blogwithvalor

The title may be cheesy and overused but it’s my first post. We’ll all get over it.

My name is Valor, and I am starting a blog as a way to write more consistently. I am an engineer by trade but have always loved writing. It’s just hard to get myself seated and putting pen to paper. Maybe having a place that records my thoughts, ideas, short stories, and general going-ons will encourage me to sit down and focus.

I love reading, watching, listening, and telling stories. My dad’s artistry and storytelling inspired a lot of this creativity in me. He was the type of parent that would sit at my brother’s and my bedside (when we used to share a room) and tell us a story. On dark nights, he would scare my siblings and I around the fireplace with a spooky tale. Knowing it or not, he was sowing the seeds of creativity.

Sometime around 2nd or 3rd grade I remember getting an assignment to write a story and make a drawing to go with it. It could be anything. So, what did I do? I wrote a story about a giant Godzilla-like monster that had skin only on its head. Its arms, legs, tail, and torso were just bones. It wasn’t a great story, but the monster did destroy some things, feel bad, and make amends for it somehow. It was a story with a little moral in it. Good job little me. However, the thing that stuck out to me was my classmates talking with me about it afterwards. They started asking me questions about the monster and saying what they thought the monster would do in other scenarios. They were expanding the story. To me, everyone telling a story together was magical.

As I got older, I continued to tell stories through filmmaking and acting. Collaboration in those mediums was one of my favorite parts of storytelling. Multiple people would get together and create a play or short film. Individually, we all had small parts but together we made something much bigger. It’s what I focused a lot of time on throughout high school. I kept this love of storytelling all the way into community college. Unfortunately, that’s where the real world started to hit.

I was taking classes in filmmaking and creative writing but began seeing that making a living at this was a very steep uphill climb. I started losing hope and interest. My writing classes started feeling like writing to appease the instructors. My main group of filmmaking buddies started splitting and there were too many new people I met that were determined to work alone or too overbearing. As my hope faded, so did my desire to go to school. So, I dropped out.

Afterwards, it was a bit of a dark time for me. No direction, lots of friends/acquaintances, and I had just started living on my own. So, every day was a party, or an attempt to not dwell on what I didn’t have anymore. After a while, my parents definitely noticed my lack of calls. They’ve always been supportive of whatever I wanted to do. But no matter what it was, my mom always said to get a degree first. It didn’t matter what in. “A degree was something no one can take away from you”, she would always say. A proverbial lifesaver when everything goes sideways. But my drive for school was shot and I didn’t know what I wanted to do anymore.

In an attempt to help me find something inspiring, my dad got me an introductory flight lesson as a birthday present. We would travel to the Philippines to see my mom’s family every few years when I was growing up and those flights always intrigued me. I imagine I said something as a kid that my parents noted and that’s what inspired the gift. On my first flight, that feel of pushing the throttle all the way forward and pulling back on the yoke was enough to get me hooked. As the wheels came off the ground, I found a new magic. It was an hour-long flight, but it felt like only 5 minutes. It wasn’t enough. I wanted to go back up right away. I wanted to live in the clouds. Luckily, I’d been working since I was 16 and had saved enough by 21 to afford the lessons. My dad may have inspired my imagination, but my mom taught me work ethic.

Eventually, I got my private pilot license and was working on my instrument rating when I started dating my now wife… again. We’d dated in high school and even went to prom together. But college pulled us apart. When we started dating seriously the second time, I realized I wanted a job that would let me come home to her every day. If I wasn’t going to fly planes anymore, I was going to build them. That’s when I decided to become an engineer.

From that point on I had every semester planned out. I spent 3 more semesters in community college finishing my associate degree and then transferred to San Diego State University. I packed every semester with as many classes as allowed to get in and out as fast as I could. Even with 20+ units a semester, it took me 3 years. That’s the problem with changing your degree so many times. I had a lot of classes that didn’t go towards my new degree. But community college is the best/cheapest place to do just that. I can’t recommend this route enough to kids coming out of high school.

In 2014, I graduated with honors with a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering. Since then, I’ve worked in the field of engineering making planes (big and small), submarines, satellite equipment, and even Olympic racing wheelchairs. But after all these years, something is still missing. It’s something that’s been slowly eating at me, and I’ve pushed it deeper and deeper into my subconscious. Engineering can be creative, but it’s not the same.

That’s what brings us to the present. I want to tell stories again. Writing is the best place to start. I’ve already been writing occasionally at home and even wrote an in-world short story for a good friend of mine that has his own collection of novels and short stories. You can read his work and my short by searching ‘the Crystalline Mythos’. But I need a place to put my own work. I don’t expect people to be clamoring for what I have to write, but I want a public place to put it. It feels like the public part will light a small fire under me to do it more consistently.

Maybe, maybe not.

I’ll definitely be posting short stories here. But I may also start writing reviews on books, TV shows, or movies. Probably won’t see too many diary/journal entries. However, some personal engineering projects will probably be laid out here. Maybe even some news style articles on things I’m interested in. Not sure how consistent I’ll be but my wife has already sent me some 30-day writing challenges and I think that’s a great idea. What’s the best way to get good at something, practice!

Anyways, that’s a bit about me and why this blog exists. I don’t know how this should end. So, I’ll end this how I used to end comments in message boards back when I was in high school and still using AOL.

Keep on keepin’ on!