Chapter 2
Dr. JJ's Story
Autoethnography as Research Method
Before delving into my life stories, it bears reviewing this unique, autobiographical research method I employed in the analysis and production of my personal history.
As previously discussed in BOOK the THIRD, Chapter 2, autoethnography refers to the creative and/or systematic research and study of one's own life, or a slice thereof. The field of autoethnography is derived from ethnography—the study of individual groups of people—which, in-turn, evolved out of the field of anthropology—the study of human cultures.
In my doctoral dissertation, I conducted autoethnographic research to carefully analyze and systematically scrutinize my life in an effort to see what I might learn about self-leadership and action research. My goal was to create an original theory and model of self-leadership that might benefit others.
The result of that doctoral research—and SIX (6) subsequent iterations of the SAL TEXTBOOK—is contained in the Life Leadership textbook you presently hold in your hands, even the SEVENTH Edition.
I began collecting data for this expansive autoethnographic research project as early as 1987 as a young diarist over two decades before I began my doctoral work.
I can, in large measure, thank my father for my journaling predilections.
Dad began writing in a personal daily journal in the early 1960s when he was in high school. And he did not stop there! Indeed, he persisted in his journaling habit with an unusual consistency and devotion for decades thereafter.
I received my first Franklin Day Planner in 1987, when I was just eight years old, and began keeping a journal on January first of that year—at age seven (7).
I have kept a variety of different journals, records, and lists ever since.
Most of my journaling involves a daily record of events, feelings, thoughts, ideas, etc.
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| Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882 |
My Emerson Journals include both poetry and prose.
I began these journals in 2001 and was amazed at how quickly they accumulated once I had begun. Indeed, I discovered that the physical act of recording a thought or idea served to fuel my philosophical muse and thereby accelerate the rate at which additional inspiration would come. This deluge of light and knowledge continued for several years thereafter flooding my mind with thoughts, ideas, and inspiration. Thus, between the years 2002-2006, I filled 22 pocket-sized "Marble Memo" notebooks, which I referred to as my "Little Black Books."
Sometimes this lightning of thoughts and ideas would strike my brain late at night after I had already retired for the night and I would feel compelled to get out of bed and jot the information down. Other times this lightning would hit me at an inopportune time for recording, such as when I was driving. If I deemed the inspiration important enough, I would pull my car to the side of the road, extract my Little Black Book and pen from my pocket, and record whatever epiphany I had received before continuing on my way. Consequently, I began carrying my pen and notebook around with me religiously, never knowing when the next gem of thought or word of wisdom would enter my brain, heart, and spirit.
Such a practice may sound a bit like Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, and there is no doubt my OCD did fuel my journaling habit—and many other positive and productive thoughts and behaviors. It was one of many examples of how OCD was "not all bad for me" as one leader once suggested to me.
It is true that OCD has been both a blessing and a curse in my life, career, and relationships. In truth, I probably never could have developed the massive tome you currently hold in your hands without my OCD-influenced intensity, conscientiousness, and detail-oriented proclivities. Thus, there is always a silver lining to every challenge and obstacle in life.
It is my hope and prayer that this Life Leadership textbook will help you discover your own life's Silver Linings, for they most assuredly exist in many and varied forms and you will be able to recognize them if you are willing to search them out and capitalize on their blessed "Bright Sides."
Implicit SAL Lessons Stitched into the Stories
Throughout my personal narratives, I attempt to vividly, albeit implicitly, illustrate SAL principles and practices as I have strived to live—and/or learn from—them. As you read through these stories, you will notice I usually do not specifically identify which SAL principle, practice, law, or corollary informed a given action or decision on my part. I have done this on purpose because I do not want to weigh the stories down with too much explicit didacticism; after all, there is plenty of that in BOOKS the FIRST through the FIFTH.
My reasoning for this clear separation between the academic and narrative elements is twofold.
First, I want to give you—the reader and student—a break from the more intense scholarly portions of the text. This will allow you to not only learn from the stories, but to enjoy them as well.
Second, I want to provide you and your mentor and/or instructor (where applicable) with the opportunity to ponder on and then carefully examine the narrative in an effort to identify SAL principles and practices on your own. You will learn more from thinking critically about and then discussing the narrative than you will being spoon-fed what I think you should take away from each narrative.
