#2) Introducing Mel


Hello, and welcome back to "Always Be Better." I am Melvyn Windham, and today I will introduce myself so you may understand what I have to offer and what you can look forward to in future videos.

One thing you'll learn is that I'm always busy. I'm always pursuing and learning new things. I hate being bored, so I hope to teach you how to enjoy life like I do.

I'm also a funny and energetic guy, able to spontaneously change most words into bad puns. You may notice my funny voice, which I use often to my advantage. Eventually I hope to find ways to bring this energy and humor to this series, but I haven't figured out how to do that just yet ... so be patient.


I'm a musician -- able to play the piano, trumpet, French horn, and organ. I'm also a composer, having written hours of music. I have a Masters degree, but stopped there because I didn't like the academia.

I own my own sheet music company, Melkim Publishing, entering its fifth year. At first it was meant to publish my own music, but then it has branched out to include other composers such as Daniel Carter, Geoff Groberg, and others.

I'm also a mathematician and an actuary. My father taught me math, chess, science, and logic at a very young age. By 4 I was reading college level texts. So yeah, I was that crazy genius kid who always made A's in math and helped other kids with their homework. In high school I scored a 156 on an IQ test. Boom! Though, as you might guess, I struggled in classes like social studies and biology where things aren't so clear-cut and logical.


Here I am a few years ago earning the Associate designation from the Casualty Actuarial Society. I was very happy that day, after years of very difficult work and passing exams. I've worked with two insurance companies in the past, and now I'm at a bank working with models, and doing a lot of programming and automation, trying to make life easier for my coworkers. 

I love to program. I learned BASIC in 6th grade and have programmed all of the rest of my life, which for some reason has opened up many doors. I'm also an incorrigible logistician who's known to terrorize my friends. One thing you'll learn from this series is how to spot logical fallacies. 

I also love philosophy, which usually goes well in hand with math, logic, and music. So, you'll hear plenty of this, but in small doses.

I'm also very strong in my church -- a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So, we'll be touching on religion somewhat -- not so much an attempt to convert, but rather to talk about what we can learn from religion -- you'll see when we get there. I promise to make it interesting.

I'm a staunch believer in science, and you'll hear from that as well. I have some crazy fun topics in that area, the first of which I'll present in a couple of weeks. And you'll learn quickly that I love astronomy.

I am also an aspiring writer. I've yet to publish my first book, but I've won a couple of prizes with my short stories, which tend to be sci-fi. I'm currently up to six blogs, and I've definitely written my first million words. Also, many ideas haunt me waiting to be written.

Links:

I can speak two and a half languages. After living in Korea for two years I became fluent in Korean, though I need to refresh it. I can understand Spanish about 70% listening and 90% reading ... I'm terrible at speaking it, but I'm working on it. I've also started a series of learning other languages: French, Japanese, Chinese, Russian, Italian, German, and perhaps others down the road.

You'll also learn that I'm politically moderate. I was raised as a Democrat, but then switched to Republican after I learned economics. And now I belong to no party. I consider myself to be fiscally conservative and progressive on social issues. Most of all, as you will learn, I believe that solutions exist for all of our problems, and they are not all found with just one party. There will be much more on this later.


And finally, here is the woman I married. We'll be wrapping up three decades shortly.


And here are my four kids enjoying life. You'll hear some stories I learned throughout life -- stories about my family and friends, maybe some mistakes I've made, and some great things I've witnessed.

When I'm not taking over the world, I'm relaxing through video games, TV, movies, anime, hiking, and sightseeing. I love it all.

So, we'll see how this goes. My goal is to help you enjoy life and then to go and help others to enjoy life. And I want you to have fun. There is so much to discuss and learn, and I hope to learn from you as we progress.

Over the next week, I'd like you to look over your own life ... for now don't dwell on the bad stuff. Just think about the things you enjoy. What are your strengths? We'll come back later to figure out how you can build on these and do more of the things you love to do.

Thanks for watching, and remember ... we can Always Be Better.

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