Has that always been the story of your life? I wouldn't

say.

I mean, I had pretty resilient parents, to be sure.

I was born in 1966, so I grew up in the 70s.

I vividly remember out-of-control inflation, the gasoline crisis, kind of the worst parts of the Cold War where we thought the best days of America were behind us.

And then seeing that, of course, all turn around in the 1980s.

During that time, we picked up and moved as a family.

Do you is it just an advertisement for the book or is it about your characters or how do you do that? What is the successful playbook for a great Facebook ad? Yeah,

So you've been working on it, you passed the CR, but what good things were in that appropriations, and what's kind of some hold-ups that, that aren't getting completed?

Well, I'll tell you what the hold-ups are.

We have passed in the House all 12 of our appropriation bills through the full committee.

That means they've gone through subcommittee, they've gone through full committee.

That means they've had, uh, offers for amendments.

I mean, they take about a day to do each one.

Uh, and we've passed all of them in, in the House.

What is your response? Is that the response, is that we've gotta get those workers?

Yeah.

And then just went on about my business.

And it really it wasn't until a guy named Tucker Max, who ran a company called Scribe Publishing, who was a bestselling author himself.

He heard me kind of giving that advice to other people.

And he goes, why don't you write a book on that? He's like, you've obviously studied it a lot.

And and at the time I was getting ready to start Graveyard Performance, my supplement company.

And I'm like, you know, I really should.

no, the question was, did he actually make it to Argentina?

[laughs]

...

the way that I ended up writing, uh, my first book, Honed, is, uh, I, I was actually writing a completely different book.

It was kind of a, I, I don't wanna call it a memoir, but it was, it was, it kinda paralleled my, my journey through the military.

And basically it was just gonna be like a, kind of a lessons learned book.

Um, I didn't, I didn't have a title for it yet.

Uh, I'd written a couple of chapters.

[laughs]

Oh, I bet.

Yeah.Uh, so, uh, and did a lot of just general medicine stuff.

I got to work...

They have a, a clinic in Tohatchie that is, you know, basically like a military clinic almost, you know, running, like, sick call, urgent care type stuff.

I got to work there.

Really, really great experience.

Just really, really good experience.

How'd you, uh, reor- reorient your head space and get through that?