In chapters 3-5 of BOOK the SIXTH, I share intricate details of my experiences with mental illness (Chapter 3), my misadventures with romance (Chapter 4), and the ups and downs of my unorthodox career path (Chapter 5). Before diving into these meaty narratives, I preface them with a brief autobiographical sketch of my life's journey to-date.
Autobiographical Sketch of My Life
My life, as with anyone else's life, is the story of a human being's struggles to discipline and gradually improve his responses to life's many problems, pains, perplexities, and failures. It is also a story of my growing successes in managing or overcoming those adversities in conjunction with progressively taking advantage of opportunities that have arisen over time in my personal life, career, and relationships.
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| JJ in Daddy's boots about the time of his Exxon station potty lesson. |
"Fri. July 10, 1981
"Cute thing happened this afternoon. I took Jordan with me to the bank to make a deposit. Left him in the car while I went in. When I came out, he had opened the door of the car, leaned out, pulled down his britches and shorts and was proceeding to make a puddle on the asphalt. The last time he was with me at the Exxon Station I got a little upset with him for going on the seat. He did it right this time. Sure was cute. He was right proud of himself." (2)
I was born on a Tuesday—August 21, 1979—in Monticello, Utah, a small, rural community of approximately 2,000 inhabitants in the rural and remote Four Corners area of the western United States.
I arrived to a larger family—the sixth of seven children and the youngest of five boys.
My ancestry—on both sides of my family—hail almost exclusively from the British Isles and Denmark. I am also related to several couples who sailed on the Mayflower, so these and other branches of my family helped settle the Massachussetts Bay Colony and/or took part in the American Revolutionary struggle that came a century-and-a-half later.
Seventy-five (75) years after America gained her independence, my ancestors—on both sides of my family—were among the Latter-Day Saint pioneers who emigrated west across the American Continent to Salt Lake City in the 1840s and 50s. Later, my father's forbears, under the direction of Church President Brigham Young, migrated further to southern Utah, where my paternal second-great grandfather—George Albert Adams—served as one of four (4) founders of Monticello, my hometown.
Growing up, I was taught to honor and revere these courageous and religious colonist and pioneer ancestors. I further took a great deal of natural interest in the biographies, characters, contributions, and legacies of these fascinating, formidable, hardy, and pious progenitors.
My connections—literal and learned—to these august souls runs deep and forms an essential part of my own character and identity.
My father spent a majority of his career teaching English grammar and literature at the middle school and high school levels. But he was really a rural renaissance man and entrepreneur who either dabbled in (or wholly embraced) several different career fields, including construction—he was a licensed General Contractor who had a hand in the building or assembly of over 70 homes—real estate and land development, apartment management, journalism, photography, sales, and the grocery business (handed down from Grandpa Ned Jensen, who had inherited the trade from Great-Grandpa Hans Jensen).
My mother was a magnificent and loving caregiver, hardworking homemaker, and skilled saleswoman who sold a variety of products, including Avon cosmetics, Lavoy pajamas, and fresh-baked bread and fudge. She was particularly successful as an "Avon Lady," earning the company's prestigious annual President's Club award and trophy—a porcelein statuette of "Persis Foster Eames Albee (1836-1914), the founder of Avon—an impressive eight (8) different times (years).
My family was large, loving, and close-knit; but we had our share of parental differences and sibling squabbles. In fact, after most of my siblings had left home, my parents' relationships deteriorated significantly, leading to their divorce in 2004—after 37 years of marriage and a bushelful of grandkids.
Despite these and other familial bumps and bruises, I was nonetheless taught from an early age—through both precept and example— o value faith, family, community, country, and self-reliance.
My parents and older siblings also taught me by example the dignity, importance, and value of HARD WORK. I got my first paying job at age five. I earned $40 dollars for a summers' worth of work helping my dad and older brothers build a log cabin on land my dad owned.
Growing up in Monticello, I was unquestionably a "Country Boy," and proud of it.
This mostly changed following my seventh birthday in 1986, when my family moved to Mesa, Arizona, a booming suburb of Phoenix in the heart of the Arizona desert. This move to a suburban area marked a significant life transition for me as I traded in my blue jeans and cowboy boots for shorts and sneakers.
Overnight, I became a City Boy!
