A new blogger is born....

After a long (15 years) fitful sleep within the comforting womb of complacency, low risk, and ignorant bliss, I have been reborn into the world of writing as my brain could no longer retain the overwhelming data that has been amassed over the last decade and a half. Therefore, it is time to free up some 'disk space' on my human hard drive (the ole noggin). And what better place to do a huge data dump than on a blog???

My writing first started when I was 14 years old when I wrote my first poem called "Tangents" (read below). My imagination was so out of control as a boy that my dad nicknamed me 'Danny Tangent'. As much as it was meant to be a term of endearment, I always took it as a back-handed compliment and used that to keep my edge. Later in life I found out (as many of us did) that I was afflicted with Attention Deficit Disorder(whatever that means). But I always knew that my imagination was my strength and that I just needed to learn to harness it somehow. As an adolescent teenager, I was often hurt and heart-broken because of my imagination. I was a romantic, a dreamer, a wishful thinker, a sheltered child who found the good in everyone and everything. And as I grew older, "life happened" and I was introduced to numerous cans of whoop-ass from that little thing called "Reality". Thank God I excelled in athletics, because it really helped balance me out. I was able to take all of that overwhelming emotion, rage and angst of being a teenager and apply it to athletic competition...most notably football. I was a little bit of every stereotypical high school personality (preppy, drama geek, rocker, outcast, etc.), but in the body of a jock. So, after high school and a brief stint in junior college, I was able to parlay that athletic ability into a scolarship to the University of Nevada.

I was finally freed from the sheltered safe-harbor of the "Golden Ghetto"(as my dad always called it), of Mission Viejo, CA... and into the open yet deceiving arms of Reno, NV. Now, take a sheltered, wide-eyed kid from Orange County who has never lived anywhere else in his whole life and drop him in the middle of the 'Biggest Little City in the World'. Let me tell you, it was the most terrifying and yet, exhilirating time of my life. It was also at this time when I first started writing. I wrote all the time. My mind was a on fire, stimulated by the multitude of experiences and experimentation that came my way from every direction. I wrote about life, death, love, hate, family, friends, competition, politics, religion...hell, I even wrote music. And as I wrote, I started to notice a building theme to all of my work. No matter what I was writing about, I always worked in a message of HOPE. Hope for the future. Never giving up on yourself or your loved-ones. Believing in your fellow man and woman. Knowing that with perserverance and determination, you can accomplish great things.

And so it is with utmost excitement and passion that I begin writing again and share my thoughts, dreams and HOPES with you...

Hello again world, this is Danny Z.

TANGENTS by Dan Zamora

I wish I could fly, like the eagles on high.
But here I sit writing...nothing exciting.