I do it for me. | Always start at the beginning.

I don't like talking about my father.  I loved him as much as I have loved any man.  To speak of him feels like a betrayal.  I prefer to keep him in my heart where I can best protect his memory.  However, I have also learned to share.  In overprotecting things you extinguish life.  Life is messy.  Vulnerability is life.  My father may or may not have understood my vision.  My artistic and writing vision is only now taking form almost as a function of him having passed on about 9 season ago - two years.  Regardless, he believed in me.  That has provided its own protection of my dreams across time. 

Many stories can be attributed to my father.  Most are quite funny.  His was a larger than life character.  My father worked for FDIC in Knoxville, TN in a final chapter in his professional work life.  He came to be known as the Mad Dog on his team.  They were, I believe, bank examiners.  Prior he had been a BofA bank auditor when such as position meant something back in the 60's across California and Latin American.  So I am told.  His team at FDIC was mostly White guys from around East Tennessee.  On some occasion he was performing a clerical procedural to "maintain his records".  He kept meticulous records and files in order to trace his steps need be.  He was told by a secretary - when we people used the term secretary - that it wasn't necessary to make those copies or whatever the procedure was.  He soon could be heard shouting across the FDIC floor of that office building in downtown Knoxville: "I do it for me."  He was being the Mad Dog and his team started to howl and laugh as he shouted "I do it for me."

My father faced his own profound pressures - racial, financial, gender, and more.  He was a biracial man before the term existed.  He was investigated by his own employer when he bought a brand new 1962 Corvette early in his career.  He lived in San Francisco during the Kramer vs. Kramer era.  He adapted to change as best he could.  He was there for me in my worst era 30 years later in Tampa.  As I have healed and rebuilt myself over and over and over, my perspective has increasingly gone in the direction of "I do it for me".  Rick Rubin gives a similar piece of advice - literally saying the same phrase "I do it for me" on a YouTube post.  I notice these reverberations and they help me.