About

I don’t offer any unique claim related to upbringing, fame, or life in general; this is just one of thousands of other stories scattered across the Internet that may or may not interest you. I suppose it does offer a glimpse into what makes me tick, the things I live for, and how I ended up where I’m at now.

In the beginning…

I was born and raised in Santa Ana, California, alongside two older sisters. Dad spent his career with “the telephone company” (Pacific Telephone, then AT&T after the “Ma Bell” breakup of the early ’80s); Mom was a full-time homemaker. Our family was nominally Roman Catholic, I suppose because my staunchly Catholic grandmother (Dad’s step-mom; his birth mother died of cancer early in his life) would disapprove of any other way.

School years.

I went to public schools from Kindergarten through the second grade. I actually spent a year and a half in second grade, because half way through my first grade year, a group of students, including me, were moved from the high first-grade class to the low second-grade class for the second half of my first-grade year.

It was in the second grade that I got put into “Special P.E.” for kids without acceptable coordination skills, interrupting the math portion of my school day (for which I was constantly scolded by Mrs. Truby because I could never finish my math assignment before it was time to go to the Special P.E. session); it was also in the second grade that the ridicule from peers began.

From the third through fifth grade I was put into parochial school, where the bullying became physical as well as emotional. It continued afterward as I transitioned back to public schools for my sixth-grade year (at a “fundamental intermediate” school) and through high school.

My way of responding to the bullying was withdrawing, especially after one afternoon in jr. high when, during lunch hour, the group that I was involved in role-playing games with drew up what they considered a “formal contract” kicking me out of their group. I kept quiet, and to myself. In high school I hung around the technology and business department with the PCs and first-generation Macs in which I became proficient and found an outlet where I was encouraged and found success, but the bullying and being made fun of outside that department led to me intentionally flunking a semester of P.E. by refusing to change out of my street clothes into a P.E. uniform that showed off my scrawny 5′11″, 88-pound frame and inability to do anything even remotely athletic (except volleyball—the only sport I never got chosen last for because I had a atmospherically-high serve, when it went in the right direction).

By the time I was in middle school I had decided, being a Catholic, that I wanted to enter the priesthood once I graduated from high school. By the time I finished high school I wanted to go into business management, but this early leaning toward religious work would come back later.

After graduating with honors, I sought to enter Southern California College (now Vanguard University of Southern California) directly out of high school as a business management major. The finances, however, fell through at the last minute and I instead enrolled in the local community college.

When faith changed my course.

It was during my sixth-grade year that Dad decided we would no longer be Catholic. It was through a friendship with a co-worker that my Dad gradually came to Christ, and through a youth group that one of my sisters had been invited to at a church directly across the street from the jr. high school that we joined that church. It was then that summer after sixth grade that the Billy Graham Crusade came into town, I stepped forward during the mid-week youth night (July 24, 1985) in a packed-out baseball stadium, and told a counselor who met me on the field that I wanted to follow Jesus. A the time, Christ was the answer to what I wanted so much—Somebody who wasn’t like all the people in school that made fun of me and/or tried to beat me up every morning and afternoon.

I was handed a copy of the Gospel of John and prayed over. I never heard from the counselor again. A paperback copy of Graham’s Peace with God arrived a few weeks later in the mail.

Music.

Beyond the halls of the high school business department, music was my escape and perhaps the greatest influence on me. I was already playing guitar as early as fourth or fifth grade, and it was at the same time that the Christian rock scene was born and growing in Southern California, Calvary Chapel was hosting concerts every Saturday night, and a chance at pecking out the melody to Malotte’s “The Lord’s Prayer” on a keyboard at a wedding in our church became nearly a decade serving in worship ministry in the church that took me to that Billy Graham crusade a couple of years earlier, and then several years afterward while in college, at a predominantly Filipino-Pacific Islander church co-leading one of their two worship teams (there were so many talented members in that community that there was one worship team for Sundays and one for mid-week, and once a month we swapped places for a week). It was also in the mid- to late-90s that I self-published a pair of collections that I had composed and programmed or performed on a beat-up synthesizer and an equally beat-up wavetable sound card on a cheap PC.

