I was born in Detroit, Michigan back in 1962. For the first 12 years of my life I lived in that city. Then our family moved to a small place out in the country where I have spent the rest of my life.

I did well in school. My favorite classes were always science. I had some problems in high school though with jerks and got sent to a private school where I met a bunch of other jerks. In that private school I picked up the habit of smoking weed. Those were my friends. We were all outcasts. I was always an outcast because I got good grades.

I went to The University of Michigan, and despite working half time in a dorm cafeteria to pay for school and my growing habit of smoking hashish, I did pretty well at first. In the end I graduated with a B average and got my B.S. in physics.

After I graduated and found out I could not afford grad school, I looked for a job. The only job I could find was as an electronics technician at a company that made computer network gear. My life went to hell that year, and I ran into a lot of really bad people. It’s also when I developed alcoholism.

Over the years I worked in restaurants, for a print shop, construction, landscaping, and finally ended up as a science technician at the local community college, where I worked for 16 years. During that time I developed a psychotic mental illness, probably from exposure to bad drugs. That was the beginning of the dark spiral my life has taken since then.

I lost my job at the college in 2005 and have been living in my parent’s home, helping out and doing most of the houshold chores as they age. My Mom finally died of Alzheimer’s in 2018, and now it’s my Dad and me and Junior, the dog, living here. If there was a rock bottom to life I’m probably flat on my back there now, but I have to be more positive about things.

Now that you know my horror story of a wasted life, and something about my background, maybe you would like to come back another time and see what interesting things I write about. Writing is about all that’s left to me for social interaction. Today, I am isolated, ignored, and denigrated as a person with a mental illness by my own family. Maybe tomorrow I will have a reason for hope.