Discipline means looking beyond the appearance, beyond that which is visible and acknowledging one Infinite Cause.

Tom Johnson

Categorized in : Mean Healing Discipline

So much of my self worth was tied with my position. It felt like I was being enveloped in darkness. It was a sense of loss of enthusiasm, a loss of happiness, a significant decline in self worth.

self-worth darkness loss

Learning is a process whereby a human being, or group, or organization, or society comes to understand and embody nature's patterns.

patterns learning organization

Plot is very important to me, but I think my stories are stronger... by Tom Johnson

Plot is very important to me, but I think my stories are stronger in character development.

important character thinking

Probably the best way to describe my writing style is to refer you to "purple prose", which was a tag given to the early mass market magazine writers earning a half cent a word for their fiction. They had to use every adjective, verb and adverb in the English language to add word count to stories in order to feed and support families.

purple writing order

I was raised in farm and ranch communities, and my dad wanted me to be a cowboy like him, but I saw how he struggled in life and wanted more than that.

cowboy dad community

The military offered the opportunity to see the world, and meet other people and learn new customs. Plus, the Army taught soldiers discipline. The life I experienced in the service was an education I could never have obtained as a cowboy.

cowboy army military

Don't get me wrong, God Bless the farmers and cowboys. It just wasn't the life I wanted. When writing stories of other lands, I can describe people and places from actual experience. And for someone with an imagination like me, I could see dinosaurs and lost civilizations in the jungle of Vietnam.

cowboy land writing

My greatest accomplishment is succeeding in life, and I owe that to my family and twenty years in the military. I don't regret leaving the farm and ranch for the Army. Although I may have been a disappointment to my father, I achieved more than he could ever dream of in his short life.

regret disappointment dream

It's been a tough market for people to generate returns, which has kept sentiment fairly low despite indices making some good gains from the lows.

Whilst volatility has reduced, confidence levels aren't sky high and people are still waiting to see what the Fed is going to do around interest rates. There are a lot of things on the horizon that could unsettle investors.

A lot of IPOs have been completed and gone well, which will encourage issuers for 2016. That said, valuations have been tighter in the second half of the year which could see more vendors revisiting alternatives like a trade sale or a private equity bid.