of my fellow Airmen (and Airwomen) that I (we) could do anything we put our minds to. So I did enter college, I did suffer through the challenges and I did succeed in doing what I once thought to be, the impossible. In fact, I did very well and I very much enjoyed myself. Research and education for me were an addiction after all and a very good thing to be addicted to.

While in he military I frequently felt I was among the smartest in the room much of the time (that coming from a childhood of being "grounded" in my room for getting often into trouble and so reading book after book to keep from going nuts). Once I got to a university I felt I had to struggle to be the smartest person in the room or to effectively interact with some very smart people, including professors who were amazing to be around.

These were people (professors) who you couldn't fool in acting smart, you had to actually BE smart, or you would find very quickly just how unsmart you really were. Rather than like in the military where you just got heckled for being a dummy, these people students and professors alike, had only one desire, to see themselves and those around them to be as informed and correct, as possible.

Leave your ego at the door, reality and facts took precedence. Surely there was egos involved at times, but the key in that academic environment, was Truth. Something I have since had trouble finding in civilian life outside of the universities. Out here it's more about ego, emotions, supporting your beliefs and agendas, or your platform. Truth be damned if it goes against what I learned in church, or from my friends, or some idiot on the internet.

I still believe as I have since I first read Aristotle in fifth grade a the library, that Truth is more important than myself, or you.

If only that were true now a days among so many who say such stupid things. Again, I'm getting off the track...

Finally, I was gaining tempo again. Lots of tempo. I felt respect from others again. 

I learned things I had never heard about. I learned how I worked as a human being and how others worked. I got my degree in psychology because I wanted to learn to be a writer (maybe, hopefully?) and you need to learn human development and characterization. However, I didn't want to learn a literary form of psychology but the most accurate view I could find. And, I did.

I graduated and then, surprise, once again, no jobs. I had walked into the Career Center at Western Washington University in March of 1984 just before graduation, to see what they could do to help me with finding a job, post graduation. They looked at me in surprise and told me I should have started that the previous September, like just about everybody else. But nobody had told me that.

I had been smart when I started college. My first class was called, Study Skills. I finally after all those miserable years in K-12, learned how to study, found there was an effective way to study and that learning was not just an abstract and haphazard thing. But it never occurred to me to take a class in what to do, post college.

We had been so busy with getting through school, it never occurred to some of us to prepare to exit college. Though in my sharing this with my friends, many of them were surprised to find I hadn't known about that, when they did, and they had entered the doors of the Career Center that previous September. Some told me they had been after school volunteers in jobs they had wanted after college, working for free and getting their feet in the doors somewhere, or experience to put on their resume, pre graduation.

I ended up back at Tower Records where I had worked just after starting college for extra money. Then I moved up to another town and found I didn't have to work as my Veteran's Benefits covered my costs. But here I was now after college working at the same pre graduation job, at the same old pay ($5.50\hr), after all that work, after earning a university degree.

I hadn't gotten anywhere. Or so it felt. But, I had a much fuller understanding of myself and the world around me. Also, I did after all have a university degree now and I had indeed learned so very much. There were times when I swear I could feel my mind stretching (sometimes painfully so) with the amount and degree of knowledge I was acquiring. 

Although I had lost tempo in some areas, I had gained a lot in others. 

Eventually, I got a job in Information Technologies.at the University of Washington in Seattle, and later I got involved in Internet technologies. The UW wouldn't allow me in, before I entered the Air Force. I had applied and been turned down, being told that straight A students had trouble getting in. And I wasn't a straight A student in high school. I had taken the SATs but hadn't studied for them, not even knowing there were books for such things until long after. Or that people spent a lot of time studying to take their SATs.

Still, I became very well paid. I remember when I first realized I was getting $30\hour when I had never thought I'd see more than $5 or $10\hr. Now a days I couldn't afford to make that little. Eventually I got jobs on very high level teams in telecommunications for a company that ran the phones and internet for a quarter of the United States. I was on a team at one point that was making history for the company and advancing them in leaps and bounds. 

I had to say by that time, I had gained some pretty good tempo.

At one point when reflecting on it, I realized I had doubled my pay after leaver Tower and I was only working half time, four hours a day. Then I got them to give me full time and doubled my pay again. A few years later I got that first big job in telecommunications and doubled my pay again.

I got the idea in my head that every five years we need to double our pay. 

Fifteen years later I realized that I hadn't doubled my pay for a while and I needed to catch up. I had a scale by which to judge my tempo in my career life by. 

