An introduction, of sorts

If you've not followed my previous blog or know me from social media, you may be asking yourself (or not) 'Who the hell is Chris Fitzner?'. I could be facetious and simply reply: Chris Fitzner is me.  But that's not funny nor is it helpful.

'Chris Fitzner' is my pen name, created from parts of my actual names (I have a confusing assortment of legal and married names).  I am an early thirty-something presently living in Atlantic Canada (Nova Scotia, to be more precise), though not Canadian by birth.  Sometime in the early 1980s, I popped into being on a military base in the southern United States and then grew up in lovely southern Michigan.  The arts  have always been in my blood and family encouraged it.  I could read by the age of three and chapter books by grade one, which may have been around the time I began craving to tell my own stories.

Random fact: I don't like being read to and never have.  It may be why I wanted to learn to read so early.

The library was (and still is) one of my favourite places on earth and few things overwhelm me more than a room stacked to the rafters with books.

Life pulled me in different directions, I love to sketch and paint as well and do crafts (thanks to my amazing grandmother, who is an incredible talent in her own right).  Music became my passion later and I sang and played the flute throughout the teenage years.  I still held onto the tiny kernel of the writing dream, stories still pulsed through my blood but the words did not come.

Paint and canvas covered the twenties while still voraciously reading novels, histories, biographies.  I fell in love, I moved to another country and struggled with all of the things that come when you've left everything you had ever known behind.

Anxiety and depression have been a common theme in my life since early puberty and I kind of figured they were here to stay when they didn't vanish after the hormonal surge of my teenage years.  They're the things that lock me up tight in my own mind and nothing happens; no writing, no painting (no singing, no reading).  Nothing.  After a lot of work (and still constant work), some tweaking of medications and a couple of rounds of therapy, I'm in the best mental health of my life and I'm here, learning, breathing, writing.

I want to tell you stories and I hope you'll let me.