Sundered

For those of you who know me (and all but a handful actually do), I am a notorious tinkerer - not in the sense that I poke around inside machinery - but rather to suggest the concept I am often possessed by the need to update and adjust things (I've been diagnosed with OCD...so there's that as well). To call me a perfectionist would, I think, be highly misleading. A title such as that might indicate that one perceives themselves as eventually capable of such flawless splendor. Not this fellow...and yet still the unattainable should never be abandoned merely for the absence of its possible surrender. I've become aware of something akin to wisdom as I've grown older. People change, our ideals, beliefs, motivations...each of these can be fundamentally altered given the right set of circumstances. However, this point made, I see beneath the demeanor of that conscious will the essence of our deeper natures bleeding out in constant pulsing surges. Who we are at that skeletal base - for me at least - seems determined from a very early age. Everything else is just the weathered flesh we've grown over that unchanging pale structure. Despite the expansive array of adjustments I have made to my personality over the years, there are often times when I happen across the bothersome remnant of some vestigial mental appendage from my early youth reaching insistently out for that thing forever denied.
But to the point (which I am wholly inept at making without the aid of numerous flowered phrases), About me: I am a writer and have been struggling as such since I was six. I produce work in an effort to evoke thought, not to merely entertain as is commonly the mantra of the base literary society. Recently though, I have begun to find photography and emotive self modeling of interest (You may check out some material in my pics folder here or on DeviantART). At the moment, it is nothing more than a hobby and I have not the intention (nor the talent) to pursue the matter to a stage wherein my skills might be appreciated by that most important of critics...ME. My real wish is to finally publish something of worth and length. My first novel Sundered is one chapter shy of its completion, but I am not pleased with the overall work. As a result, once the ending is reached I will set it aside, nod, and get on with writing the next of two other novels based on a similar thematic discourse.
Now the basics in brief (Yes, actually in brief): I am a former martial arts practitioner and assistant instructor. Despite my aspiration to make a living at writing, the career I am employed in deals with medical research. I reside in Wisconsin and despise everything about it. I live alone. I have two cats. Oh, and I'm an atheist. I do not begrudge an individual their own particular system of belief if it manages to afford them some sense of support. I am a firm proponent of "to each their own". However, Thumper's mom also imbedded me with the concept that "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." - so should you have Jesus in your heart...keep him there and don't criticize me my ambition to exist in a world bereft of any power beyond my own will and the capacity of this mind to excel to the fullest reaches of my humanity. If you should come knocking on my door, expect civil, courteous treatment...but also expect to turn right around and march your little ass down the street in the opposite direction.
And that, as they say, is that... Feel free to post any comments which happen to pop into your heads. I'm always fond of making new acquaintances.