I’ve been blogging in one form or another for five years now – the 27th of May marked the actual anniversary of the blog post that “started it all” over at “Life in the Question Marks”.

In that five years, I’ve done a bit of experimenting, writing and “finding my voice” as it were. My “first love”, LITQM is still active – a term I use loosely –  as I work to compile my “best” writings, the “Grilling Sacred Cows” series, into an e-book format. Besides that, I haven’t had a theological/spiritual post on there in quite some time. It’ll get hits and random views on the blog; oddly, all through April and into May recently I was getting a bunch of notifications for email subscribers, all really weird email addresses from Outlook, spam of some kind more than likely.

I’m still working on the “Sam” fictional series over at LITQM, birthed from my experiences “unplugging” from what I call the “matrix” of the institutional church. All the links are currently set to private as I mess around and edit them, getting them reading for an e-book as well. Though my life has taken different turns spiritually / theologically / existentially, I still think I have a few things to say. As Rocky says, there’s “stuff in the basement.” As of right now, though, I don’t feel a need to pull it out from the basement.

Four months to the day after I started LITQM, I created another blog to satisfy the itch of writing out another fictional idea I had going at the time, Endure . To be brutal, it was really just a mental masturbatory post-government-collapse piece of work. It was fun while it lasted, but it grew tiresome after about a year of trying to create the fictional world I was writing about. I ran out of ideas and really the care to tie it all together. Lesson learned there was that I really should have a good outline of where I’m taking the story.

And then came this blog, at first it went under the name “Strong 4 Family” – which should explain the url – and my first post was July 23, 2014. Four years ago, today. Happy Anniversary, Dear Readers! Starting out, my intention was to show people that it was possible to have a full time “sedentary” job, be married, have some kids (or a small nation state of them) and still be active. I’ve had a lot of fun with this blog, and as those precious few who’ve been dedicated readers have seen the transition into what became “In Pursuit of Mastery”.

It may not be masterfully done, but I’ve been writing in one form or another since I moved out West to Idaho some 23 years ago at the “wise” age of 15. I’ve had fun writing and learning and I’ve no intention to stop. If anything, I write for myself as much as I write for someone to read it. When it comes to writing, to use an absolutely terrible phrase, “I’m still finding myself.”

God I hate that phrase with a passion… finding myself... I keep looking back at it, wanting to change it… glaring dagger eyes and middle fingers at it. It takes so much self control and discipline to keep my eyes from rolling permanently up into my skull when I hear someone utter those words.

Ok, deep breath, moving on.

Maybe what I’m trying to say here is that I haven’t fully discovered what I want to I bring to the world. I see glimpses of it, which is why I keep writing. Those glimpses are like course markers, or sometimes course corrections, spurring me on a little further.

So, “Just Tom”… yeah, things are slowly changing, again.

Basically, I feel like I’ve imposed some limitations on myself with the blog in it’s current form and I don’t want to be limited…or have three blogs all going at once. This isn’t going to turn into a Life in the Question Marks 2.0 or Endure 2.0, or anything like that. For the most part, my passion in writing lately has been directed towards my journey learning Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in the “BJJ White Belt” series I’ve been doing. I still enjoy fictional writing and have done a few flash fiction pieces on this blog as the muse willed.

So, basically, it’s going to be just me – writing about whatever, whenever. It could be observations of a father rearing his children. Or it could be a short fictional piece inspired by something I witnessed or experienced. Or it could be reflections of my journey learning BJJ. Okay, it will definitely have BJJ articles. But overall, it’s just me. My pursuit of Life and Mastery.

Just Tom.

**Hey there! First, I want to express my thanks to you for reading this post. If you find value in what I’m writing or you know someone who would, the biggest compliment I can receive is for you to share this post far and wide: Instagram, Facebook, SnapChat or even E-mail. While you’re at it, leave a comment or two, I’d love to hear your thoughts! Thanks again!**