Welcome to my blog “My Life’s Reflections.”  I am excited and scared for I am about to embark upon a journey to reach my next important goal.  This goal is to be self-caring and developing my personal potentials.   More on this will be explained later in this blog.

Let me introduce myself.   I was born in the 1960’s in rural New York State.    I was the youngest child in a family with an older brother and sister.  My father worked as a white-collar professional in a large corporation, and my mother was a housewife.  It was a traditional middle-class family.  Like what happens to an average of half of such families, my parents divorced.   I was just 7 years old.  This become a moment that everything before the divorced was blocked out of my memory.  I remember nothing, not the arguments, the crying and the drama.  It is just blank.  I can only listen to my older sister’s stories about the divorce and family events.  Speaking of my sister after the divorce she ran away from home and disappeared for over a year until my father was able to track her down and bring her back.

My memories is as a child of being raised by a single mother who worked during the day and searched for a future husband in the evening.  I remember spending most of my time riding my bike in the countryside, reading adventure and fantasy books like Lord of Rings and day dreaming.  This is when I developed the habit of talking to myself.   I had bouts stuttering, migraines headaches and high fevers before I turned sixteen. I had a special education that helped me manage my stuttering.   I saw multiple doctors on these medical issues, but none made much of a difference to my conditions.  Over time, as I became physically and mentally stronger, I eventually overcame these conditions.   I joined the swim and track high school teams.    I was never a top or competitive athletic, but I learned about building endurance, strength training, and having regular workout routine. 

Academically I began to excel.  I had very few friends and spent most of my time study.  As I did better academically the more, I wanted to study harder and it was more of curiosity of the world around me.  I was fortunate to have inspiring teachers who cared about the development of their students. I began to look for greater challenges.  I joined the public speaking and theater clubs.  I ask my father to support me to transfer out of the public school to the best private school.  I became aware that I needed to learn more and do better in my studies if I want to get where I was going.  At that point, I did not know where I wanted to be—it just wasn’t where I was right then.   I also ask for his support to become an exchange student.  I just turned sixteen, I was asked by the exchange student organization where I wanted to go.  I told them that I want to go as far away as possible to the strangest and most alien place such as the moon or Mars.  They responded that they had such a place, it was Japan.  In 1980 Japan was mostly unknown and unfamiliar to most Americans.  The war with Japan ended 35 years ago, America knew of the inexpensive products build in Japan and their Godzilla movies.  Two years after my experience as an exchange student in Japan, I later was an exchange student in Germany.  I will save these events for another article.  My academic journey latter had me study and obtain undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University and later in life I attend Harvard Business School for an executive certificate in General Management.  All life changing and helping me become a stronger and more curious person.  I love to learn and believe in being a lifelong student.  I’ve lost this habit in recent years and want to restart learning again.  I will conclude my introduction here and will revisit this and make edits and update since I am not happy that it does not captures the full extent of impact the early years of life to my life’s journey and who I am today and who I want to become.  This will be an iterative process.

Let me also introduce the abstract of this blog and the reason for me writing it. There are many reasons.  Let me start with the most important reason.  I feel lost and not reaching the potential that I have.  I want to take inventory and renew myself into someone that I am proud about, and I want to become the person, the man, who have achieved his true potential. I am wanting to be me.  I want to be in love with myself and respect myself because I am the best me possible.  I recognize that I have not yet fully reached my potential and have spent considerable time reflecting and searching for direction.  Another reason writing this journey it to produce something tangible that is important and demonstrates that I can be better.  Do this for me.  If someone it is reading this blog, I hope that they can understanding themselves better and be motivated to do more with the precious life we have left.