Thanks to . . .
I grew up in Northeast Texas on the rural edge of a small dairy town, reading - like scripture - all kinds of animals, gardens, fruit and nut trees, and grandparents.
My first career was teaching college English, the second was pastoring in an evangelical church, and the last was developing curricula for a firm that educated commercial real estate managers. I've always enjoyed packaging information people found useful.
Along the way, I've usually been preoccupied with spiritual stuff. In the beginning, that meant religion, but eventually the languages the arts use won out over the ones theologies use. Looking back now, I can see that I was always just wondering how to expand calm and cheer, how to shrink fear and anger and impatience and judgmental rigidity.
In the years after leaving home, The Search kicked into high gear. Reading books may have helped de-construct some of the cherished wreckage I'd inherited, but it didn't give me anything to do that might modify feelings and behavior; I just evolved into a more and more intelligent jerk. But, when something struck me as a useful insight, I did jot it down in a journal, trying to develop a technology of faith, some way to apply tools for well-being that were becoming more and more obvious. I was like a city-dweller who wanted to eat organic tomatoes, knew all about it, but didn't plant seeds, keep them watered, get dirty, and repel pests. Mainly, I complained about the food I was eating.
Finally, about midway through writing these Reflections, I actually started to meditate. It was an instant fit; the side-effects were very nice. I've been sitting zazen for five years now. It seems to "weed the garden" fairly well. What still occupies me steadily is just how to become more alive, less stuck in afflictive emotions, more present to "Things As It Is [sic]."
Maybe one or two of these little artifacts might prove useful to your evolution, too.