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| Standing on a fence on a ranch in my "Jeans and Boots." Circa summer 1985 |
That same year, I attended my first Franklin Day Planner seminar taught by my famous and successful maternal Uncle—Hyrum W. Smith—an originator of the Franklin Institute's (later Franklin Quest and then FranklinCovey's) world famous day planning system. By the time I entered second grade, I was using my Day Planner on a regular basis and loving every minute of it.
I was officially on my way to becoming the SAL Guy!
In hindsight, it seems clear that this seminar, and other, similar events were providentially placed along the pathway of my young life; and there is no questions they planted important seeds that would eventually grow into my chosen career—and the decades-long, piecemeal process that developed gradually into this Life Leadership textbook.
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| JJ slam dunks at his home in Mesa, Arizona; circa 1988 |
It was in Mesa that I was introduced to two of my life's great loves: SPORTS and competition.
It was the 1987-88 basketball season and Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, and Michael Jordan were kings of the NBA (National Basketball Association). It was at this time that I first discovered I had some coordination, speed, and talent as an athlete. My greatest interest was basketball, and the fact that I shared a name with his "Airness" was not lost on me or my playmates on the playground.
I played basketball seriously until 9th grade, when hoops began to lose its luster for me and I discovered I was actually much better suited to the individual-oriented sports of cross-country and track. In 10th grade I made the difficult decision to stop playing basketball and focus entirely on my running. It turned out to be the right decision, and I went on to become a State Champion—individually and as a team—in cross-country my junior season (1996) and a 5-time Region Champion. Later, in college, I walked on to the cross-country team my second (and last) year where my team finished 2nd in the nation in the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA). I also became an All-American in indoor track and won a half-tuition scholarship, two achievements I take great pride in to this day.
I attended kindergarten in Monticello Utah in 1985-86 before we moved to Mesa, where I then attended first through seventh grades from 1986 to 1993.
Following my seventh grade year, we moved back to Monticello, where I attended Monticello High School from grades 8-11. During the summer months, I worked at a variety of blue collar, manual labor jobs involving lawn and yard care, landscaping, construction, farming, and ranching. These jobs taught me to work hard and endure heat, sweat, fatigue, and other physical discomfort. They also helped me to develop character traits such as endurance, resourcefulness, and stickie-ta-tudy as I discovered the immense satisfaction and fulfillment that followed a job well done.
While in high school, my main chore was to chop, stack, and replenish the wood supply for our home's wood-burning stove. It was also my job to light the fire, keep it continually fed with fuel, and then clean out the accumulated ashes as needed. We had electric heat in our home, which we sometimes used, but my dad was very frugal when it came to our utilities bill, and the wood-burning stove was a far more affordable method of warmth in the winter.
As a teenage Boy Scout and fire lover, I did not complain about these chores, in part because I honored and respected my parents, but mostly because I quite enjoyed chopping wood and building fires!
I answered the ad and got the job. Though the pay was paltry and the circulation low, my new gig was a heady experience for a homely, lanky, teenage lad like me. It was, after all, my first opportunity to ply my trade as a paid, professional writer. For someone who had previously earned money only through lowly manual labor tasks, this was a significant step-up in the world for me.
It was a magnificent experience. I learned a lot, further honed my skills as a writer and interviewer, and had a couple of hundred articles published under my name—an achievement that provided me with a great deal of weekly pride and satisfaction for the 20-or-so months I held the position.
I first began experiencing symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) at age 10. They became increasingly severe at age 12, when I was in sixth grade. Unfortunately, I would not be clinically diagnosed until I was 17 and a junior in high school. The intervening 4-5 years were, in many ways, poignantly hellish—as a later chapter will chronicle in acute detail.
After demonstrating great promise scholastically in my elementary school years, my academic performance began to flounder in junior high and high school. My educational struggles were rooted in math, science, poor study habits, my preference for athletics over academics, and my OCD symptoms. As a result I scored only average grades and test scores in high school. Consequently, I was rejected to the university to which I applied and ended up getting my bachelor's degree at a neighboring State College, where I improved my high school Grade Point Average (GPA) from a 2.9 to a 3.2. Later, in Doctoral school, I raised this to a better-than-perfect 4.049 GPA, thanks to a couple of A-plusses.
From ages eight (8) to 18, I was involved in scouting programs; first as a Cub Scout, and later as a Boy Scout, Varsity Scout, and Explorer. I completed the requirements for my Eagle Scout award just shy of my 18th birthday.
