Introducing: Tim Ebl

Author, adventurer, mindful mentor

I’m going to pretend that this isn’t awkward and contrived at all. I look at other author introductions and feel like I can’t come up with anything that even the most desperate for entertainment would read.

Fair warning: I have trouble taking life seriously. I may attempt to be humorous.

Who am I? I mean, who am I really?

I don’t want to describe myself by where I am, or what do I do for a living. Not by what I’ve written, or what I’ve experienced. Not by who I’m related to, or who I know. Not by the things I learned so far. Not with my gender or my skin color.

Not by my species or my level of sentience. Not with the plane of existence I currently am resonating with.

Those things aren’t the real me. That’s just the mask.

What? You mean you JUST want to know about the mask? Well, why didn’t you say so?

I currently identify as human.

I’m a white dude in his early 50’s who lives in Alberta, Canada. That means I’m privileged, entitled but polite. At least I know it! I’m married to a wonderful woman who apparently can put up with random shenanigans and way too much science fiction. We have a cat.

I meditate every day. I practice yoga nearly every day.

I watch B movies on purpose.

I don’t enjoy Medieval Chamber Music. Not enough electric guitar.

I am not a Flat Earther. But I do think it might be turtles, all the way down.

A Brief History of My Universe:

A lot of sad, unpleasant things happened to me for pretty much my first two decades on Earth. Then I escaped captivity and went feral. Others call this feral stage being in their 20's.

I mated and raised three offspring: two boys and a girl. They inherited or learned as much silliness and independence as I could shove in their faces. Then they fled to far away locations like Vancouver, Canada and Melbourne, Australia.

I had a “midlife crisis” about 10 years ago.

That sounds pretty normal, right? Having a phase where everything goes from black and white to a dull, depressing shade of gray? Contemplating your life and wondering if it should continue? Buying a sports car and driving too fast? Trying dozens of activities to distract myself from the fact that I didn’t know if life had any meaning? Totally normal.

In 2016, I wrote my first book called Demons in the Cellar. It was about those sad, unpleasant things that happened to me when I was a kid. I let it all hang out, and got it off my chest. I self published that one and moved on. I didn’t write much at all for almost three years.

In 2019, I co-authored my second book with my good friend Kyla Dagenais. It’s called The 90 Day Meditation Challenge: How to Build a Daily Mindfulness Habit. It’s live on Amazon and doing its job of helping people. Collaborating on this book was one of the best experiences in my life.

I wrote a third book and put it out on Amazon too. It’s called Hiking Survival Guide for Day Hikers and Solo Hikers: Make Memories and Get Out Alive! I didn’t promote this guide at all and hardly anyone’s read it. But I had a lot of fun writing it.

The Recent Past

This spring, like a lot of other people, I got evicted from my day job by a virus.Thankfully, everyone I know is healthy and safe.

I became an unemployed Empty Nester hanging out with his wife and cat all day. That was great for a couple weeks, until I ran out of junk food and Netflix got boring. I was spending a lot of time worrying about the world’s problems and the fact that someday I would need to look for work.

It was too much. I needed something to do. I got off the couch and started writing for Medium. And guess what? I’m really enjoying it! I even made a couple bucks last month!

What’s Next For Our Hero?

Here’s where I’m supposed to share my BIG PLANS. Like dominating the world, or building a massive spy organization that span the entire globe. Or better mousetraps.

I’m working on small things instead.

I’m trying to live one day at a time. I’m learning to write every single day. I’m becoming persistent, consistent and ever present. You know, like dirty laundry or dishes in the sink.

Okay, bad metaphors. Maybe more like oxygen. Or Stephen King. He’s an element, isn’t he?

What I discovered about writing articles instead of books is that I get a sense of accomplishment every time I finish one. It’s small doses of satisfaction.

Writing a book means a few months of writing, rewriting, formatting and suffering, and then bam! Publish and promote. And then exhaustion. Maybe I was just doing it wrong. But for me, I couldn’t develop a solid writing habit because I was working on a by-the -project basis. I need daily consistency to really grow as a writer.

So there you go. This is one of my masks. I’m putting the finishing touches on a few more. Maybe I’ll wear them for you next time!

Of the stories I’ve written lately, I like this one the most: