Who Am I?

Tales of The Iron Goat

Let’s begin things with a brief introduction; get to know each other, so to speak.  Well, you’ll get to know me, anyway.  If you’re reading this than you’ve demonstrated yourself to be a classy individual and that’s all I need to know about you.

     I am from a small suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan, called Comstock Park.  Until the age of seven, I had a very normal, middle-American life.  My Dad was the most exotic person I knew... since he had a suntan.

     When I was seven I began to suffer extreme migraines.  By the time doctor’s discovered the cause, it was too late and the brain tumor that had been developing began to put pressure on my optic nerves.  To make a long and complicated medical history short, two surgeries left me alive but completely blind.  This was, in a word, life-changing. 

     Such life-altering experiences can have one of two results: leave you depressed and defeated or drive you to seek out and overcome every challenge.  I chose the latter life-path and spent the following years devoted to school.

     After graduation from high school I attended the University of Michigan [go blue] where I got highest honors in psychology and fluent in Spanish.  During this time I studied abroad in Santiago de Chile and went to Spain to hike the Camino de Santiago. 

    After university, I spent two years teaching English in southern Spain.  Why I ever left the shores of the Mediterranean Sea I will never know, but my wanderlust eventually drove me to Kitakyushu, Japan, where I spent an additional two years teaching. 

     This brings us more or less up to the present.  I am now preparing myself for one final year in Japan at the International Budo University, where I will be studying Judo. 

     Along the way I have met a myriad of the most interesting characters.  It has been these people, perhaps most of all, which have kept me traveling.  You start to get attached to these sorts of people and that, my friends, is dangerous!  Many have been my various sensei and other roll-models and I will, occasionally, be forced to nod a cyber head in their direction.

Now join me as we talk Budo!  And whatever else takes my fancy.  Let’s enjoy blogging!

-Nick