Scouting taught and reinforced many important SAL lessons I was already learning at home, school, and church. It further instilled within me the importance of consciously developing character traits such as honesty, integrity, cheerfulness, cleanliness, courage, duty, discipline, loyalty, consistence, persistence, kindness, formality, obedience to and respect for authority, a strong work ethic, patriotism, reverence, and a positive attitude.
My involvement in Scouting also introduced me to the idea of personal creeds, commitments, and mottos in the forms of the Boy Scout Oath, Law, Motto, and Slogan. Much later on, I would explicitly incorporate similar elements into the Freedom Focused Constitution and Corporate Culture.
Influenced by church, scouting, my immediate and extended family, and my own diligent efforts to obtain knowledge, skills, and experiences, the concepts of positive affirmations, quotes, mantras, and other character-building tools resonated deeply with me from a young age and I often displayed quotes in my bedroom and on the wall above my desk where I could see them on a regular basis.
One of my favorite quotes was one I had seen my older brother, Joe, display above his own desk (we were roommates for a time in Mesa). I quickly copied his action and posted the same quote above my desk as well. The quote was from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and was spoken by the Prince of Aragon (one of Portia's suitors).
Said the Prince:
"I will not choose what many men desire,
Because I will not jump with common spirits
And rank me with the barbarous multitudes." (2)
Knowing nothing (at the time) of the contextual variables of character and plot, I simply perceived the literal philosophical value I interpreted from these timeless lines of the Immortal Bard. Though I was still quite young—nine or 10 years old at the time—I immediately comprehended that my life's desire was not to "jump with common spirits," nor was I interested in maintaining any modicum of the social status quo in my personal or professional vision, mission, and goals.
I yearned for something deeper, grander, richer, and more fulfilling and influential and harbored a firm and undeviating belief and faith in the fact that if I was willing to pay any price that Life required, I would eventually rise to the full measure of my potential and become all I was capable of becoming.
In truth, I have always had a deep desire to be not only the very best that I could be, but, if possible, the very best—period—at whatever I ultimately chose to dedicate my life to. For a time, I believed that something was basketball. Later, it changed to middle distance running. Despite many modest successes in both athletic ventures, I ultimately fell far short of my grand desires of competing in the NBA or the Summer Olympics and would have to try and ply my effort and passion at something else.
That something else was organizing, speaking, teaching, and writing.
Thus, I have spent the last three decades focused on the organization and composition of a literary contribution—the SEVENTH Edition of the SAL Textbook you now hold in your hands. If you, dear reader, find its quality up to your own highest standards, then I have succeeded in my attempt. And if you find the message contained herein to be helpful or inspiring in any way, then I will have succeeded all the more.
In 1997, just prior to the start of my senior year of high school, I moved to Spokane, Washington, where I lived with my oldest brother and his wife for nine months. My primary reason for moving was to pursue greater athletic opportunities. Spokane was one of the most competitive communities in the nation for high school cross-country and track, and I would be competing for a 4A rather than a 2A school. My parent's marriage had also significantly soured by this point in time, so I also sought a more positive home environment.
I graduated from high school the following spring, in early June 1998.
Following high school, I served a voluntary, 2-year mission for my Church in Alberta, Canada.
In between high school and my mission, I worked for a dry wheat farmer, helping him to bring in his harvest during the late summer of 1998. I was also hired to write and direct an original play for a group of elementary school students in my hometown as part of a Federal grant for the arts. My mom—who had extensive amateur theatrical experience—co-directed the play with me. It was called Chivalry Isn't Dead and aimed to both entertain and promote character development, positive life lessons, and respect for women.
In 2001, a few months after returning from my 2-year missionary service, I began my undergraduate studies as a visiting student at Brigham Young University (BYU), where I attended spring and summer terms as part of their visiting student program. I then attended Utah Valley State College (UVSC)—now Utah Valley University (UVU)—just up the road a few miles from BYU, during fall and winter semesters.
Between taking a year off to work after high school and serving a two-year religious mission, I felt very "behind" academically and was determined to catch up as quickly as I could. To accomplish this, I went to school year-round and took heavy course loads. As a result, I was able to complete my 4-year degree in only 2.25 years (27 months). I also accrued the exact amount of credit hours—120—that I needed to graduate, thereby maximizing my efficiency.
