I just got back from having a great Thanksgiving dinner with my family. I got to visit with my parents, see 2 of my cousins, my brother, grandmother, aunt, great aunt and others. What a great time, the 10 mile drive home was very long but as I pulled in the driveway with the lights shining on my house I had about 60,000 thoughts flash in my mind. It was really odd as past experiences that I have never even thought about popped into my mind. For the longest time now I have struggled with the feeling that good enough is not enough, While I don’t always publicly do everything, in fact my public audience sees, hears or knows only a very small percentage of my life. My mind however is always looking for that next best thing bigger, better shinier, you get the idea. Back to the point though as I pulled in the driveway and had these thoughts flash in my mind of living in a trailer, driving a 30 year old car because its all I could afford. Back then I was happy just waking up and being me. Now fast forward to today where I own my home, drive nice cars, Do just about everything you see out of my home office, even have a dog and a white picket fence but it never seems like enough but way?
I wish I had an answer but I honestly don’t
Now transitioning to today’s life where I am always looking for what I can do to grow my plans, better promote the community, take a bigger part of conservation and education. Its like a crazy dream that never ends but the community as a whole is not much different. I can remember back in the day when King Snakes were the thing. Now a ton of Retic morphs are being produced, just about 1 in every 40 homes has an Alligator in it or at least that’s what the news wants us to think. When I first got into the hobby 20 years ago did I ever imagine that we would have a national organisation defending our love for keeping reptiles? Hell no is the answer for that.
Honestly I think a good partial solution for today’s problems is to back up the truck a little bit. Stop worrying about that next morph, stop trying to be cool for Bruce down the road by bringing home an Alligator, Stop raping our hobby for everything its worth and start fighting to at the very least keep what we have now. Our community has made people a TON of money and I would love to see some of that being returned via donations to USARK or any kind or public relations program that anyone can manage.
My eyes to the problem at hand have been partially closed for some time now and that is somewhat embarrassing to say as a person that is suppose to be informing and educating others. After a lot of conversation with many people and just recently with Chris M Law and John F Taylor it’s like an explosion in my head, we did this, we screwed up big time. I can just about bet that everyone of us at some point had an opportunity to step up when we saw something we didn’t agree with but we kept quiet for one reason or another. I myself have seen a ton of shady stuff and kept quiet mostly for fear that everything I worked so hard for would be crushed if I called out the wrong person on what they were doing. You see what I have made is my baby, a lot of blood sweat and tears have gone into it and I must protect is when reasonably necessary but that my friends has been my big screw up. Several times I should have stepped up rather than ignore something. This way of looking at this is over my friends, From this day forward I am going to do my thing my way and I can say right now not everyone will like and or agree with it, in the end though I will be able to sleep at night knowing I am at least doing something. I challenge anyone who might not agree with me to share what you are doing. I equally challenge everyone to do at least something.
That being said I am very excited but also a little scared to say the programming that I produce it going to be taking several turns in the future. I have done and for the foreseeable future will continue to do the news but starting immediately I will start producing content geared towards the hobbyist as well as conservation and any other related topic I can come up with. I will NO longer curse Animal Planet for programming making us look bad when I have the capability to produce programming to make us look good, That’s right From here on out rather than spending my time pointing fingers I am going to be spending my time doing it better.
As I said I am in a way scared for clear reasons, this is clearly a huge goal that will be not only expensive but time consuming to do and I am sure it will try every last nerve I have in my body but the one thing I have on everyone ells is I am not scared to work until my eyes bleed for what I believe in. Not only that I have an awesome audience already who I am sure will take up arms by my side to work for a better future not only for our community but for our planet as a whole. Now lets light that fire under our ass and get it done.