Farewell

Well kinda farewell, kinda not really though.. I’ve spent way too many hours on this site to take it down. Definitely worth the 60 bucks a year to keep it alive for awhile. But! I’m back at school now and I can’t do this posting regularly thing anymore. My grades first semester weren’t bad, especially after taking a year off…. and having a traumatic brain injury…. but I’ve clearly recovered pretty well, and I know they could have been better. I had two grades ending with a plus, which just pisses me off. And sure; a grade with a plus is better than a grade with no plus, but the thought that a few more points on one, maybe two assignment would have bumped me up to the next letter grade pisses me off. Anyway, I’m going for all A’s this semester, so I can’t be writing like three page non school related essays every week. I copy/pasted all my posts thus far to Word –12 font times new roman single space– and the doc was 35 pages long… all but the last couple of which were written during classes first semester. Too bad I wasn’t in any English classes because I woulda had one helluva thesis paper to submit.

Being back at school is kick ass… it’s the tits. I haven’t even seen more than a couple of friends so far because I haven’t been here for a weekend yet. I have to lay low for awhile anyway; I still have some recovering to do. My mid section is still actin’ up a bit from the docs tampering with my intestines and bladder with knives and shit. But I feel fine now and am hopeful that things will straighten themselves out soon. I think they on they way. Hey; another thing to look forward to. Just being here doing my thing, getting started on classes, and being around people my own age again is an awesome feeling. Makes me feel normal again, which is always cool for me. Monday, I went to my classes, all cold as hell, but was cruisin’ around going from class to class with my ear buds in. I’ve always been an active guy, which is harder now that I’m in a chair, but ATLEAST I get to tear up the streets.. and the school hallways.. and the grass when sidewalks are under construction. I was so happy, though. I haven’t been able to move like that since the end of last semester.. just one of the things recently that has made me so very thankful.

Tuesday went a little differently. I was still pumped about being here, but was thinking a lot about e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g I have to do to take care of myself now a day. Before my surgery, I already had to spend a lot more time on myself than the average joe, and now that time has almost doubled due to post surgery precautions. And when my bladder is worse than ever, surgery being over a month ago, it’s hard to believe that surgery even worked. Even forgetting that though, it’s just like… how much longer are these long days gonna last??

Today, things were good again. Facts are facts, so nothing has actually changed, but something clicked this morning that got me feeling a lot better… After I woke up, I sat in complete silence and tried not to think about anything for a good 10 minutes. I think that’s what meditating is. My brother and his friend suggested I do this several months back when they visited Miami, but I never did. I actually really liked it and I wish I listened to them awhile ago. It completely cleared my mind, which made me feel better. I spent the day better focused on the tasks at hand, rather than worrying about the future. I then got in the shower and started to think of everything I have to be thankful for. Most of which, I’m sure, you also have to be thankful for… There’s food readily available, which I’m physically capable of eating whenever I want. There are liquids readily available that are physically capable of drinking… at my leisure. I can swallow effortlessly and painlessly, whenever I want. I can move around freely, whenever i want to. I am not incarcerated in a hospital. I have family members that truly care and will do anything for me, whenever I need them to. I have the liberty to attend school, or work a job that provides solidarity advancing my life in the right direction… I was saying this all out loud to thank God for all of my blessings. Then I took it a step further and did something I never thought I would do. I’ve done pretty well and have only been mad at Him a few times since my accident, but this morning I thanked Him. I thanked Him for what has happened to me… bad things have happened to good people since the beginning of time. It doesn’t mean you deserve it. It’s just life. I thought about some loved ones in my life who I had a hard time seeing deal with the things I’ve had to deal with. Traumatic accidents such as mine are very capable of breaking someone, and I knew it could have broken some of the important people in my life, stopping them from moving forward. It may ruin them as the person I’ve always known them to be, throwing ME off. I thanked Him for dealing ME the shitty hand instead of a loved one that could be lost. Especially a family member, or my future wife, wherever she is… After all, I’m a little selfish, I KNOW how much future Hunter loves those nice legs she has. And don’t you even get me started on that booty.

Well this will probably be my last post for awhile. I know I’m going to miss writing, so I’m sure I’ll still write from time to time. However, I want to try using that hole in my life to start drafting for my book. I really want to write a book after the experiences I’ve had thus far with this blog. The sooner I start working, the greater the chance of me seeing it through and the fresher the memories of the past year and a half will be.

But before I go, let me share some of the hunterheck.com stats real quick. All of which were really surprising to me and likely for you, as well… So it was after a church sermon last spring that I decided I would start blogging. I really didn’t even know what a blog was, I was originally going to write experiences and thoughts down in a journal. I worked an internship in Cleveland all summer, but had a couple weeks of free time to figure out blogging before school started. A friend at church had a WordPress account and shared with me his knowledge of blogging. He helped me get things set up and rolling. My first entry was posted the day I moved to school the return of my first semester. The day I moved back to school was August 21, 2013; a little over five months ago… As of now (not counting this post), I have posted 21 entries to my page that has had 24,000 views. This wasn’t a recent surprise because that number has been displayed on the right since day one. What is to come is what is to come is what really blew my mind, though… I started sharing most of my posts to Facebook sometime in November which resulted in me sharing seven of my posts shared to Facebook. Some of these posts were reshared to Twitter, but significant amounts were reshared to Facebook. In total, those seven posts were shared 672 times. My “Family” post was only my fourth entry, well before I started sharing my own posts to Facebook, and “Family” killed it with 137 shares. It wasn’t until recently that was topped by my post “Surgery”. “Surgery” was shared 212 times and resulted in my biggest day, with 1,268 site views. As far as the existence of this page in the world; it has been viewed from 41 different countries: Belgium, Spain, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Russian Federation, Singapore, Italy, Netherlands, Thailand, India, Mexico, Viet Nam, Ecuador, France, Denmark, Ireland, Albania, Hong Kong, Bahamas, Luxembourg, Myanmar, Republic of Korea, Argentina, Aruba, Jamaica, United Arab Emirates, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, Nicaragua, Austria, Switzerland, New Zealand, Lebanon, Philippines, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Czech Republic, and obvi The USofA. Crazy. I’ve never even been to any of those places, other than Canada and Jamaica. Oh and one more thing. Probably the biggest thing… Word Press has a page labeled “Fastest Growing Blogs (out of 100)” that changes daily based on how many views a blog receives that have been started within the past six months. A couple of months ago, I looked under the “referrers” list on my stats and saw this growing blogs page referring people to my blog. I was really confused because I didn’t know anything about it, so I clicked on it and found my page at number 25 on the list. I was really surprised when I thought my blog was the 25th most popular blog in the country, but then I went to some of the other blogs on the list, they were decked out with pictures, professional design and color. I tried reading some of them, but couldn’t… it wasn’t a country-wide list, my blog was ranked 25th in the world.

So thank you all who have been following my blog! These stats make me feel like I’ve already accomplished my goal to “make my mess my message,” but I’m not stopping. I plan on furthering my goal by keeping this blog in motion and writing my book that will come out on the NAth of NA, 20NA… I really hope I can find the discipline to write this book. Thanks for reading!