So you're a poet, a writer, former military, wildlife enthusiast. I guess you could say.

Why don't we start a little bit with your military career, kind of what drew you to joining the service and how long were you in?

When did you join? Why don't we start there? Okay, sure. So I enlisted September 5th of 2001 as a 13

Mike, which is multiple-on rocket specialists, thinking that, you know, the old in the Army now, Polly short thing,

you know, one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer,

what could possibly go wrong?

And the literal next week, 9-11 happened.

Wow.

And found myself having college,

it's going to be a little bit more expensive than I initially planned.

But I joined the North Carolina Army National Guard for, again, field artillery.

And I grew up kind of idolizing an uncle of mine that was an officer in the 82nd Airborne.

And so I always looked up to him.

And then I had a buddy in high school that I'd already enrolled in college and was,

I had classes scheduled.

And that first week of September, I don't know if something happened, I went and saw

him graduate from basic training.

And I was like, man, if that dummy can do this, I can surely do it.

And National Guard seemed like a pretty easy option to serve

and also,

you know,

kind of get college square away

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