Good morning and welcome to my blog! My main goal here is to use this as a way to help focus my thoughts and get my ideas out into the universe. I spend a lot of time daydreaming about random topics and become passionate about a large number of things. The biggest one that comes up time and time again is how can we make this world a better place. Not only for ourselves but for all life and the planet itself. But before I get too far down that rabbit hole, I would like to take some time to introduce myself and give a frame for where my thoughts might come from.

        I was born 30 years ago on the 19th of October 1988. I mention 30 years because my birthday was a couple weeks ago and it’s still fresh in my mind. I’ve been asked often if I feel any older and/or what it feels like being an old man. I laugh at this most of the time because, I don’t feel old. I don’t think i will ever feel old. Though it has certainly caused me to look back on the past couple decades that i’ve been around for and reflect on all the things I have learned. Its partially what inspired me to pick up the “pen” so to speak and start putting my words down into a somewhat organized form.

        I was born in the quiet town of Emporia, Kansas. The population here has hovered around 20k-25k people with a large percentage of the population being hispanic. I’ve always liked it here and it is where I am currently living. A couple of things the town likes to lay its claim to fame is that it’s the hometown of the late William Allen White. Who was an editor for the local paper, The Emporia Gazette. It is also,according to itself, the founding city of Veterans Day. I believe the movement to congressionally change armistice day to celebrate all veterans started here.

        There are a few other events that regularly happen here. A big disc golf tournament and a 200 mile dirt road bicycle race are the first two that pop into my head. For these and other events they will close a 2 block section of main street and have a well attended block party. And with every block party there are food trucks and when there are food trucks I will be there. It is probably why I enjoy these block parties so much. Another little tidbit about me is my love of food and I’ll go into that more at a later date.

        Growing up I almost was always living outside of town. For the first 10 years of my live my family lived in a farmhouse just off the cottonwood river. It was about a 15 minute drive from Emporia and the majority of the drive was nothing but farmland. Unfortunately we lived on a floodplain and the floods did come. There was two major floods where water did come into the house. The second of which is what inspired my family to move. After that we moved to a few other places outside of town and It was always country living for us.

        After I graduated Highschool from Emporia I immediately moved into town and began attending the local university. This wouldn’t last long as I eventually gave it up later that semester. Looking back at it, through a combination of social anxiety and not being prepared, I just wasn’t ready for it. So instead of school, I went to work at my families business. My family’s original reason for moving to Emporia was to purchase a small business. And to this day it has been doing well with my brother now running the business.

        Present day I have since returned back to the University and am working towards a degree in information systems. My main inspiration to return to school was because of my wife, whom I met 6 years ago. We have now been married for 4 years and I love her more and more everyday.

        For now that’s enough about my life. Ill go into further detail on later posts as things come up. Speaking of what’s next. I plan to post something which will probably be later on today or tomorrow. I want to talk about the Governor’s race here in Kansas and my general feelings on it and why i’m voting for who I am voting for. Otherwise I appreciate your time spent reading this and I promise something more interesting next time. Thank you for reading and have a peaceful day.

-Onundr Blackstone-