A few months ago, someone sent me a lengthy email message regarding something I had written about his wife on my weblog. He was outraged at the personal nature of the entry. I had written about a very embarrassing experience I had with her while she was my girlfriend, over two decades ago. Shortly after our breakup, the man who wrote me married her. Now, after all these years, he came across my aforementioned entry and was infuriated. He said that if I didn’t remove the entry, he’d make a lot of trouble for me. Oddly, that isn’t what affected me the most, though.

The man missed the point of my entry entirely. In other words, I failed to sufficiently convey my feelings about an incident that left both his future wife and I emotionally scarred for the rest of our lives. In addition to that, the man mistook my entire weblog as a means for me to brag about my sexual conquests and to make myself out to be a very good person. However, that was not the intention of this weblog. In fact, I thought I had gone very far in explaining quite the opposite.

I am not a proud person. I have done horrible things in my life that can never be undone. The major reason I began this weblog was to reach out to my estranged son, Cameron, to let him know that I am thinking about him constantly, wondering what he’s up to and if he is okay. These words will hopefully survive long after I am dead and buried, through mirroring them on archiving sites. I don’t want the only story told about my first marriage to be replete with errors and disingenuous storytelling, which is what my ex-wife has presented. Even though much of what I write clearly implicates me as the predominant cause in that marriage’s failure, I want the truth out there.

Someday, I hope that Cameron’s heart will open up enough for him to realize that I have never had anything but love for him, and that my numerous attempts to have a relationship with him were always thwarted by his mother. I can take most of the blame for that marriage’s demise, but the culpability of withholding visitation from me afterwards lies solely on her shoulders. She did what no decent mother should do. She alienated her son from his father, solely for the purpose of seeking revenge against me. Revenge for what? I have no idea, only speculation. I think that she might have taken every bad man that she’s read about or seen on TV over the years and identified them with me, thus making me out to be some sort of horrific ogre. The truth is that, while our marriage did have problems, things weren’t that bad. We could have solved our marital problems, but we were too young and stupid to realize that.

Another reason I began my weblog was to make an accounting of my life happenings, a sort of tell-all about someone who isn’t that important in the grand scheme of things. My open-book policy got me in trouble quickly, though. The husband of another past girlfriend wrote to me a few years ago and said that he had a problem with what I wrote about his wife, which were things of an intimate nature. He asked me to remove my remarks about her, because he was concerned that would-be employers might pass her by for a job opportunity, after searching for information about her and coming up with my remarks. I fully understood his position, but wrestled with the notion of editing myself. I came up with the idea of changing her first name to a nickname I called her by. This satisfied her husband, and the three of us remain friendly to this day. In addition to that episode, I had an old friend of mine voice his disapproval with what I’d written about him. With him, I decided that it would be best to edit my remarks, not just to avoid ill-feelings on his part, but the remarks really had no great relevance to the entry that contained them.

I’m sure I’ll offend others, as I continue to build this weblog slowly. “Slowly” is the key word in that sentence, as I really haven’t done any substantial writing on the weblog in a very long time. That is why I’m getting in trouble with this latest guy and his accusations that I’m trying to put forth my “sexual conquests”. The reason I wrote about my girlfriends first wasn’t to brag about anything. In fact, if you read the stuff I wrote, the opposite is true. There’s a lot of self-loathing in those entries. I have a lot to be sorry for when it comes to being a good partner. The reason I wrote about my girlfriends first was actually because those happenings put a date for other future entries to be based around. You see, I only write about things that I’m sure occurred. I don’t write about foggy experiences. I remember who I was with in certain years, so that is where I began. I planned on, and still do, to write more entries based upon those dates. It is easier for me to remember happenings when I think about who I was dating at the time. In that manner, I was going to build my account of past happenings. Unfortunately, I became less interested after those entries and haven’t written much since. If they were buried amidst hundreds of other entries, they’d be less-noticeable, I’m sure. I guess that’s why this guy felt I was trying to put forth myself as some sort of Casanova.

I came to an agreement with the man who is now married to a girl I dated a long time ago. The understanding we came to involved having me mark the entry about his wife as private. That way, only people who register for my weblog will be allowed to read it. I like this arrangement, because I will soon be looking for a job and there are some embarrassing remarks I’ve written on this weblog which I wouldn’t want a potential employer to read about me. Consequently, I’ll probably be marking other entries as private. It isn’t that I’m overly-ashamed of them. To the contrary, I feel that the truth is of great importance, like “the truth shall set you free!” It’s just that I don’t want anyone to make a cursory scan of my weblog from a search engine and only read the negative items. And there are certainly plenty of those! I really should make an effort to write more positive things. Sadly, I’m not motivated to write when I’m positive. Hence, the over-abundance of negative things.

When I was in America, attending my dad’s funeral, my mother gave me some personal documents. One of those documents was my birth certificate, which contained the name of my recently-deceased father and mother, even though they adopted me when I was but 12 days old. My mother gave me another document that should have been sealed before my adoption. On it was the name of the lady who gave birth to me.

I grew up always knowing that I was adopted, even though my parents treated me no differently than their other three children. I’m glad that they didn’t keep it a secret from me. I think that parents who do have done a disservice to their children. We should always be as honest as possible with our children. About the specifics of my adoption, I had no idea until recently. A few years ago, my mother told me that the story she was told was that my birth mother was married to a guy, divorced him, and then got pregnant by another guy. After that, she returned to her husband. He didn’t want to raise a child that wasn’t naturally his, so I was put up for adoption.

