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The 20-year anniversary of when I started getting serious about writing

Not many people know this, but February 8th of 1997 is the day I officially got serious about writing. Yes, it pains me to say that this occurred 20 years ago, yet it helps me to reflect and think about all the progressions I've made in the past two decades.

I was 15 years old on this day (16 on February 28th), a sophomore in high school, and slowly evolving from an extreme introvert to the extroverted introvert I am today, from a die-hard Christian to an agnostic/humanist, from indifferent and ignorant on the world of politics to passionate and progressive. The artist which most helped me to accept myself as I was, including my perhaps atypical imagination, was Marilyn Manson, and on February 8th of 1997, I bought four tickets to see this controversial shock artist with three of my friends in the extremely conservative state of Nebraska. Just a few days before the show, then Republican Omaha Mayor Hal Daub went on the air discouraging parents from allowing their kids to attend this concert. He spouted off some debunked conspiracies regarding the artist and his shows, doing this as a simple means of free publicity. Ironically, the show sold out the very next day. Unfortunately, two of my friends' parents were influenced by the mayor's words and had them return their tickets to the box office. My mother, who was quite involved with her church and was known around the area as a "good Christian" individual, received a good deal of criticism for allowing me to attend this show, but to her credit, she didn't follow the other parents' lead and said I could go if I wanted, and so I did.

The show itself was incredibly surreal. As we were standing in line, a friend of mine and I were witness to a handful of protesters standing on the median across from the concert venue, holding up signs, throwing snowballs in our direction, condemning us to hell, and yelling many other "Christ-like" sentiments. After attending the concert, seeing first hand that the outrageous rumors were all false, and experiencing the hypocrisy of the far-right, I was awakened. Not wasting a moment of this awakening, the following morning, I wrote a letter to Mayor Daub, filled with passion and facts, as I informed him the rumors were false, that he had lied to the public, and, if anything, he had helped the concert sell out, for what do teenage kids like more than rebelling against authority figures' wishes? To my surprise, and to his credit, I received an email from Daub. He didn't have anything of substance to say with regard to the concert, but did praise my writing and asked if I had written anything else I wouldn't mind sharing with him. I did, emailed him something I had been working on for a while, and a few months down the road, I received a call from the mayor's secretary, as she wanted to schedule a meet-up between the mayor and I.  The mayor and I met up at a restaurant (another surreal experience), he provided me words of praise on behalf of both he and his wife, set me up with a literary agent, and the rest is history.

In hindsight, the series of events which really got me started in writing is rather ironic, for it began with a Republican mayor reaching out to me after reading a letter of mine defending Marilyn Manson, and 20 years later, I'm writing satire, largely at the expense of the GOP. Life really can be crazy sometimes, can't it?

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