Tell us a little about yourself.
I grew up in Pekin, Illinois, and graduated from high school in 2005. I’m happily married with five children, and these days only one still lives at home.
In 2019, my wife and I bought our home in Williamsport, Indiana. My wife is a registered nurse, and I work as a correctional lieutenant at an Illinois state prison.
How did all of this begin?
I was always creative as a kid, but for a long time life had a way of pushing that creativity into the background.
As a teenager, I worked at a video rental store and became fascinated by movies—not just the stories themselves, but the emotions they could leave with you long after they were over.
Around 2021, I started developing an idea for a found-footage feature film. I spent a lot of time thinking about the story, but eventually life took over again and the idea was set aside.
Then, around 2025, my youngest child became interested in YouTube, filmmaking, and editing. Helping him explore his creativity sparked something in me that had been quiet for a long time.
What started as helping him create became the beginning of my own journey back into storytelling.
Today, I’m building Eight Creek Productions while helping him explore his own creativity. I have a fully scripted short film in production, several other shorts in pre-production, a couple of feature-film concepts in development, and that old found-footage idea has evolved into something completely different—and is now about halfway written.
What disappeared for a while never really went away. It just took the right moment to come back.
Anything you want to tell the people reading this?
Life gets busy. Responsibilities take over. Years can pass. But that doesn’t mean the creative part of you is gone.
Sometimes it just takes the right person, the right moment, or the right idea to bring it back.
Surround yourself with people who encourage you, challenge you, and motivate you to pursue the things you once thought were unrealistic.
I’ll leave you with a quote I came up with many years ago and have tried to live by ever since:
“The world is what we make it and we make our own destiny, so why not make your destiny the world”