Memoir

/ˈmemˌwär/ noun. a record of events written by a person having intimate knowledge of them and based on personal observation. Usually memoirs. an account of one's personal life and experiences; autobiography. the published record of the proceedings of a group or organization, as of a learned society.

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For those who missed the inaugural post explaining what the Memoir Monday initiative is all about you can find it here.

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This week’s Memoir Monday question:

What’s a small decision you made in your life that ended up having a big impact on your life?

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My answer:

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There are two decisions that changed my life in the most magnificent way and both are interrelated, let me explain. Around 2002 an idea for a book came to me. It was a big, complex story with vivid characters, with a massive plot-twist at the end. At that point I had been writing non-fiction articles, poetry, and short stories for a decade but never anything close to the length of a novel.

The more I thought about the plot of this science fiction story, the more excited I became. I started jotting down notes and ideas in a journal but the thought of writing something as large and complex as a novel was so daunting I didn’t really know where to begin. So I became paralyzed and the book was never started.

Life moved on, days turned into weeks, weeks turned into years. Still, this sci-fi story occasionally haunted me almost as if it was begging to be born. I would sometimes forget about it for months at a time but then the thought of the story would always circle back.

I was hired for a claims examiner position at the insurance company I was working for in 2009. After a year or so it turned into the most stressful job I’ve ever had. It was just awful, the work of four people were heaped on each of us and we were all expected to get it done no matter what, even if it meant working ten hour days six, and sometimes seven, days a week. Life became monotonous and revolved around nothing but work and it continued like that for a few years. Utterly exhausted, I felt like a vital part of me was slipping away.

I think it was like this for a lot of us who worked there. There were some of my co-workers who developed drinking problems, a fair amount suffered from failed marriages, one employee was caught throwing work files away in a desperate attempt to lessen their workload, and another had a nervous breakdown in the office. I started having trouble sleeping, as soon as my head hit the pillow worries about the work I needed to get done the next day began. Up to that point I had always considered myself able to handle stress well and managed to maintain a good work/life balance. This situation snuck up on me and by the time I realized how bad it was it felt like it was too late. I became like a robot who could focus on nothing but whittling down my stacks of work on my desk but none of us could keep up. After a few months of too little sleep, chronic anxiety crept in and I began to feel like I was losing all hope of my life ever getting better. I started having a drink or two more than I should at night as a temporary escape.

Around 2011 that old sci-fi story idea of mine popped back into my head. By this point the job was beyond awful and to top it off I got the news that someone was suing the company I worked for and I was being deposed in a lawsuit. In addition to keeping up with the monstrous workload I had to attend coaching sessions with company attorneys to prepare me for the upcoming deposition. This process lasted a few months, the deposition came and went in a whirlwind of chaos, and everything turned out fine in regard to the lawsuit in the end.

Disgusted and thoroughly emotionally and physically exhausted at that point, I started taking vacation days to work on my novel as an attempt to escape that job. I have no doubt these temporary breaks and the act of writing saved itself my life, I really believe that. Since I was working towards something I believed in and seeing progress, my attitude improved greatly and I started feeling hopeful again. I began sleeping a little better. After about six months of writing at night, the occasional vacation day, and on weekends the first draft of the book was done. It was such a feeling of accomplishment. Around that same time I interviewed for a new job in the company, which was actually the old position I held before I accepted the hellish one, and was rehired. The new-old was significantly less pay but life became immediately better and I finally self published my first novel, Alarm Clock Dawn, on Amazon in 2013. I had never been more excited about anything in my life up to that point.

Sales of the novel were brisk at first but then leveled out after a few months. Life marched on and my attention was drawn in a million other directions. In the spring of 2016 I began hearing a buzz in a motivational group I was part of on Facebook (called Choose Yourself) about a new social media platform called Steemit. It was built on something called a blockchain and paid content creators in cryptocurrency. I had no idea what blockchain or cryptocurrency was but I signed up to join. Unfortunately there was a technical glitch with the Steemit onboarding process that wouldn’t allow me to open my account. After a few failed attempts I gave up, a few more weeks went by.

All of a sudden, the thought of joining Steemit began to nag at me on a regular basis, in the same way the novel did. On July 5th I sent an email to Steemit’s customer support and they unlocked my account.