That night, after my mother had given me the document containing my birth-mother’s name, I spent a few hours googling for information. I discovered that she is 67 years old and still lives near Van Nuys, where I was born. Records indicated that she never actually got a divorce from her husband, who had been married before her, and had three boys with him. The youngest boy is three years older than me and might be an actor. I’m not sure of that last part, though. His name matches that of an actor who appeared in some movies and lives in that area, but that could just be a coincidence. I wrote down the lady’s phone number and address and went to bed.

Over the next several weeks, I mulled over the notion of contacting my birth-mother. Because of my estranged situation with my first son, Cameron, I thought that the lady might have been wondering all these years about my whereabouts and if I was okay. I felt a phone call wouldn’t be sufficient enough, so I decided upon writing a letter to her. In the letter, which I wrote by hand in cursive, I told her that my purpose of writing the letter was twofold. First, I wanted to thank her for giving me life. Without her, I wouldn’t be here today. And, despite all my life’s hardships, many of which are ongoing, I’m glad I’m alive. As long as I’m alive, I have the chance to progress. I might not be doing it at the pace that I should be, but at least I have the chance. I don’t know what her options were at the time, but I’m grateful that she chose to give me life. Also, I wanted to write to her in order to let her know that I have had a good life. I grew up with a good family, a somewhat dysfunctional family, but a good one nonetheless. My parents brought me up to respect and be kind to others and taught me the value of hard work. I know that my one brother and two sisters love me and would do the world for me, as I would for them. I am blessed to have been brought up in a family as good as The Iversons. I think my birth-mother needed to know this, and I hope my letter helped her feel good about what she’d done.

I ended the letter by writing down my email address, inviting her or any of the members of her family to contact me if they felt the desire. I’m not looking for anything from them, but wouldn’t mind hearing from her or what are essentially my birth-half-brothers. I have no expectations, other than to hope that my birth-mother is pleased with my letter of gratitude to her. I think that just about this time she should be receiving it.

Whether she contacts me or not, I’m glad I got the chance to write to her. It’s somewhat like the message I wrote to my son Cameron’s girlfriend (Ashley?) through MySpace. I wrote to her that I wanted her to know that I care about Cam and hope that they have nothing but happiness and success in their relationship. I also promised her that I’d never write again, if she didn’t request it. She hasn’t, and I’ve never written her again.

Shu Mei and I recently went through a period of emotional turmoil. It wasn’t due to our relationship problems, which still have yet to be resolved, but from the decision we had to make of whether to move to America this year or next. I won’t bore you with the pros and cons of the two options, but just state that we decided on staying in Taiwan for another year.

In this “extra” year, I have some very important goals I want to obtain. First, I want to learn to speak Chinese to the point where I can hold my own in basic conversations. Second, I want to lose 55 pounds, which would put me at my ideal weight. Third, I want to come to a conclusion on what it is that I will do, once we return to America.

That third goal looks the most daunting to me, which in no way means that the first two will be a piece of cake. It’s just that there are numerous paths I could pursue. As I have stated before, I love being a teacher. If I were to die today, I would love “Teacher” to be engraved on my headstone. I can’t think of a more meaningful job for me. I am in daily service to others, working to help them become self-motivated to the point where they desire to learn things that will help further their advancement in life. What other job can claim such a worthwhile objective?

The dichotomy is that, while the job of a teacher is of paramount importance in furthering the progression of the human race, the monetary rewards are meager. I have always wanted to make a lot of money in my life. This desire is more for my family than myself. I would love for my wife and children to experience some of the things I did, growing up in a middleclass family. As of yet, I haven’t been able to give them anything beyond the bare essentials. If I were to continue being a teacher, I would undoubtedly never make enough money to buy them things.

I understand that happiness doesn’t come from money, but there were certainly a lot of happy times I shared with my parents and siblings that involved things that cost money. To date, my wife and I have had to make due with what we have, and try to find other ways to make life more enjoyable for our children. We take our sons to the park, to go kite flying, or to the ocean, to go wading, or to a local amusement park that isn’t too pricey. Doing things like that keeps us living within our means and helps Billy and Tyley experience the joy of doing things as a family. Still, it is difficult to have come from such a privileged youth, as I did, and not be able to provide the same things to your children.

So, do I opt for a path that could lead to making more money, throwing myself back into the corporate world that stressed me out to no end? Or, do I continue working at the job that has given me the greatest satisfaction I could have ever imagined? If I go for the latter course, I would have to return to college and pursue a teaching degree, something I’ve been without as a teacher here in Taiwan for over seven years. It hasn’t been an issue here, as my experience has gotten me to where I wanted to be. However, teaching jobs in the U.S. are more about what’s on paper than what is in your head. I don’t know how many credits they would accept from my years in college before, toward the teaching degree, but I imagine it wouldn’t be many. Just off the top of my head, I’m guessing I’d have about two years of schooling to go in order to get the degree.
So, I have a lot of thinking to do about what my future direction should be. I’ve been praying about this every night, along with asking for the motivation to follow-through with my goals. With Our Heavenly Father’s help, I hope to steer the course of my family’s future in the right direction. Without His help, I’m lost. Personally, I am way in over my head with this whole life thing. I wonder if in the pre-mortal life I really knew what I was getting myself into.