06/05/2026
A little about me, who I am, what I do, etc..
Born in 1989 in Beech Grove, Indiana, I spent my first 3 decades of life mainly in Greenwood and Indianapolis, though a little time was spent in northwest Indiana when I was a baby, and, much later, in Muncie, Indiana, and Cincinnati, Ohio.
While growing up in Greenwood, I attended pretty much any kind of school you can imagine except for a Montessori or Laboratory school. I attended public schools until the end of 5th grade, followed by private schools (both Protestant and Catholic ones) in Indianapolis, Greenwood, Franklin, and Marion, Indiana (that was an online program). I struggled a lot with school, and later, work and life itself at times, but excelled in Music from a young age, beginning at the end of fifth grade.
From middle school to the end of undergraduate college, I continued to build my musical abilities. After graduating from the University of Indianapolis in 2013, I continued this, adding singing, pop music, jazz and hymns, rock and roll, composing original music, and more to what I had done previously. I also earned a Transition to Teaching certificate from Indiana Wesleyan University in 2017.
A series of odysseys took place around that time, the second major one being a job in Cincinnati. Upon returning from that second odyssey during the 2020 nonsense, I went to live in southeast Indiana, in Nabb, a tiny farm town between Madison and Jeffersonville, right on the Ohio River, where my parents had settled in 2019 after leaving Greenwood. In 2021, I briefly returned to teaching in a school full-time, at Madison Junior High in Madison, Indiana, but it never felt like enough, and it was a temporary position.
From 2021 until 2025, I faced a series of difficulties related to having part-time work, but stuck it out as co-manager of a music store my parents and I founded (and still operate today) in Scottsburg, Indiana, called Moxie Music Center LLC, originally designed to help us get by as my parents are retired, as well as to benefit the people of Scottsburg and surrounding areas, whether or not they are musicians. In time, this second goal has become our main one, and most of the time, my parents do not accept any of the money we earn from our lessons, sales, and sometimes events.
I continued working on music when I could, and also learned how to become a professional photographer, while upgrading my camera equipment as well as traveling music equipment. At the end of 2023, I had the idea, while sick and waiting to recover in a hotel near Charlotte, North Carolina from food poisoning, to begin a side business where I could offer music or photography services in equal quality to interested clients.
That dream is still building at this time, though I have some of the best cameras available today ready to go, namely, a Canon 5D mark IV full-frame DSLR, as well as a Sony CyberShot RX100 VII premium point-and-shoot. I mainly use the Canon for stills, and the Sony for video, though the Canon also does well with both types of media. During those days in Charlotte, bored and feeling like garbage from the sickness my family and I had, I taught myself how to really use digital cameras, including manual photography features, editing, and more.
In 2025, I became an Intense Intervention teacher, part of the world of so-called Special Education, so that has been my main work source ever since the spring of that year. Working with those young students and trying to help them grow has become so rewarding that it's helped build me up as well. I credit that opportunity to the renewed push I'm making this Summer in looking for and working for paid music and photography work. I will be in my second full year doing that, come August of this year. I was one who thought that field was a complete joke in the past, but thankfully, I was mistaken. Four years of part-time, barely sustainable work has also made me more humble and kind over the years.
