Determined

November 19th, 2025
​
As I sit here writing my second novel (half way through), I find myself looking back at the crazy year I just had.
 
The year started with a question mark around my ability to work five days a week. I had taken a job way below my skill set two years ago, driving a forklift for an American Multi-national company to support my family. I became their hardest working and most reliable employee in Montreal.
 
In March 2025, I would turn 65 (Retirement age) and had decided that if I was to continue working, it should only be for a maximum of four days a week because I no longer had the energy to work a five-day week…and I wanted more time to write.
 
I put in a request for a four-day week, but unfortunately, the company refused (three times), leaving me with an important decision. Should I continue working for them or should I look elsewhere?
 
However, to make matters worse, after my request, they enforced a rigid rule that would compromise my personal safety as a forklift driver and the safety of others in the warehouse because of it. I tried it their way, under duress, but couldn’t continue working under dangerous circumstances. In essence, they left me no choice and so I gave them a two week notice and retired. My last day of work for this American multi-national was June 9th, 2025. Good f*cken riddance! 😉
 
Meanwhile as all this was going on, I wrote and released my 5th book (The Activist Poet Volume IV) released on May 25th, 2025. But just as I was trying to market the book, the four books in this series, including the new one, were removed from the Amazon website June 6th, 2025 at a very critical marketing phase. I fought hard to get my books back online and finally succeeded around July 12th.
 
I started a new part time job on July 13th, and so with my books back up online and a new job, it looked like things were finally going my way. That is until July 18th, when I had a massive heart attack.
 
The stress I was under this year was enormous and while under stress we tend to go off our diets, which is what happened to me…although heart disease doesn’t happen over night. However, my diet choices from February to July certainly didn’t make things better. The bright spot was that I had kept up with my workout routine two to three days a week, which made my body strong.
 
I’m now well into my 15th week of recovery after having open heart surgery with a quadruple bypass on August 1st, 2025.
 
The doctors had to rebuild my heart with pieces of me; large vein from my left leg, one artery from my left arm and three other arteries taken from around my heart.
 
The initial shock of having a heart attack didn’t really register at first, not until I received the results of my angiogram. Before the angiogram, it was mentioned I would probably need a stent in one of the arteries and that, if so, it would be done right there and then during the angiogram.
 
However, when they brought the bad news to me in the recovery area, that six arteries were blocked and that I would need a quadruple bypass operation, I went numb…
 
Yet, even still, there were many depressing avenues I could have gone down, but I didn’t. And here I have to say that the reason was that I had a premonition, years and months earlier, that I was going to survive this moment. I saw beyond it, and it was this: me as a silhouette in a black and white scene being wheeled out of the hospital by my son…(and that did indeed, happen.)
 
Intuition and vision have played an important part in my life, but it was only when I began to listen that it made any sense. I went into the operation knowing I would come out of it, and I knew I would do so with a focused determination to heal in a short period of time….and guess what? I have! 😉 Positive attitude is everything.
 
Now in hindsight, I see that the operation I underwent was an ending of a cycle on my journey and the beginning of a new one. Going forward, it will be my last task, and one that my whole life has prepared me for…I will continue writing. I have more time for it now. I don’t know if I will be successful or not, but the premonition says, I will be successful, later down the road.
 
There is one thing about me that is very true, and it is this; when I set my mind to doing something, I not only do it, but I do it with a determination to win. I may fail at first, but failure is but a step in a learning phase and I never quit when I have my eye on the ball.
 
I have been a champion in whatever I put my mind to my whole life. Novel writing will not be any different. I’m half way through writing my second novel which continues the intriguing mystery thriller from the first novel, “The Shard of Asclepius”. If you haven’t read the first one, you are missing out on a great story. Christmas is around the corner, so why not support a Canadian, shadow banned, independent author?
 
I’ll be spending more time here on my author’s website in the coming months to keep you up to date with the new book but also to share positive energy in a world gone completely mad…and if you want to talk about the madness, I can do that to…Talk soon! 😊
 
Stewart

---