Welcome to My Blog: A Life Unfolded

Discover the Journey

What Inspired Me to Create This Website?

One Saturday morning in 2015, I was at home when I received a message from a friend that simply said, “Pray for TJ.” TJ was a high school friend of mine, though we had lost touch over the years. By 2015, I wasn’t on any social media—it just wasn’t my thing—so I hadn’t kept up with many old friends from high school.

TJ was two years younger than me, and we had played football together. We both played the same position—Quarterback—so we spent a lot of time together during practices, talking about life and everything else high school kids talk about. I’d often go watch him play on Saturday mornings, offering advice or helping however I could. Back then, we didn’t have social media or cell phones to stay connected after graduation. I finished high school in 1992, and TJ graduated in 1994.

Fast forward to 2015, and TJ was living in Florida with his wife and three kids. He was a healthy, active guy who had even completed a full marathon not long before. A great father, husband, son, and friend—suddenly, at just 39 years old, he was found unresponsive by his wife. He had suffered a brain hemorrhage and passed away on March 28, 2015.

I’ve always struggled with the idea of death, and as I’ve gotten older and had kids of my own, it’s hard not to think about how fragile life is. If something like that could happen to TJ, it could happen to any of us at any time. The overwhelming sadness for his family, his kids, and his friends hit hard. Since I wasn’t on social media, I asked a friend to show me some of TJ’s posts, and I saw the videos and messages he had shared. He wrote about life, fatherhood, and the lessons he had learned along the way. He even had a website called DadFirst.net, where he documented his journey as a dad.

Watching his videos and reading his posts broke my heart. It made me reflect on my own life and my own kids. Inspired by TJ, I reached out to a friend about creating a similar website where I could write about fatherhood and anything else on my mind. That’s how we came up with “The Life of a Dad.” My goal was to write at least once a month—mainly for my family. If something ever happened to me, I wanted to leave behind more than just memories and photos. I wanted my kids to have my thoughts, my stories, and my perspective on life—something they could look back on long after I’m gone.

Life gets busy, and over the years, I never had much “extra time” to consistently post. But the good news is, I wrote down plenty of thoughts and reflections along the way—I just never got around to sharing them. Now, I finally have the site up and running, a place where I can document family experiences, life lessons, business ideas, and personal thoughts on everything from vacations to sports to the unpredictability of life itself.

This website exists because of TJ Turner. He unknowingly motivated me to start writing and reflecting on life as a father. I can’t change the past—I wish I had reconnected with him before he passed—but I hope this site will serve as a meaningful collection of memories, just as his posts did for so many. While it’s mainly for my family, others might stumble upon it and find value, inspiration, or even just a laugh.

I wish TJ were still here so I could thank him personally. I know we’d have some incredible conversations, just like we did back on the football field.