Jeremy D Scholz

I was destined to be a writer; I’ve been telling stories my entire life. In middle school, I created comic books. In high school, I wrote poetry and lyrics. As an adult, idea after idea crashed over me like waves. I was meant to create through art, music, photography, but storytelling has always been my true calling.

For much of my life, unseen obstacles kept me from fully embracing that calling. Throughout my K–12 years, I sensed something was wrong with me. I didn’t have a name for it then. Maybe I was a master of masking, or maybe the understanding simply wasn’t there. What I was left with was the deep, painful impression that I was stupid.

I took time off from education, partly in rebellion against my father, who believed success was impossible without a degree, and partly because I doubted I had what it took for college. During that time, I worked a variety of blue-collar jobs, construction, auto repair, trucking, grocery, roadwork, manufacturing. I loved the physical work and prided myself on matching any coworker in pure efficiency.

It was my sister, a teacher herself, who first suggested I consider education. “You’d be good at it,” she said. I decided to try. I earned a bachelor’s degree in Organizational Leadership, fascinated by how humans behave in groups, especially under stress. That knowledge led me to a teaching credential and, eventually, to my place in 7th grade science, a perfect fit for my perpetually twelve-year-old heart. As my sister predicted, I was good at it. I was honored as County Teacher of the Year in just my fifth year.

Then, after 25 years of teaching, came a moment of clarity: I was diagnosed with severe ADHD and dysgraphia. Suddenly, my life made sense, the relentless creativity, the difficulty writing it all down, the feeling of being stuck inside my own mind. I chose to begin treatment, a deeply personal decision. For me, it was as if someone turned on the lights. The stories that had lived inside me for decades began pouring out. As I typed, the characters who had waited patiently inside my imagination came alive. I got literal goosebumps watching them face the world I’d created.

This writing is the life I was meant for. I’m ecstatic to finally share these stories, and these characters, with others.