A word about myself

The idea of blogging requires that we exercise an organ that for most of our lives we've been taught to suppress: the "me" gland. Nobody wants to be thought of as egotistical or Narcissistic, and any action or inclination to action that we have along those lines is considered a fault.

Friedrich Nietzsche, my favorite philosopher, has a lot to say about that, and rightly claims that the self-suppression of pride in oneself is a very dangerous thing indeed. Even so, when I decided to do a blog, I was convinced that it had to be about something more general than "me." Not only because writing about "me" is arrogant, but writing about "me" typically isn't good writing.

Real good writing, even when it is about one person, or one event, or one place - illustrates a greater truth about life through that one event, that one place. In "The Sun Also Rises," Ernest Hemmingway writes about youthful adventurers in Pamplona, Spain. But it could just as easily be Mongolia. The movies "Lone Star" and "Fargo" tell a murder mystery in the vastly different settings of South Texas and North Dakota, but the elements are timeless.

So even when it is about "me" it's not really just me. "Me" is just a metaphor, so to speak.

That being said, for this blog to make sense, and for my readers to have a starting point, I do have to give background on who I am and what I've done.

My life so far has been kind of like a real-life version of Forrest Gump. I've kind of been everywhere and done everything. Or at least it seems that way. I grew up in Southwest Texas and attended Texas A&M, where I got my degrees in Journalism and German. While in college, I took a year to study at the Eberhard-Karls Universitaet in Tuebingen, Germany, where I studied European history, European politics and European women. The first was too bloody, the second too socialist and the third too hairy. But it was a fun time.

Returning to Texas, I completed my two degrees, and qualified for a third degree in history, but some bureaucrat said there was a rule against giving out more than two. If I ever do run for governor, as my high school goverment teacher told me to, my first act will be to find that guy and fire him.

In 1996, I joined the workforce as a new reporter at the acme of Journalism - the Stephenville Empire Tribune. After stops in such Pulitzer-worthy locales as Uvalde and Lake Jackson, Texas, I then got another chance to go to Europe, this time with the Arthur F. Burns Fellowship, which is an exchange program between Germany and the U.S. For a couple of months, I worked at the Berliner Zeitung in Berlin, writing stories in German for that paper, and in English for my paper back home.

Politics had always appealed to me, and through my connections made in the newspaper industry, I got a job in 1999 as the Deputy Press Secretary for U.S. Senator Phil Gramm. I subsequently worked on several campaigns, in the Texas Legislature, and as a reporter for a political insider newsletter in Texas, the Lone Star Report. In 2006, I left that job to work for Kay Bailey Hutchison's re-election campaign. When that race ended, I started my own political public relations company.

One of my most surreal moments came in 2003, when the Democrats of the Texas House of Representatives decided to shut down the Texas Legislature by busting a quorum and hiding out at the Holiday Inn in Ardmore, Oklahoma. All of Texas was looking for them, and we in the legislative staff suddenly found ourselves with no real work to do in the height of the political season. So, taking a cue from U.S. troops who had created a deck of playing cards to locate Saddam Hussein's inner circle, I created a deck of cards featuring the missing 51 members of the Texas House. Although I did it initially as a joke, my boss, a Republican state rep, showed a deck to a T.V. reporter, and the cards were on CNN the next day. I ended up selling a couple hundred of the decks, and got my cards in Texas Monthly (above).

Somewhere along the way, I also found time for all of my hobbies. I got my pilot's license in high school, but don't get time to do that much flying anymore. I've been the lead guitarist in a couple of ill-fated blues/rock bands in Texas and Germany, but I mostly play Texas country/Americana music these days.

For two years, I served as a volunteer crewman on the Elissa, a 19th Century square-rigged sailing ship homeported out of Galveston. Working on the weekends, I helped maintain the ship, trained on it, and sailed as part of the crew around the Gulf of Mexico. (In the second photo, that's me out on the jibboom).

Along the way, I've tried very hard to keep myself loyal to some basic principles of family, country, duty and honor. These aren't old-fashioned notions, they're timeless. On September 11, 2001, I was working in Senator Gramm's Dallas office when the first of the twin towers collapsed in front of my eyes. As the enormity of the attack came into focus, our office was evacuated on orders from Washington. However, with the capitol shut down, we had no way to get out press releases from the Senator. So, late that afternoon, I came back to our office and sent out press releases and took a few press calls. But mostly it was quiet.

As I sat there watching the coverage of the attack, I decided that this was truly the calling of my generation - the chance we all have to make history. Growing up idolizing the World War II generation, and venerating the unfairly maligned heroes of Vietnam, I felt that whatever I could do to make a difference I would do.

So, after finding a service that would take me at my advanced age (32), I joined the U.S. Navy reserve as an intelligence officer. In June, 2007, after completing my training, and having met all the other requirements for deployment, I raised my hand and volunteered to be deployed to Iraq.

So that's why this is about "me."

(Photo: Taking the oath and receiving my commission in the Texas House of Representatives Chamber, in front of the San Jacinto Battle Flag)