About Me

(Last updated September 14, 2025)

Hey folks, thanks for visiting my little journal/blog/make-the-world-a-better-place website… thing. 😊

If there’s anything I’d want you to know about me, it’s that more than anything, I want to make a difference for good everywhere I go. I want the world to be a better place for my having been born–for every person’s life to be brighter when I’m around, and for every place to be better because I was there.

I want to spend my whole life encouraging, inspiring, lifting, loving, and serving every person with whom I come in contact. I want to be an influence for love and peace and light, and as many other good things as I can be, as far and as wise as I possibly can. 🥰

I also want to be the very best person that I’m capable of being. I want to be kind, compassionate, gentle, understanding, humble, and filled to overflowing with love for every living person and creature on this earth.

These, greatest of all my desires, are my dream, my passion, my hope, my heart… my life.

🥰

Though I have these dreams (and have had them for a good chunk of my life, if not all), I am very much a work in progress: I still struggle, significantly, to live up to my own ideals; and while I’ve tried to do many very good things in my life, I’ve also done bad things as well, and to my sorrow, have caused others pain along the way.

My hope is that I can make amends for any and all of the bad things that I’ve done and spend the rest of my life just… lifting the world.

🤞😊

And that brings me to this blog:

I hope that by sharing my life, my thoughts, and my experiences via this blog–the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly–that this blog can be a means of lifting the world, of comforting those who are struggling, of helping people feel understood and loved. I hope it can be a resource of hope and strength and courage for all who might find themselves in pain of any kind. I hope that, at the very least, it’s a source to help others feel that they are not alone.

I hope to pass on to the other side having left the people who knew me or knew of me feeling understood, safe, and loved for who they are, where they are–petals, thorns, and all.

So that’s the most important stuff. 🙂

Other potentially interesting details:

I’ve been a paperboy, a LDS missionary, a salesman (briefly), a student (spent time at three different colleges/universities 😶), a teacher, a freelance writer, a customer service/tech support person, a mason’s assistant, a car detailer, a car mechanic, and I’m currently getting my Lift The World organization off the ground… (might be missing some things 🤷).

What else…

I’ve had the great privilege of traveling all over the United States and to many countries of the world (I think I’ve maybe been to 45ish of the 50 states, 20ish countries, and six of the seven continents), though some of those countries only very briefly (I’ve only been inside an airport in Australia, for example. 🙃)

I have lots of fun stories and experiences, ranging from the exciting to the embarrassing to the harrowing. 🙂

Let’s see… what else… added up over time, I’ve spent probably 3 years of my life living in a vehicle 🚗/🚐 (gratefully, by choice).

I’ve generally been a devout Christian (despite my many personal failings in that effort), specifically a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints. At times, however, I’ve struggled with my faith in God. I’ve been all in, and I’ve been mostly out. I’ve turned my face toward God, and I’ve turned away in anger and rage.

Currently, I’m striving to be all in, and I hope I forever stay all in.

It’s been quite the journey.

I’m now in my [gulp] 40s. 😶 I’m single. I’ve never been married. I have no children.

And that’s been… really hard.

My greatest desire for this life is to have my special someone at my side all day everyday–from now through eternity–as we, together, gave our entire hearts, souls, and lives–united as one–to love and serve and lift each other and the world in every way we were able.

[sigh]

That’s my picture-perfect life.

Unfortunately… it’s not a current reality. 🙃

What is reality is that not only do I lack the companion I long for, but I almost qualify to be the fourth installment of The 40-Year-Old Virgin tetralogy. 😆

I still call my 2000 Ford e250 high-top van (affectionately named Rover) my home and have for nearly the last year and a half! 🚐

#vanlife 🙃

His name is Rover 😊

There’s no running water, but I finally got a 12 volt cooler and a small microwave, and it’s shelter and transportation all in one. 😊

I actually love van life. 🥰

Currently, I live in South Dakota, having traveled here after a long road trip through the western United States. I stopped here to try and help my sister and brother in law build their house, but I haven’t been able to help her make much progress, unfortunately.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to help make more progress in the future.

We are relatively out in the country here, which is nice, as being outdoors, away from human creations, is my haven, my heaven… my home.

I likely won’t stay very long, however. The next chapter of my life appears to be in New Zealand, and I’ll be heading there for about 6 months, if not longer (depending on Visa restrictions).

Gratefully, one of the things that helps make my lifting-the-world dreams more possible than ever before is the job I was able to get in January of 2024 working as an online mechanic, helping to answer customer’s questions via chat and phone calls.

Though I’m not making anywhere near as much money as I was before, and though I can sense that there’s not much more time I’m going to be spending in that particular position, at least for the time being, I can work when I want and where I want, which is the perfect combination to be able to pay for the necessities of life while having the flexibility to spend the next 6 months (starting late October) writing a book and getting Lift The World off the ground, so I can finally live my dream of giving my all to change and lift the world. 🙃

The time is now.

I’m excited. 🙂 I’m scared. 😅

Bring it on. All of it. God will see me through.

🙏

So anyway, that’s where things are for me right now. 🙂

I hope this little blog thing is a blessing to you.

Feel free to send me messages, ask me questions, make comments–whatever you’d like. The blog part is just about my life, the things I believe, the things I’m learning, and it, hopefully, chronicles some good things I’ve tried and will continue to try to do to lift the world.

As far as the contents are concerned, I want to be completely transparent with everything in my life, but that’s hard when there are other peoples’ lives intertwined with mine, and I want to respect their privacy even when I’m not really concerned about my own.

Accordingly, I can’t be completely transparent without risking injuring others, but to the degree I can share without causing harm to others, I will.

I hope that by sharing just about everything, from my triumphs, to even the deepest, darkest, most “shameful” parts of my life, that it will help others to know they’re not alone, that we can be good people and still struggle with challenging and embarrassing things.

If you’re reading this, and you feel I’ve wronged you in any way, if there are amends I need to make, please send me a message, and I’ll do my best to mend what I’ve broken.

I really do mean that.

It’s my goal to leave every person and every place better than I found them. I hope I can do the same for you.

My love to all of you.

Lift the World.

~ Stephen

P.S. If you’d like to learn a little bit more about me and my life, click on the links below at your leisure. I think I wrote most of them while I was a bit sad, so please forgive any negative undertone. I will be going back through each one periodically to make edits in an effort to provide the most-accurate representation of my life that my memory is capable of 😊.

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