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I know the last time I opened a column with a header like that I preceded to unleash some unpleasantness. Well, this time I would like to offer an apology and an explanation.
First, I do want to apologize for the scathing column some months ago. I still think some of my points are valid but there is no doubt that I could have handled their delivery much, much better. Open dialog is acceptable; ranting such as I did is not.
Second, although this is very personal, I do believe I owe it to my fellow Club, RACES, and ARES members to explain what happened.
As most of you know I have been a paraplegic for quite sometime. I became paralyzed on August 11, 1992. I missed the first semester of high school, mostly in one hospital or another. However, because of a lot of hard work, especially by my friends and family, I had a great time in high school and graduated with my class from Hotchkiss High School in 1996. My senior year I was the student council treasurer, FBLA VP, yearbook editor, varsity volleyball manager, and helped to plan the class trip. I did all of this while taking a full class load, which included 4 classes for credit at Mesa State.
So, when I went off to college (thinking much too highly of myself) I had great expectations for myself both educationally / professionally as well as personally. However, many things did not happen the way I expected. Some of the bumps in the road were of my own making and some of them were beyond the control of any human. With all of them I began to roll down hill ending with a very large crash that started around 2001 and lasted into 2007.
During that time, when not in the hospital, I was merely surviving day to day. Thinking ahead wasn't something that I did or could do. When I did have good days, I was very, very glad to have things like amateur radio to do that kept me from thinking about what else might go wrong. Now, I don't want that last part to sound like I am getting out of radio... Noting could be further from the truth.
What has happened is, I have gotten better. Now, I am by no means completely out of the woods, but I am close enough to see the open, and the future. As the crash ended I sort of woke up. All of those things that I had planned to do and wanted to do and needed to do all began to flood back into my brain.
As they did, and I realized it, I began to have a crisis of sorts and unfortunately released the steam pressure onto anyone and everyone who was around, including the ham community. Then to top it all off, I had a birthday. What some people would call, "one of those milestone birthdays." Well, as I realized that I had reached the age where I figured I would have accomplished many of my goals, and hadn't... I simply lost my marbles.
This is the point where my radio (and web site making) activity almost completely disappeared, mostly because I almost disappeared. I may very well have, had it not been for my two best friends. I don't know why either of them, or their families, continue to put up with me but they do. The two of them got drafted, for lack of a better word, into the jobs of marble catchers and psychologists.
The two of them listened to me, reassured me, and caught all of the marbles that came flying out and put them back in my head. I have thanked each one of them, but I wanted to do it here too. Now, because I don't want to embarrass them, I won't give their names, but they know who they are. (I worry about things like that, as they will tell you. That isn't new to me; I have always worried and probably always will. It drives THEM crazy sometimes.) I am however, going to send them the link to this column, because even though I have told them how much they mean and how much they helped, having it written seems somehow, well more important.
With their help I have managed to reemerge from my slump. That isn't to say that I won't have some down days and I will almost always have some medical issues to stumble over... However, I am looking forward to moving forward, including as a ham and as the web master. I hope over the next few weeks and months to start to get back into the swing of things on the radio and on the Internet. I have already been able to get a few things caught up on the web sites, and hope to make some of the nets on a regular basis again.
So, please understand that by no means did I intend to come across like a grumpy ole bear or to take my insanity out on anybody else. I just needed to work though all of those ideas, thoughts and emotions. Please also, do bear with me as I make my way closer and closer to the edge of the woods.
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