My Turn

Jon Acton
3 min readNov 11, 2023

My Turn

My Turn — I have thought of, created, modified, or outright stolen several slogans over the years. Some include Expect Victory, Always Compete, Win Forever, Defend the Valley, Onward we Sail, Fire all the cannons, and a list of other (what I thought were snappy) and not so snappy phrases. Short word configurations put together to hopefully, convey a larger and deeper meaning. So too does My Turn

My Turn — Is not a grouping of “poor me” paragraphs, but hopefully a new rallying cry for anyone who has gotten “the” you know what knocked out of you by Life. For quite some time, Life has been kicking my posterior. Dating back to 1992, when I came close to taking a dirt nap by coding from a massive Crohn’s attack to present day cancer PLUS other not so fun things can make each day challenging to different degrees. Add some humdinger job and relationship stressors, mental fatigue, some never acknowledged anxiety and the “stuff” has hit the fan. Honestly, the word is not “stuff.” Again, this is not a “poor me” post because I KNOW, many other people have daily challenges that far exceed my own.

My Turn is the realization that I have become reactionary to Life. Maybe some of you reading this have as well. Somewhere along the line I became a punching bag for Life, focused on absorbing one of life’s hits after another. Get knocked down, find a way to crawl, scratch and climb back up stubbornly, even defiantly and keep going. I realize those are positive qualities because the alternative is to yell loudly into the dark void that the world is not…

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Jon Acton

Husband, Father, Former School Superintendent, National Blue Ribbon School Principal, Teacher, Coach, Author in progress