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Today's Featured Biography

Rick West

Okay...I promised Shawna and Mark I'd get this done a couple of months ago, but things are usually pretty busy around our home (people to see, places to be!). I'm a long-winded kind of guy when I'm forced to type, but I'll try to keep it simple and to the point:

After high school I was kind of lost for a time and ended up enlisted in the U.S. Navy as a photographer. It was there that I really started to get to know myself and found some solid direction for the first time. I spent the next decade or so amusing myself, testing the waters and doing all the things that I had been too scared, repressed, controlled or ignorant to give a shot before and I was delighted to find out just how amazing the world is once I stopped being a coward and started being a part of it. I really never “got it” growing up in Deerfield just how much there would be to see, taste, smell, touch and listen too once I stepped out of my shell, but I’m thankful every day that my path (however convoluted and erratic at times) brought me to the place and person that I am now.
For a time I lived in Michigan and then Kentucky, but I ended up back in Garden City for several years (had to work through the last of the family angst) before moving to Lawrence (the spot I currently call home). I’ve been here for something approaching 5 years and I LOVE it. I never thought I’d find a spot in this State to fall so in love with, but Lawrence has brought me quite the unexpected bag of blessings (most notably, the love of my life, the thing that makes me smile all the time, Casey). I came out of the closet sometime in the early 90’s and was lucky enough to find my chosen vocation around the same time (I work with individuals with Developmental Disabilities). I’ve been doing that for, wow...a bunch of years now (with some periodic breaks to avoid burnout). If someone had told me in high school that I’d spend my life working with folks with special needs, I think I would’ve been somehow offended and flatly announced that it would NEVER happen. *lol* I can’t express how amazing it is to have a job wherein you do something positive for someone else everyday, no matter how bad that day may be.
All in all, my world is a reasonably stable (with “stable” being a relative term *lol*) and generally content place to be. Casey and I recently passed the two-year mark and I’m lucky enough to live in a place with lots of live music, creative people and interesting things to do and see. Aside from just having the trappings of gratuitous wealth (for the perks!) I wouldn’t change a lot. *Smile*

Well, provided that doesn't sound like some demented personal ad, I'll wrap this up. I hope that everyone else is having a good time as well and it should be an interesting experience to attend the twenty-year reunion. Thanks again to Mark and Shawna for tracking me down and renewing old friendships.

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