It was February, 2023.
I’d just written my way back from burnout and sent Muscle Cub: Bear Camp Book 2 to my editor.
I was mentally exhausted, scrolling on social media — wondering what the hell to write about in my newsletter — when I saw a post:
“What was the first TV show you ever binged?”
I had to think about it for a few minutes, and the answer took me back to a dark time…
In November 2002, at thirty-three, I was working at a stressful job in a university counselor center.
You know the expression: “Don’t give yourself an aneurysm.”
I didn’t.
I had a stroke.
It was one of the most devastating events of my life.
It left me partially paralyzed on my one side, mostly affecting my face. When I spoke, I looked and sounded like I was drunk.
The students I advised stared at me in curious shock and horror, and my work superiors were less than compassionate about my situation. Within a few weeks, they compelled me to resign.
It derailed my plans to become a licensed psychotherapist. My appearance and my inability to speak at full capacity destroyed any motivation to try and interview for other similar positions.
Who was going to hire me in that state?
I became severely depressed, and didn’t want to leave the house.
It would take me nine months to recover about ninety percent of my speech and facial expressions, but I lived as a shut-in for a couple of years.
I started looking for work I could do from home, and landed a remote job writing item descriptions for a man who ran an online store and shipped merchandise out of his garage.
On Christmas Eve of 2002, he laid off all his employees. Without paying us. His business had been going bankrupt long before he hired me.
I’d never lost a job, and now I’d lost two in a row in the same month.
Feeling powerless pissed me off.
Looking back, I believe the universe pushed me into doing the one thing I’d always excelled at and would never have taken the risk of trying:
Writing.
I never got paid for those few weeks I worked for that guy, but I’m thankful because it taught me that I could get paid working from home as a writer.
In January 2003, I spent $35 on a domain and began learning how to code and build websites.
My intention — figure out how to make a living writing and publishing online.
I found another position as a virtual assistant for an email marketer, Ali, who was building a business with an e-zine.
Remember those?
They were plain text emails with no images or font variations. We used rows of hyphens and asterisks across the page as borders and section dividers, and all caps for headers.
Ali made money creating information products — written tutorials in PDF format.
Ideas. Words. No physical merchandise.
I talked her into letting me install this new software on her site called a “weblog.” (Back in the day, you had to know how to code php to start a blog.) I set up the RSS feed so it would automatically send anything she published to her email subscribers.
She loved how much it allowed her to simultaneously build her site while writing her newsletters, and she approached it as a syndicated columnist. I started affectionately calling her “Carrie Bradshaw,” and watched from behind the scenes as she developed a million-dollar personal brand.
Around this time, a friend introduced me to Phil, a literary agent.
Phil insisted I establish an audience while I was writing and before I tried to find a publisher. He wanted to get me gigs writing columns for newspapers and magazines.
I was like, “Dude. Why don’t I just blog then?”
He didn’t know what I was talking about. He was old school, from the traditional publishing world, and even after I explained it to him, I couldn’t convince him blogging was a worthy alternative. I made a bet with him I could build a readership online and get 1,000 subscribers before he could place one of my articles in a print magazine.
I won that bet.
Phil did ultimately get me a book deal, but the contract fell through spectacularly. It was an epic emotional whiplash, from a dream come true to a traditional publishing horror story, but it affirmed that digital self-publishing as the right path for me.
My blog was blowing up, my audience was growing exponentially, and I was starting to monetize my words as Ali had taught me.
It took me three years to make a full-time income writing online, but I built a personal blog with an email list of thirty thousand readers, eventually turned it into a podcast, and it ran for fifteen years.
Until I started burning out talking about the same topic week after week.
Hoping to rekindle my creative spark, I began writing MM romance as a passion project.
I managed to finish Grumpy Bear and “The Uncut Wood” right before hitting the final stage of burnout.
Back in 2003, when I was hiding out at home installing blogs for clients, my brother asked to store his stuff at my house while he traveled overseas for work.
Among his valuables was a desktop Mac computer with a DVD player — I couldn’t afford a DVD player or a TV — and a collection of the first five seasons of Sex and the City.
(I’d never really watched it. I was also too poor for cable, let alone an HBO subscription. I was also fascinated that my straight, butch brother owned this show.)
I watched every freaking episode back-to-back in a matter of days.
I remembered thinking at the time, “Carrie Bradshaw would’ve made a killer blogger.”
As a writer of weekly narrative non-fiction, I always imagined myself as a younger, gay, male Carrie. It was my secret persona.
Flash forward to 2023.
February was my twentieth anniversary as a professional writer and content marketer.
When I saw the post asking about the first TV show I’d ever binged, it occurred to me that, although I’d seen the movie sequels, the recent spinoff, and a ton of syndicated reruns over the years, I’d never fully binged the final sixth season of Sex and the City from start to finish.
I put it on.
(Yes, some of it’s cringe by today’s standards, but it’s been my comfort show for two decades.)
As I watched, I thought about my past intention of becoming a self-published author.
I heard the still small voice inside me whisper, “You did it.”
Damn.
I’d never acknowledged it.
It took me twenty years, but… I did do it.
The epiphany — the full circle moment — flooded the buried memories with healing and pride.
I cried.
And just like that...
I thought, maybe I should keep doing what I’ve always done — share the real-life backstories that inspire my books.
Like:
The time I applied to work at a naked campground in my twenties
The real locations Bear Mountain Lodge is based on
Stay tuned for upcoming emails…
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Read the Bear Camp series by Slade James.