Several years later, while enrolled in community college, that earlier desire to serve in the priesthood came back. Since I was no longer Catholic, though, it took another form: as a pastor-teacher. I again applied to Southern California College as a transfer with a religion major with concentration in pastoral ministry, was again accepted, and this time there was enough money to go. After a bit of creative credit-shuffling by my academic advisor (who was also Academic Dean) to obtain credit for an ethics telecourse I took at the community college level, and a distance course in counseling through Southeastern College, I graduated with honors in 1996.

The opportunity after that to go directly into full-time ministry, however, never materialized. I was already starting work in the business field as an administrative (read: secretarial) specialist, and that direction never shifted.

My addiction to pornography.

I suppose, though, that there was another, much more important reason that a desired opportunity didn’t materialize directly out of Bible college, and that was because I had been struggling with pornography addiction in some shape or form since high school. I further surmised in hindsight that until that was addressed in a serious manner, I could never fulfill the heavy responsibilities of a pastoral role.

That addiction continued into my first of two marriages. I met C. (initial only for some people that are still living and/or deserve privacy) via America Online in an online chat room a couple of years after graduating Bible college. We became engaged on our first face-to-face meeting on New Year’s Eve of 1997 and married eight months later in August of 1998. Again in hindsight, to describe the process as “rushing in” would be an understatement. The marriage lasted a little over eight years and the adoption of our son S. before my addiction was caught and brought out into the open. Within the month I started attending Celebrate Recovery and we had a few sessions in counseling, but things were never the same. I also resigned from serving in a national motorcycle ministry that I was involved with as a multimedia director.

It was during that process, in 2005, that I was diagnosed as type 1 autistic, among other things (including Arrested Development Disorder from the decade of bullying I had endured from elementary through high school).

The other shoe drops.

Toward the end of 2007 and into 2008 things happened in rapid succession: I was laid off in September just as the Great Recession was starting; a few days into January, C. filed for divorce; and by the beginning of February, the divorce was final. I left everything except for my clothes and electronic gear and moved into a small apartment in Plant City with the severance package from my now former job as proof of income, half of which they put into my retirement account forcing me to withdraw it at a penalty to live off of. By the end of 2008 I had to file for bankruptcy. It took four years to find full-time work again.

I also left behind an adopted son and never saw him again. This is perhaps my greatest regret that I will live with the rest of my life; but at the time I had concluded I was persona non grata anywhere near their church-based circle of affluence, and I figured that he had others around him that would do a far better job than I could of being the example of anything other than a failure. (Lest my reader think there is a chance for reuniting, S. is also autistic, and now in his early 20s, and has no interest in meeting because he no longer remembers, and social anxiety has taken over; given I live with the same conditions, I accept it.)

Try (and lose) again.

About a year or so had passed from losing my home and family that a chance long-distance encounter happened with somebody I had a crush on in jr. high but then seemingly disappeared from existence a year or two into high school—one attempted date failed to happen, and in my sixth-grade yearbook she had scrawled, in bold black marker, “I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOUR UGLY FACE AGAIN” (the later irony was not lost on either of us). V. had come from a severely broken home, left high school early to complete her diploma through an accelerated program with the county, had two children in generally abusive relationships (two of which were marriages), was disabled with chronic pain, PTSD, and bipolar disorder, and—more urgently at the time—was about to be kicked out of the home she was “platonically” sharing with her first husband (that she was on friendly terms with) and her two children. I offered the extra space in my own apartment and she moved in while I made efforts to get a new job and she made efforts to apply for disabilty benefits with Social Security (that consumed a lot of our effort).

While V. was seeking to be a Christ-follower, she stongly preferred doing so within the structure that being Catholic provided, and I still had enough past memory to go back with her, where we were supported both spiritually and materially while I was out of work and underwent counseling together.