I published my very first blog post that day.

After a few weeks my blog started gaining traction on Steemit. Luckily for me, I had this voluminous backlog of stories, articles and poetry from my previous twenty years of writing. I just kept posting from this storehouse of material and interacting with, and supporting others on the platform.

I was astonished when, after a few weeks, my posts started occasionally earning more than I made in an entire day at my corporate job. Then, on the advice of a couple of mentors who I’ll forever be grateful to, I started releasing Alarm Clock Dawn in installments every day in the morning as well as a poem at night. It went on like this for the remainder of that summer into autumn. Thanks to the decades of work I had already put in I had more than enough material to use.

In November of 2016 my wife and I were able to make our first trip to Amsterdam for Steemit's inaugural conference (SteemFest) and I read a portion of Alarm Clock Dawn on stage at the Tobacco Theater. During that conference I shared the same stage with author Neil Strauss, something I never would have dreamed of before. This experience in Amsterdam was one of the most memorable of my life.

It was as though all of those previously locked doors I had been knocking on for over twenty years finally flung open, with this came a flood of opportunities. I learned more about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies through the people I met on Steemit. Eventually I was able to free myself from the shackles of debt, started to invest in myself, began traveling internationally, met interesting people from all over the world, and quit my day job to start writing full time in the autumn of 2017.

None of this would have been possible if I hadn’t: 1.) finished Alarm Clock Dawn in 2013; and 2.) sent that email to Steemit customer support to unlock my account on the fifth of July, 2016.

Still, all these years later, I shudder to think about how different my life would have been if I hadn’t finished the novel and sent that email. Neither the novel or the blogging one could have achieved the same level of success on their own but together they created this incredible alchemy that gave me nearly everything I wished for in a very short period of time. If it wasn't for all these stars aligning I would, no doubt, still be working that corporate job, struggling to write in whatever few spare hours I had left, looking forward to a weeklong vacation each year (that’s if I was lucky), and still living paycheck-to-paycheck without a safety net. I’m in awe every time I think about what a blessing it was that everything came together like it did. I’m still blogging all these many years later but the Steemit platform was rebranded as “Hive” on March 2oth of 2020.

I’m infinitely grateful and feel like one of the luckiest people in the world. This experience taught me to pay close attention to what is going on in my life and always ask myself, “What’s trying to happen here?”. You should make it a practice to ask yourself this same question too because there are subtle and sometimes incredibly overt signs all around you if you take the time to notice them.

I get chills when I think about how easily I could have blown that Steemit customer support email off for something like taking a bike ride or walking our beagle, Amstel, on that beautiful summer day. If I would have done that I might have missed what was probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. July 5th, 2016 will forever mark a sort of rebirth for me, when I was able to take those first steps to freedom and to becoming my true and authentic self. I credit that resilient voice inside my head for saving me and miraculously changing my fate.

I’m not certain if that voice was God, the Universe, or some higher-being in another realm but if you hear that same resilient voice please take that voice seriously. Also, don’t let the struggles of this world kill the belief you have in yourself, your abilities and your dreams. By all means, take chances and always keep yourself open to the possibility of what COULD BE. As my experience illustrates, sometimes the most minuscule of decisions can have an incredible impact on your life and the life of future generations of your family.

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Rules for Memoir Monday Participation

1. Please reblog this first post and share on other social platforms so we cast the widest net possible for this initiative;
2. Pictures paint a thousand words. Include pictures in your posts if you have them;
3. Answer each Memoir Monday prompt question in your own post. The prompt question will be published each Monday but you'll have the entire week to answer and publish your own post;
4. Have fun with it, don't worry about getting behind, or jumping into the project at any point after we've begun; and
5. Lastly, be sure to include the tag #memoirmonday.

It's that simple.

At the end of the next twelve months we'll have created something immensely valuable together. It's so important to know our "whys" in life and there's no better way to do that than this.

Someday all that will be left of our existence are memories of us, our deeds, and words. It's up to you to leave as rich of a heritage as possible for future generations to learn from. So, go ahead, tell your stories. I can't wait to read them.

Be well and make the most of this day. I want to sincerely thank all of the participants thus far. I've really enjoyed reading your posts!

~Eric Vance Walton~

(All photos are original.)

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