As a college student, I was never one to let school get in the way of my education.
"I have never let schooling interfere with my education."
I was not a partier; I have never partaken of an alcoholic beverage, nor have I ever used tobacco or recreational drugs. I did, however, seek out a variety of educational opportunities involving athletics, theater, film, part-time employment, babysitting for—and spending time with—family members, dating, and attending speeches and presentations on campus and throughout the community.
To make time for all of these worthy extracurricular activities, I strategically aimed for "B-grades" rather than "A-grades," knowing how much more time it took to get A's than it took to get B's—and realizing that in my case, my college GPA was far less important than my diploma. I have always strived to approach my life and career with this holistic perspective in mind, whereby I place the greatest value on what will be most beneficial to myself and others in the long-run, rather than prioritizing short-term gains and/or what will merely please others.
My graduation ceremony was held at UVSC in May 2003, just over two years after beginning my first class at BYU in May 2001. The legendary interviewer, Larry King, spoke at my graduation ceremony. I completed my final class in July 2003.
The day after completing my bachelor's degree in July 2003, I fulfilled a personal dream to move to the American South. Enamored by Southern hospitality, warmer climates, economic opportunity, romantic notions, and Civil War history, I went forth to Seek my Fortunes in Atlanta, Georgia. My dad accompanied me on a multi-state, cross-country road trip in my car to get there. Dad then flew back to Utah after we arrived in Atlanta.
I spent six months in Georgia on my first go-round in the South. I lived with my cousins and worked for them part-time in their software business. I also got a part-time job as a retail salesman in a couple of FranklinCovey stores in two area malls.
More importantly, I taught my first seminar on personal leadership—a pro bono gig—at Lassiter High School in suburban Atlanta (Marietta). I had first began theorizing on the subject of personal leadership the previous November (2002).
In early 2004, I returned to Utah and got a job as an assistant to the Director of The Center for the Advancement of Leadership (the CAL) at my alma mater, Utah Valley University. During this same time, I further developed my seminars and facilitated over 60 pro bono trainings to high school and college-aged audiences all over the State of Utah.
In 2005, I named and founded my company—Freedom Focus, LLC—and became a full-time entrepreneur.
I did not spend a lot of time thinking about what I would call my organization; the epiphany just came to me one day and it immediately felt right. It didn't take much logical analysis to discern that the name was not only ideally succinct, but perfectly descriptive of what I aimed to help future readers and students accomplish in their lives, careers, and relationships.
A few years later, I changed the name to the more grammatically and semantically apropos, Freedom Focused, with an -ed. The idea for this minor change came inadvertently from a large Insurance Company with whom I had purchased a business policy as part of my contract training position with Fred Pryor Seminars. One of their agents had mistakenly added the "ed" when they mailed me my policy contract—a rather Providential typo in my biased opinion.
In late December 2005, I moved back to Georgia, where I continued building my fledgling business. On April 6, 2006, the first several hundred copies of the SAL Textbook—I Am Sovereign: The Power of Personal Leadership—arrived at my apartment in Woodstock, Georgia. It was my first comprehensive effort to organize and codify my growing ideas on the subject of Self-Action Leadership—a term that had not yet been coined, nor would it for another six years.
The book you now hold in your hands is six comprehensive iterations removed from that original construct. Though unquestionably the work of an amateur, it was an ambitious and solid start. I will forever be proud of that initial effort, which laid the groundwork for everything that would eventually follow.
Despite any and all progress I made in building my business at that stage of the game, my leap of faith did not pan out as I had hoped and dreamed. Out of money and deeply in debt, I spent 16 months doing whatever work I could find to make ends meet. Odd jobs I picked up included childcare for my cousin's kids, substitute teaching, grounds keeping, and temp work.
Little did I know at the time how tending my little cousins was preparing me to someday serve as a stay-at-home dad!
With a little help from my dad and my church, I managed to stay fed and keep a roof over my head while narrowly skirting eviction, bankruptcy, and the repossession of my car.
In hindsight, I have mixed feelings about my decisions at this stage of my life and career. Part of me is embarrassed—even a little horrified—by the situation in which I found myself mired. But a bigger, more significant part of me is—and always will be—proud that I had the gumption and guts to "go for it."
