I need to write a new “About Me” both for the blog and for the “Author’s Page” before the new book comes out in May.  I created this blog after being inspired by a friend’s current writing.  I have spent the night trying to decide how to frame all this updated information about me and what to highlight.  I need a method to walk through my thoughts on photos to choose and sections to write for the blog and website.  I need to learn how to post a blog and add photos and links in the blog posts.

My work is to create a strategy and a brand as an author and person to ensure that my work can grow and be experienced by others.  I have researched and seen that I need to become interesting on social media.  But how does one decide to become interesting on twitter?  I suppose I will need to find a way.  But first my “About Me” needs to be interesting and fun.  In the middle of this mental work, I was asked a question that may help in how I update my biography.

I was asked why I named my blog “Our Orchard.”  Why did I not name after myself?  Surely an aspiring author’s blog should be named after the author?  I often find I cannot explain myself or what I am doing.  I can explain a business decision, or elucidate why a choice should be made or not.  But I find it harder to illuminate exactly what I am doing at any given time and why.  I make choices based on seemingly rational (to me) but ineffable thoughts and plans.  The rest of humanity is often a mystery to me, and trying to take what is in my mind and place it on the table for others to understand is not always something I can see how to do.  But I respect the person who asked and so I circle through my brain in an attempt to explain.

I am a philosopher and have been an artist.  Now I wish to become not only an artist but become the art that I create.  I consider myself a social philosopher, and I have supported my life by helping the casino industry.  I am now working to become an author (even finishing a novel) while working as a consultant.  I have up until recently spent my life helping casino’s and other businesses achieve higher revenue by providing experience-based insight and informed direction through improved analytics and more efficient operations.  I started working in gaming in September of 1997 as a tribal casino.  I spent my entire adult life managing people.  In that work, I found that true success does not come just with a bigger bottom line but through Servant Leadership.  Only by empowering others will I find success in this life.  I am nobody and nothing.  I have worked my way through the industry by being an objective observer.

I am an enrolled member of the Village of Kotzebue and a voting shareholder of the NANA Corporation. I grew up in rural North Idaho on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation.  I have lived in many places, though Honolulu Hawai’i was a favorite.  I love to travel the world and find new places and foods.  I love food, and consider myself a foodie, if a drunken version of one.  I find myself to be highly eclectic and love to try new experiences.  I live very much by the doctrine of experience.  With recent changes, I have decided to create a blog, which seemed obvious to me I should call “Our Orchard.”

I hope to fill the blog with short stories, book ideas, book promotions, food thoughts, travel enjoyments, and just basic things that come about that I find that I want to talk about (maybe go over many ways to make the best cup of coffee, and yes there are many).  I do not plan on creating a marketing commercial for my books, but instead, create a journal of my growth and change.  I want to expand my abilities in as transparent a way as possible.

You see I left my long-term job in August, and have begun to travel and write.  I have become a leaf upon the wind.  I cannot stay immobile though and need constant action.  I spent time at Standing Rock in protest, visited places in the world that sounded illuminating (only two more continents to go! (Australia and Antarctica)), and spent a lot of time trying to decide on what to do next.  I have found myself in the enviable (or unenviable as the case may be) position of being my own master.

I know others in my situation might fear what comes next, but I hope for a bountiful harvest.  I am the wind and the wind passes through me.  I do not worry about what happens next, I expect flowers in my future.  As a hobby and a food source, I love to garden.  I even attempted to create a gardening app a while back on Kickstarter.  I love the warm sun on my face and the dirt in my hands.  Spring is an amazing time to be in Idaho.  It is the perfect time to live in the now.  I learned through my years of gardening what I need to do to expect flowers.  To expect flowers one must plant seeds.  It is my goal to learn how to best sow the future I wish to have.  I seek to learn the best way to live in this world, and I plan on sharing that journey.

Currently, I hope that my next step is done through my writing.  I will write in eclectic and vastly different genres as the ideas come to me.  I plan to fail, and through those failures to find my way to success.  I may go to another casino, or find a whole different industry.  But, I will live my life as a libertine, and an artist of experience.  I invite you to join me on my journey.  My days of binging Netflix and reading for 8 hours did not last a month.  The time has come to embrace the next step in life.  To find a better way to enjoy my world.  Follow me as together we plant seeds and grow our orchard.

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