Just one of many…

Arm full of puppies. Magic has her head on my shoulder. Legend is looking down for food. They have both passed away, along with my brown hair. photo from rob akers.

 

Hey Y’all,

 

Preloading the next story time. My wife and I have been married since 2002. When we met, she had no idea what a life as a military spouse would be like. In fact, it was her first marriage so she had no idea of what being a spouse would really be like either. She had her preconceived ideas and unfortunately for her, she choose poorly. I made it my mission in life to shatter all the dreamy thoughts of what her life would be like. Fortunately, she stayed with me until I got the wheels put on.

 

 

Donetta and the guy she let get away. She prefers her men short, fat and gray…ha ha. photo from rob akers

 

As the years went on, the deployments occurred and the reunions happened, she loved to hear the stories of all the nonsense that went on while we were “Over There.” I started to write in 2008, partly because I was dealing with a touch of anxiety. I never intended to write about my experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan but she encouraged me to write them down so the kids would know what it was like.

 

I did write them and you are reading them as they were first composed. The problem is that I wasn’t planning on sharing them with the world. But as I was also learning to write and I wanted to write a novel, I needed to have an author’s platform. Meaning a blog. And after a year or two of writing for it, writing these stories and writing my novel, I was beginning to figure out that I was spending a lot of time writing stuff that no one would ever read.

 

So that is when I started to combine the story time and the blog. Knocking out two birds with one stone. So here we are a lot of years later. I am still working on the number one novel (ugh!) and now I am on Facebook (not as bad as I feared) and I am combining story time and social media. I might not be better, but I am more efficient.

 

I wrote all that to say this. Way back when I wrote all these stories, I really never intended that they would be seen by anyone other than my kids. My stories are about real people. I write about people that I know and that know me. I have never asked anyone for their permission to write about them and I have never asked anyone if I can share their stories. If I ever write anything that is less than flattering, I am sorry but I promise that I always portray myself as accurately and honestly and unflatteringly as possible, warts and all.

 

Finally, these are not their stories or their version of that time in life or their perspective of any event. It is written exclusively from my memories during a turbulent period of my life therefore if anything I wrote in 2012 is not accurate, the blame lies with Donetta. Ha ha!

 

 

Without Donetta, this family wouldn’t exist and none of these stories would ever be written. photo from rob akers

Until next time, keep on rockin

 

https://robakers.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/heroes-all/