About

Name: Derick
Age: 28
Contact: Use This Form

Who is this “Author” we’re supposed to meet?

The exact location of my birth is a closely guarded secret, but I have spent much of my life moving around. From my birthplace to Louisiana… then to Kentucky… then to Georgia… then to Texas… and then to Missouri. While all of the moving had its downsides, it also allowed me to meet and befriend a large assortment of people from different areas of the country and different walks of life. I think my interest in people stems from this interaction with diverse individuals in the few short years I’ve been alive.

I turned my interest in people into an education and career in the mental health field.  I still have a lot of education ahead of me and I feel that my exploration of the human being has just started… and that’s why I created this blog. What better way to explore the human condition than something public, open, and free for interaction?

I don’t profess to be an expert on anything. Instead, I like to think of myself as always learning… always growing… not a human being, but a human doing. I’m a little cynical at times, a little moody, overly blunt, and sometimes I need an ego check. This I know. Feel free to knock me down a few notches should my opinion venture into the realm of arrogance (it’s a family trait… I blame genetics… haha).

I spend a lot of time alone, which is both a blessing and curse. As my brother is fond of saying, if you can’t be good company for yourself, how do you think other people see you? I have a lot of free time to do whatever my heart desires. Usually this consists of music, writing, and sometimes photography. But sometimes the boredom sets in and there’s no telling what I’ll do to pass the time.

What’s this Reader Meet Author thing all about?

I started Reader Meet Author as a place to explore myself and the nature of my own personal beast. But it quickly evolved into something more: a place to explore human nature itself. Through the interaction of readers and the feedback they left and sent, I was able to see much farther than my own experiences. I’ve learned a lot not only about myself, but about my fellow men/women along the journey that you see before you now.

The exact nature of Reader Meet Author has changed a little since the first post was written in July of 2004. I didn’t want to create just another “what I did today” blog. I wanted something different. But as I started to write, I found myself creating a hybrid. It was a personal blog in that I was sharing what I’d done during the day. But I was also using the events of my day as a springboard into some grander topic of discussion. If I was lied to during the day, I’d write a post about lying in general. If someone did something to me, I’d write about human interaction in general. It turned out better than I could have imagined!

That’s not to say you won’t find personal bits of information without some grand message behind them. I’ll write about anything! For example, the following posts illustrate the spectrum of topics covered here:

Love & Hate | Education | Self-Esteem | Mouse Turds | Interesting Characters | Marriage | Suicide | Dirty License Plates | Death | Dealing With Kids | Celebrity Internet Searches | Working w/Psych Patients

As you may already know, my blog is named after a song of the same name by Morrissey (in fact, I’d venture a guess that a great many of you found your way here actually looking for that song). I thought the title of the song was a great match for the purpose of this blog. Of course, I’m not fond of writing lies… but the rest of the song fits well I think. And no… I’m not one of those “oh my life is a shipwreck” types. But I love the mental imagery of life as a journey taken on a ship… will it reach its destination… or end up at the bottom of the ocean…

Credits