Ever since I was in grade school, all the way through Junior College, all of my instructors kept telling me to be a writer. Friends always pestered me as well. I began a few stories and never got past CH 1 due to laziness and cowardliness. One copy of one of my starts did get out in a building I was living in, and I had people banging on my door all hours of the night wanting me to do another chapter, but.... 
God graced me with, not only a very radical imagination but with being very mechanically inclined. I was a Jack Of All Trades and a Master of Most. I was injured on the job in 97 and had my spine twisted 180 degrees. I couldn't return to work, so I drove trucks over the road for over 10 years, until my back and health went bye-bye on me.