Begin Again

Before I get super into it, just in case anyone actually reads this thing, this is for me. I’ve wanted a blog for a long time. My mistake with my first one was trying to monetize it. I felt pressure to produce content, produce produce produce. It took all the joy out of writing. The second one was much the same.

This time, it’s for me. No keywords, SEO, none of that stuff. Just my thoughts. If you like it, neat. If not, neat.

Man. How many times have I started something? College, the Army, EMS, the fire service, wildland fire dispatching, 911 operator, woodworker…and those are just the highlights. Or low points, depending on the day.

A lot of people seem to be afraid to start over. I get that. I certainly don’t want to start over again.

But what about beginning? Not starting something new necessarily, but just starting. Not starting over. Just starting.

Maybe I’m getting a bit in my head about the significance of the wording. I know I have a tendency to do that.

Anyway, I’m going to write when I feel like it. Not on every topic. There’s lots of useless blogs, news agencies, ad nauseum out there on any topic that floats your boat. I’m going to stick to what matters to me.

Faith, marriage, fatherhood, kids with special needs, mental health, and occasionally bladesmithing.

The funny thing about this entire venture is that it was really just a way to deal. Exploring a new avenue after chemically lobotomizing myself for 3 years playing medication roulette to control my PTSD. I met a guy, and now here we are. Medication free. Doing more than just surviving.

My time in the shop tends to be mostly spent talking, ironically. Working things out. Exploring memories I don’t want to explore. Letting life, my life, flow through me and into my work. That’s where this idea came from that every knife tells a story. They take on a life of their own throughout the owner’s life - scratches, patina, dents and divots and such. But they have a story before they ever leave a shop. Each one is a memory, a symbol of something I’ve dealt with in a healthy way.

Bladesmithing has been a massive blessing in my life. I trust myself again. I’m learning to use my hands to create and empower. I feel excitement for the future. For my future. I’ve always been excited to see who my kids become and where they decide to go, but I wasn’t usually in the picture in those dreams. Either dead or elsewise just not there. Not any more.

Ultimately my goal with this entire thing is to try and bring some of that light and hope to other people. I want to sell enough knives to buy the equipment and machinery to be able to instruct others, to see if they want to take a chance on blacksmithing, to climb out of the pit and learn to live again.

I put a lot of power into bladesmithing talking about it like that. I think, most of the time, the reality is that it’s the door God used to bring me back from the dead. The metaphors and analogies life has to the forging process are nearly endless.

And don’t forget. I was dead. There was no spark. I tried leaving my wife and kids, figuring they were better off missing a memory of me than dealing with the reality of me. Work was going nowhere. Weight was piling on. Friends falling away. No, that’s not fair. Pushing friends away. Angry at God, the faceless, omniscient, omnipresent scapegoat for all my problems.

But.

Here I am. Clean and sober. Still married to the same woman, still a dad to my kids, still breathing air instead of dirt.

All because of a little bit of steel and a lot of coffee and tears.

For when I need to see this again, having real friendships in which I can share the horrific and ugly things I’ve seen and done is what really changed me. Talking about my mistakes, people I hurt, people I couldn’t save, the screams in my head that still wake me up.

Other people are really all that matters. Looking outward and seeing pain, seeing someone in that same pit that needs help, that’s something I can do.

Here’s to beginning again, moving forward, and rising from the ash.