I had married a beautiful woman I was very much in love with who was very much in love with me. I had gained massive tempo in life and love. Eventually I lost the marriage due to curious and unusual circumstances, but I had gained a couple of great kids.

Tempos were gained and lost in different life areas. 

Five years ago I decided, I was still single, my kids were about to leave high school and I wanted finally to turn my attention to myself and my desires in life. Not just to worry about money and raising a family but to ask myself, what did I want to do now?

Write? I also needed to catch up on the amount of money I thought I should be making by now. 

I started writing, day and night, all my spare time, during commutes (I had a four hour a day commute, driving, bus, ferry and walking, both directions mornings and afternoons). Then, my kids moved out and I continued to write more.

Eventually I slowed down, I changed how I wrote, what I wrote learning to be more precise in many ways and gaining tempo in writing in those areas or production, marketing, branding, and becoming known. I got even more precise, I paid attention more to marketing, networking, other things I hadn't known about. I found the career I had thought about all my life, had changed drastically even in only the past few years.

I gained more tempo, along with a brand for who I was as a writer. 

Tempo.

We are told we should reflect upon our life from time to time.

It's suggested that everyone should check in with a therapist from time to time throughout one's life. But most won't do that because in our western medical orientation, to seek help is to admit defeat or defect. 

But that's not what it's about. I

t's about checking on your personal tempo in life in various areas and to see if you are bunched up in some areas or frustrated or damaged. To question (and this scares people) f you are far beyond where you should be and if you just need to reflect on that. Or simply to appreciate your efforts in how far you've gotten. To adjust your internal image of yourself to be more accurate, both in your good and bad areas.

Sometimes, your internal image of yourself is warped because of the image others in your life have of you. Sometimes those closest to us, in loving us as they might, can become our worst examples regarding how we need to view ourselves. 

Maybe you're fine in life, maybe not. Maybe some adjustments are needed or maybe you need massive changes. Many people are terrified of any change to their status quo. Embrace change when it's needed and fear it not.

Because as they say, the only thing that never changes is, change.

One way to tell if you need change in your life without going to a therapist (because let's face it, you probably won't go), is to check your tempo in life.

Put your original desires in life up against your current position. Are you where you wanted to be by now? Do you need to do SOME thing to catch up? Or, has your orientation changed and your direction hasn't?

These are all important concerns that need to be thought about, considered, acted upon. I suspect so many times in people's lives, when things are not going well, it has much to do with no thought being given to things such as these. And in some ways, it's a very small thing to do. 

Now, don't just change your orientation to fit your life, though.

That may be what you need to do, but don't just be lazy and do that. It's too easy to do, too easy to fall into that trap. Consider what is missing in your life, consider changes that are needed, consider, these are changes FOR you, for your BENEFIT and so, probably, for the benefit of those you care about in your life.

Think about how good you have it as things are, how good you could be having it with a little or a lot of change, or simply how you can't have it any better.

These are things a therapist can help you with if you have trouble seeing them on your own. It's not an easy thing to do sometimes, to accurately view one's life and whether you are failing to achieve or achieving and failing to recognize it. It's not a case of getting fixed, it is a case of accurately and objectively reviewing your life to see if you are where you want, or need to be.

Two very different things, wanting and needing.

Life is an ongoing balance between survival and the pursuit of happiness.

Tempo is how we balance between those two things and to see how far off track we have gotten in relation to them. 

Find your own tempo. Then and only then, put it up against those in your life, their own tempos, and the tempo you create along with them through life.

Consider where you should be, where you want to be, where you wanted to be, where you can get to.

Most of us can get to where we want to be if we are willing to make the right sacrifices. Sometimes the sacrifice is merely trying to learn how to make the sacrifice in order to achieve your desires. 

Thinking it cannot be done is just defeatist and so you will have failed before you begin.

Even if you cannot achieve what you want, finding a way to experience the pleasure in trying, is something, to say the least. We are the most important person in our lives. No matter what happens in life, we are already and always there.

If you ask, what about children or loved ones? Well, if you don't survive, there are no children, there can be no loved ones for you. If you do not consider yourself or your needs and desires well enough, just how happy will they be? 

Life is a balancing act. That balance comes in the way you choose to move through your life.

Tempo in your life is the engine by which we achieve, just survive, our truly live our life. 

It's mostly up to you. You just have to think about it. Then make the right choices.