I’m Matthew, and this is my life, not very exciting per say, but hey mediocrity has to shoot for something. I live in Utah with my wife Kristina (see OnBlank in my blogroll for her site) and our two dogs.
I grew up in Utah, escaping periodically for College and an LDS, aka “Mormon” mission, but it’s safe to say that I am and have always been a resident of Utah. It’s not as bad as the real world portrays…things here aren’t all God this and God that, or 1 wife, 2 wives, 3 wives more, there’s more to it than that. Between the deserts of the South and the mountain peaks of the North, there is always something new and exciting to see or do here, and that is why we’re still here.
I mentioned a “Mormon” mission, don’t mistake me on this one,it was, stimulating, that’s a good word for it. My mission was stimulating, but not enough to keep me from wondering why I was there, and why was I spreading a message that I didn’t get. I guess that’s why it took two attempts for me, and when I say two attempts, I mean two attempts. The first was to Toronto Canada, simply for the reason that someone somewhere said this kid shouldn’t leave the Northern hemisphere, because if he does we may never see him again, so lets send him to the Great White North. That lasted all of 2-3 months…it was fun, and the inhabitants of the Great White North were interesting…kind of like going to another state here, except that everyone is happy and says “A” and “You Betcha” more often than is needed. The second time was a complete 180 from the first one. I think that same decision maker that initially said lets send him to the Great White North realized their error and I didn’t fully agree with the frozen tundra of the Great White North and thus I needed something with more heat and humidity…so lets send him to heart of darkness…otherwise known as Atlanta. How I ended up from freezing my butt off in Canada to sweating it off in the humidity and heat of Georgia has always left me wondering. So after a brief 9 months in Georgia, I realized that simply pulling the handlebars into on coming traffic was not the answer and that I was grown up enough to simply give the certain few that had made it their life’s ambition to keep me wallowing in that religious hell the finger. So that’s the very thing that I did and returned to Utah. Now there’s many more lurid details of the entire experience that I’m sure will come out in this blog at some point, but for now you’ll just have to accept that the most rule breaking I did was to listen to a radio, I know, give me paper cuts between my toes and pour on the lemon juice, I was bad, bad to the bone baby. So those of you that think I came home for having sex with the bishops daughter while we drank tequila straight from the bottle in that stolen van while running from the police, you know who you are, it’s just not true…or is it?
So after being ostracized by the local community and certain family members I returned to a normal life, you know what I’m talking about, working, dropping out of college, re-enrolling for college and dropping out again, this cycle would continue for the next few years until I was able to convince myself that that two year degree was totally worth the last seven years of my life and made the finial push. Or was it the fact that the college was kicking me out for having too many credits without a degree, it was graduate or get lost! I guess they just got tired of taking money and putting me further and further into debt.
So what do I do now you ask…
The same as everyone else out there, sell my soul for the mighty green back. Thankfully I have a very supportive wife that keeps me in check, so that on those days when I feel like driving past my exit on the highway and running from my real life, I get off and go to work. One day I will have my own company producing custom wood creations, but that day is just a little further out still. If you’d like to see some of my creations you can go to www.watkinsgallery.com maybe you should go there, check it out, they’re mind blowing, would I lie to you?