In the spring of 2011 I had finally found a full-time contract job that became permanent by September of the same year. We spent the year following going through the canonical processes and our wedding in October of 2012 was sprung as a surprise on the parish during a Saturday evening vigil mass.

We were both living with mental illness—the statistical data suggested a nine-in-ten chance it wouldn’t work. But we kept to two rules: first, we would figure it out no matter what it took, including giving each other space when it was needed; and second, only one of us could go crazy at a time. Surprisingly, it worked—not always perfectly, but somehow it did. Shortly after we married, V. was approved for federal disability and began receiving her benefits from Social Security, for which I ended up as her “representative payee” due to her mental illness. Eventually our month-to-month apartment lease (that I had entered into with the landlord to avoid being evicted earlier) was not renewed and we were forced to move to Tampa.

In June of 2016 the whole “fairy tale” collapsed—specifically, V. collapsed, and never got back up. We were to celebrate sending in the last car payment with dinner that night, but the muliple psychiatric and pain medications that she was on had become too much, and when I finally did find her collapsed on the floor of our apartment next to the bathroom, it was too late to bring her back. Doctors in the emergency room managed to get her heart beating again, but all of the subsequent tests confirmed that she was brain dead and could not be revived outside of what machines were doing to keep her heart going. There was enough time to fly in her children from California to say their final goodbyes, and then, in accordance with her previously-stated wishes, she was allowed to pass on a week after she was rushed into intensive care. Because we had no family or friends locally, there was neither funeral nor memorial service; her remains were cremated and shipped to her children in California in a USPS Express Mail box with a black “CREMATED REMAINS” label slapped onto the top, and nearly all of her earthly possessions that her kids wanted to have soon followed; her clothing donated to charity. I, with my autism, couldn’t mourn; I didn’t know how.

RE-constructing my faith.

I remained in that corner apartment another year after V.’s passing before the rising rents forced me to move from Upper Tampa Bay back to Plant City. Between social anxiety and finding churches around me just too big and/or overhwelming, I had not been back in a church since V.’s passing; I was watching services online, listening to podcasts, doing my own study.

Toward the end of my most recent time in Plant City I rewatched a DVD I had bought years earlier of the first Passion OneDay gathering and watch John Piper’s sermon from that weekend. I became reinterested in his work and began listening to more of his sermons. Not long after I learned that a church in Celebration, Florida, was founded and being pastored by one of his former teaching assistants, and I started making the drive from Plant City to Celebration Community Church to learn under Pastor Gregg Heinsch and worship with the community there. Eventually, I packed up and moved to a development south of Clermont to be closer to that church (that is where I’m at now).

I don’t think there was any point at which I ever “deconstructed” my faith, as a lot of other long-time Christians who came to faith around the same time I did had done (and are continuing to do). However, I did find myself in this period and since reconstructing the faith that I had formed initially as a Catholic then through the lens of evangelical faith and then pentecostal faith in my Bible college studies. My lifelong faith has been reconstructing around the idea of God’s absolute sovereignty, and all of the streams that flow out of that idea through the likes of Calvin and Spurgeon and (more historically recent) Piper and others along that “Reformed” stream. Rather than finding that message restrictive or binding, I’ve found it to be the most liberating aspect of following Christ ever. To me, it is the freedom to be human—and, yes, to fail—while at the same time pursuing obedience in a spirit of wanting rather than having to, out of gratitude for what he has already done rather than out of compulsion with some expectation of “I’ll make it if I do this and that and the other thing”. Through the sacrifice of Christ, I’m already there; the purpose of the years I have left then is to over time and practice become what I’ve already been declared through the blood of Christ to be—saved.

Disney.

What does Disney have to do with all this, I’m sure my reader is asking? For the record, I have never worked for the company and likely never will.

However, I grew up in Orange County, California. The story was that my first words were “Mickey Mouse” (later proven false, but apparently I squeaked as a baby and a particular aunt wouldn’t stop calling me that as a result).

