A Few Updates

 well, this is exciting. I've finally committed to Drama Adjacent as a thing, bought the URL and everything. Just not sure about telling anyone about it just yet. I have a lot of things I want to set up. I still have the dream of doing 30PercentNET as a portal to the world of artists, musicians and writers I know. I also need to work on my portfolio site, and a bunch of other annoying little details I want to fill in. But for right now, I felt like I should do a bit of an introduction, so if you will excuse me, here it goes...

Welcome to my dreaming!

I'm jkhinzman, hopefully you know that already. I should give you a tiny bit of history on why that matters to anybody but me. In many ways, I have had a wildly charmed life. I have been lucky enough to have a family that supports me (in more ways than one), friends who have been amazing over the years, and some friends who have done some cool stuff themselves. I've traveled a bit, though not as much as I would like. I make music under a few names, art that I like to call grafix, and I like to think the presentations I give are a little better than average. I've been on disability since I was twenty-one (more on that in a bit) which means my work life has been sporadic, though I am quite proud of where I actually have worked and finally, I am starting what I hope will become a really nice set of websites for others to interact with.

So where to start?

I should start at the beginning, because that's a very good place to start. Ha! See what I did there?

 Ok, I was born just outside my nation's capital. I had a decent upbringing. I can't say I ever went without food  or anything...But my parents got divorced when I was seven, and my dad married a millionaire while my mom went to medical school. So dad had lots of great toys, mom had less. Just less of everything. I started showing signs of mental illness pretty early on, and ended in special day treatment programs/alternative schools for the majority of high school. I did much better there, so it wasn't all bad. I did so well I eventually became valedictorian of all the alternative schools in my county.

After high school I moved away shortly after my son was born and adopted. I went as far away as I could, all the way to Columbus, Ohio. This was a move a long time coming as my baby-momma was from Columbus. I had met her at a Nine Inch Nails show. It was a good show. I liked Columbus a lot, I couldn't really say why, but I did enjoy not being near my family and I started dating a girl fairly shortly after I got there. She was an odd duck, really helpful in some ways, and utterly awful in others. But she encouraged me to start a fanzine, which eventually became a catalog, which led to us interviewing Pigface and making friends with a lot of the rock stars we loved from Chicago and eventually landed me a job as a database wrangler for a small indie label I loved. The problem being that the internet and Chicago led to my marriage falling apart and me moving back to Ohio.

Ohio didn't last long and I moved back to Maryland and eventually moving in with my Sunday school teachers which led me back to Ohio a year or two later.  More dating that eventually fell apart until finally my family led a crack team of commandos (actually my mother and brother) to come and rescue me and I was back in Maryland.

One night while in my lovely apartment through the magic of Facebook, I got re-united with a girl that I had a date with in high school, at the very end. So we started dating. We had been dating for a few months when she told me she had to start working again because it was summer, and either I was going to have to move in with her at her house near the beach or we would have to break up. Leaving me to answer the eternal question so many of us have faced..."Stay in a city I have never enjoyed and be friendless or move to a location I have loved my whole life and be a beach bum?" So I moved. What I didn't realize was that this would become a horribly abusive relationship that would scar me for life. I absolutely loved her family, her niece and nephew would make me re-evaluate my total apathy toward small children and living at the beach was just as awesome as I had hoped. But a series of mistakes would unravel the relationship and make us both fight to see who could be the most petty and crazy. It ended rather badly, and when a long time friend told me "you need a home and I need someone to watch my dog" I started rethinking my lot in life.

Unfortunately, before I could leave I had a bad day that ended horribly. It led to me in a coma for four days with kidney failure, pneumonia, a fever of 106 degrees for two days, and an infection that seemed to just go away. I got better. Much better than I was supposed to, but after a year of getting healthier I left the abusive relationship and moved in with my friend who needed a dog sitter.

Life With Laurie

Moving back to Maryland was very different this time. Instead of spending most of my time with my family, I tried to do things on my own. I leaned on Laurie a lot, but I tried to be as independent as I could. When I couldn't get all the mental health help that I wanted, I started going to NAMI meetings again. Almost immediately I was asked to become a facilitator for the meetings. During the interview it was suggested that I might want to talk to others about my mental health journey.

So I started volunteering. A Lot.

I ended up facilitating the young adults group for NAMI until covid happened and we went virtual. Then I was co-facilitator for a very successful Monday night group. We had big numbers of participants, a waiting list to get in and a very tight-knit close community we were building. 

While I was doing the facilitating, I was also doing a lot of presentations for In Our Own Voices; a presentation to people who were in mental hospitals about what to expect from recovery. I was also doing Crisis Intervention Training, or CIT, for my county and then also for the 3 southern most counties in my state. The Southern one I really enjoyed because they would reimburse me for staying in a hotel in a truly lovely area. Then I get up in the morning and have a leisurely stroll and then give my presentation. I love doing those. I also felt really good that both of these presentations became regular gigs. Something I could count on doing three to five times a year for the next few years. 

Somewhere shortly after starting all of this and before covid, I was asked to speak at my states annual NAMI conference. That was a really big honor and a little scary, but I am soooooo glad I did it.

Meanwhile me and Laurie just kept plugging away at trying to be adults. Doing our best to pay the bills and keep our mega-home tidy. It was also really fantastic to settle into a living situation with someone who I began to think of as my sister. After all, she had been my friend as long as I could remember (even longer than that, truthfully) and was just a fantastic human being. As far as I know everybody loved Laurie, she was just that great of a human being. She fit in anywhere, always had something to say and our table talks were epic! Hours of just sitting at the kitchen table, just chatting about anything and everything. Nothing was out of bounds, and it was always a true conversation; both of us actually listening to each other.

But like every bowl of ice cream, there was an inevitable ending.

Laurie-Less

In June of 2021, Laurie succumbed to a very stupid cancer. It didn't need to be that way, but it was. She ignored too many warning signs, and by the time she was fully aware of it, it was too late. So I lost my sister, my best friend and my home, all in one swell foop.

I moved to a hotel for a short bit (love hotels; but much like Washington DC they are a wonderful place to visit, but you don't want to live there), then moved in with a roommate, which it very much seemed like as soon as I got settled, she gave me sixty days notice. Then I ended up where I am now. The second floor of a high rise I have wanted to live in literally as long as I can remember. I live three or four blocks from my first house. It's kind of cool to me.

I'm trying to pick up the pieces of a fully shattered life. I have things I still want to do. But when I decided to go to Ohio to celebrate my forty-ninth birthday before really digging in and trying to get my life together, I ended up having a heart attack. Kind of resetting the clock on my "Build a foundation with my body and mind so I can get on with the growth plans that I have". So here we are again, only this time it's business. 

And that is a quick introduction to me. If you have comments, feel free to leave them. If you have questions, please ask. I would really like to know if anyone is reading this; Not just by looking at analytics, but by starting a conversation. This is not the first blog I have started by any means, but hopefully it can keep my attention long enough for me to do what I really want to do.