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| JJ and Lina's engageent photo |
We spent the first six months getting to know each other and going out on our first few dates. We then spent a year dating exclusively—including two breakups—before getting engaged in February 2008. We were married six months after that on August 8, 2008.
In August 2007, I got my first contract training position with Fred Pryor Seminars.
Lina graduated from Georgia Tech with her bachelor's degree in April 2009. Shortly thereafter, we moved to Houston, Texas, where Lina began her career with the oil and gas giant, ExxonMobil. She was fortunate to get a great job when she did—in the midst of the Great Recession—a tribute to her own dogged and disciplined job search and the fact that she had a pending Georgia Tech diploma backing up her resume.
With the economy tanking, my training work with Fred Pryor dried up almost completely. To adjust, I pursued and acquired a position teaching ninth grade English at a local high school in the metro Houston area. The same month—June 2009—I began a doctoral program in education at Fielding Graduate University—a distributed (distance) education program based in Santa Barbara, California.
My first year teaching high school English turned into my last year when my wife received a new position at work that required us to relocate to St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. Lina moved to St. John's in March 2010, when her new job began. I remained in Houston until early June so I could finish the school year. We broke up the three-month separation with fun and romantic meet-in-the-middle trips to Boston, Chicago, and Toronto.
We spent two years in Newfoundland, during which time I worked on my doctoral degree and taught seminars for Fred Pryor in Canada.
In the spring of 2012, we returned to Houston.
In the fall of 2012, I published my second book: Psalms of Life: A Poetry Collection, which contained over a hundred original poems I had written.
In March 2013, I finished my Doctorate in education, we bought our first home in the Spring-Conroe area of North Houston, and Lina gave birth to our first child—a delightful orange-haired boy we named Tucker (Lina's maiden name)
In 2013 I ended my work with Fred Pryor and began contracting with SkillPath Seminars instead.
In March 2015, our second child was born—a beautiful baby girl we named Kara.
In 2016, I stopped training for SkillPath and became a full-time stay-at-home-dad. At this same time I began applying for faculty positions at universities all over the United States and world. I also applied for a couple of high school English teaching jobs in the Houston area. During the 2016-17 school year, I taught an early morning (6:00-6:50 a.m.) "Seminary" (religious instruction) course on the New Testament to a group of a dozen sophomores in high school. It was a volunteer position I accepted by invitation of my local church.
After nine (9) months of applying for teaching positions in higher education, nothing had materialized. I had either been rejected or ignored by 70 different schools for a hundred different positions. The two interviews I got at local high schools were also a bust. At this point in time, I decided to terminate my search and focus on parenting and writing.
Over the course of the next three years, the original business vision I had held for Freedom Focused developed more of an academic flavor. Part of this evolution arose from opportunities I received to publish five articles in peer reviewed academic journals. Four of these articles introduced: the SAL Theory (3), the SAL Model (4), SAL as a Pedagogy of Personal Leadership (5), and SAL as an Ideaologically-Balanced Character Education Construct (6). The fifth paper examined the impact of religion and spirituality on the lives and careers of my uncle, Hyrum W. Smith and Stephen R. Covey—co-founders of FranklinCovey Company. (7)
About this same time I turned 40 years old.
The following year, in March 2020—right as the COVID-19 Pandemic was exploding across the globe— we moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico with Lina's job. It was in Carlsbad that I began blogging more consistently—publishing a new article every week on Wednesday morning at 6:30 a.m.
Later that year, Lina received a job offer with a different company—NextEra Energy—in Juno Beach, Florida. Lina was born and raised and South Florida and we shared a mutual desire to move to the Sunshine State if and/or when an opportunity presented itself.
As much as we enjoyed our time in Georgia, Texas, Newfoundland, and New Mexico, it was a dream come true for our family to become Floridians!
The past six years I have been in the thick of raising my kids. On the side, I continued my writing, blogging, and church service. Beginning in September 2023, I began serially publishing the SEVENTH Edition of the SAL Life Leadership textbook on my blog in preparation for the hard copy version you now hold in your hands. It took me approximately two-and-a-half years to complete this mammoth blogging project, and the balance of 2026 was spent prepping the hard copy version for publication.