It was a half-hour drive from South Coast Metro to Anaheim and Disneyland when I was a kid, and one of the first things I paid for when I moved in my first studio apartment in the mid-‘90s was an annual pass to the park, which was at that point a half-hour walk or fifteen-minute bike ride away instead of a drive. When I was working on contract I would bring my little Casio Handheld PC with me and camp out in a corner of the Harbor Galley seating area working on my invoices and logging my hours while waiting for “Fantasmic!” to set up on the Rivers of America. I started hanging out with a group of other passholders who were contributors to the alt.disney.disneyland Usenet group (shortened with tongue firmly in cheek to “a.d.d.”). Through that group, I got to know, become friends with, and share a lot of moments with many Cast Members throughout the park, including opening and closing days of attractions and shows, celebrating work anniversaries and birthdays, &c.

Upon arriving in Florida in 2000, I didn’t get an AP right away (married life meant there were other priorities with my our money and nobody other than me was much of a Disney fan). When I found myself living alone again in 2008, however, I wanted some way to get out of the apartment and not go back to living like a hermit as I had done in California, and thus paid for an annual pass to Walt Disney World. When I started working full-time again in 2011–2012, I started getting one every year—initially for V. and myself, then for myself only after her passing.

An aside: Disney actually did a really thoughtful thing when V. passed. As a Florida resident we have access to the monthly payment plans to make an annual pass affordable, and we were about six months into the annual contract when she passed. I called to have her pass cancelled because of her death, assuming that I would continue to pay out the rest of the contract (a contract is a contract, after all). Disney cancelled her pass and given the circumstances stopped payments on it to my relief. But then I noticed the following month that the payments on mine had also stopped. I called the hotline back, and learned that not only had they cancelled her pass and stopped payments, it was cancelled ab initio and the payments made on her pass were applied to mine, which paid off the contract for my pass that year in full. It was equivalent to six months for free.

Except for the months during and after COVID when passholders were allowed to cancel their contracts, I’ve had one ever since, and I continue to go to the Walt Disney World parks and resorts with that pass multiple times a week to get out of the apartment and not live like a hermit.

The other irony, which I remembered recently, was that as a Kindergartner watching TV ads for Walt Disney World during commercial breaks watching “The Love Boat” and “Fantasy Island” on Saturday (or Sunday?) nights, I remember that I wanted to live in Florida when I grew up “so I can always go to Disney World.” In a rather roundabout and definitely unexpected way, guess what?

In a way, that time at Disneyland being around Cast Members has come full circle—I initially discovered Mosaic Church while looking for an accountability group to continue on my 21 years (and counting) of addiction recovery (I’m now a part of that group) and not long after discovered there was a “Mosaic at WDW” campus that was not only a directed outreach to Cast Members/College Program/International Program workers, but was also more of a size of fellowship that wasn’t as overwheming as stepping foot into a Sunday morning at Mosaic’s main campus (sorry, but that massively sun-bright LED screen in Winter Garden was overwhelming that first visit).

Part of my “giving back” in my recovery, along with being a part of the Men’s Freedom Group on Monday nights, is going to the parks after Mosaic @ WDW on Sunday and other nights when Magic Kingdom is open late enough to look for CMs I know who had to miss church that night because of their work schedule and just be present to let them know they’re still seen and remembered (and just maybe try to make them break character).

The Study of Starlight

The most recent life change was being weaned off the psychiatric medication that I had been taking since I was diagnosed autistic in 2005 (I had to, due to long-term health reasons that are of higher priority) and learning to lean on God in every moment for my continued sanity and recovery, and it has been an amazing and liberating journey thus far. In the process I’ve been rediscovering the flood of emotions that three decades ago drove my music and other creative output, both while serving in worship ministries and while composing/self-publishing my own musical/creative work. In March of 2026 I launched The Study of Starlight as the outflow of that newly found passion for music and creativity. The first track, “Genesis”, is available on most major music streaming platforms, and much more is on the way.