In August 2023, my youngest child began kindergarten. For the first time in my parenting career, all three of my children were in school full-time. This opened up my schedule to tackle a couple of IRONMAN Triathlons in 2024, including a full 140.6-mile event, which had become a "Bucket List" item for me. I had already completed 13 marathons, many half marathons, and scores of other races and relays, and I felt an itch to complete what I viewed as the "Granddaddy" of endurance feats. After crossing the finish line in just under 15 hours, I officially "retired" from racing, which I had been doing since age six—when I ran my first 5K road race.
In 2029—a couple of years after the publication of this, the SEVENTH Edition of the SAL textbook—I will turn fifty (50).
Here is a brief recap of the first half-century of my life...
- As a transient, I have moved 48 times to 45 different addresses in seven (7) U.S. States, and two (2) Canadian Provinces in five (5) different time zones across North America.
- As a traveler, I have visited all 50 U.S. States, nine (9) Counties of Great Britain, eight (8) Provinces of Canada, and nine (9) foreign countries.
- As a student, I have attended 10 different schools and had 37 different jobs (many temporary) in a dozen different industries. Thirty-one (31) of these positions were wage-earning. Five (5) of them were entrepreneurial
- As an athlete, I have completed 13 marathons, dozens of half marathons, one full IRONMAN (140.6-mile) triathlon, two half IRONMAN (70.6-mile) triathlons, countless other races and relays, and spent thousands of additional hours playing basketball, football, and a variety of other sports.
- As a journaler I have penned many thousands of pages in personal diaries and letters.
- As a poet I have written over a hundred original poems and published them in a book entitled: Psalms of Life: A Poetry Collection.
- As a writer I have published seven (7) books, over 500 blog articles, and hundreds of additional articles in newspapers, academic journals, and other periodicals.
- As a public speaker, I have addressed over 20,000 people in over 700 audiences throughout the United States, Great Britain, and Canada.
- As a teacher I have taught high school, coached young athletes, and instructed on countless occasions in religious and spiritual settings.
- As a thespian I have written and directed a play and performed in multiple theatrical and film productions.
- As a church-goer, I have spent tens of thousands of hours in study, worship, service, leadership, and teaching roles.
- As a civilian, I earned the Eagle Scout award and spent many hours in volunteer service in my community.
- As a parent, I have fathered three children and raised them as a stay-at-home dad.
Collectively, this diverse and eclectic array of experiences have added a cornucopia of texture and richness to my education, career, and life.
I do not share this "Life Resume" to impress you, but to impress upon you the nature and scope of my life's experiences and achievements to date as a means of establishing credibility for all that has come before—and all that will yet come in the balance of this comprehensive Life Leadership textbook.
Like other people, including YOU, my life has been a tale of triumph and trial, sorrow and success. I've had relatively equal measures of anticipation and anxiety, achievement and failure, and ecstasy and agony. Despite the many and deep trials I've faced, my life has been richly blessed in the aggregate of all my experiences. I was born into a loving family that resided in unusually peaceful and prosperous parts of the world. While my early life was not marked by financial abundance, I never wanted for any of life's necessities and even enjoyed a measure of luxury relative to the rest of the world.
While I did not become financially wealthy until later in life, I have always considered myself to be rich in relationships, ambition, education, faith, opportunities, memories, conscience, and most importantly, an intrapersonal will to self-manage and self-lead my own life to great heights.
Working in conjunction and harmony with Serendipity, I credit this will to be a self-action leader as the single most important variable in my life's unusually rich, textured, and successful journey of experiences.
While OCD and other life challenges have tested me to my core, these riches served as a bulwark—yea, even as an indomitable defense—against terminal failure and permanent defeat. My blessings have stood to soften my heart and keep hope alive in the midst of my life's many refining fires.
It is my sincere hope that sharing my life's story will further light a fire underneath YOU and inspire you to make the most out of your life. As you aim to do so, remember that you are not competing against me any more than I am competing against you. I have unique skills and strengths that you may not. And you undoubtedly have unique strengths and skills that I do not.
In the end, life is not an interpersonal competition.
It is an intrapersonal opportunity for YOU to try your best and make the most of the time you have to grow and progress as a self-action leader.
May you truly make yours count for something and someone.
What are five different benefits you might derive from producing a written record and autoethnography (or analysis) of your own life's journey?
—Dr. JJ
Author's Note: This is the 482nd Blog Post Published by Freedom Focused LLC since November 2013 and the 271st consecutive weekly blog published since August 31, 2020.
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