My middle daughter told me that my about page was too long. She said people are only interested in 2 paragraphs. I'll come back later and work on that.

I am a fifth generation Biloxi born Byrd boy. Like my uncles, I never imagined living anywhere but in the former Seafood Capital of the World, Biloxi. But once I left, I never imagined returning. The more I see of this place we call Earth, the more I want to see. By now I have spent nearly six years living outside the USA learning a lot about other cultures, lives, traditions, histories, the food, but also a great perspective back on my homeland. I still have the same values, thoughts, and aspirations I had, but now I've seen that Mark Twain was right, travel is fatal to prejudice. The more I see of this giant planet on which we live, the smaller it becomes.

My hobbies include writing, especially literary fiction, but even that takes a back seat to my wife and three daughters. They don't mean the world to me; they are the world to me.

I hope you see something on my website that makes you think whether we agree or disagree with one another. Together we can talk, discuss, debate, argue, and grow. Thanks for visiting and not telling Lizi I busted the 2 paragraph limit.

About the Website

Several years back, I shifted my website from Wordpress to Squarespace. I didn't like my old host because I had an awful lot of downtime, a problem I have never had with Squarespace. Welcome to Byrd Droppings, my website full of writings, thoughts, emotions, and me.

It started as a blog entitled The Hole on the End of the Bible Belt. It was my thoughts on things with the perspective of living in the deep South where I was born, raised, and had spent most but not all of my life to that point. After a few years, though, I took a job outside the Bible Belt of the US. And so the blog changed. For a better explanation of why I changed the name, see my post Blog Transitioned.

The job I took was almost half world away. In an active combat zone. Where Americans are targets, ignorance is rampant, yet good people still exist in large numbers. And a new promise is constantly on the horizon. During A Year Without Wearing a Tie, I was able to see the United States from the outside for the first time. I was able to experience Afghanistan and did indeed not wear a tie for an entire year. Sixteen months later, I got another job on the Gulf Coast and partly because of the aforementioned technical challenges, had mostly stopped posting. Soon though, I started briefly back.

This time the daily commute had turned from a grind into a chore. My office was 120 miles from my house and I drove in every single day. People asked me if I worked over the Bay and I said yes—over Mobile, Biloxi, and Bay St. Louis. After doing that while I took another job far from home. Really it was the same job, but in a different place. Not the Bible Belt, not the Sand Box, but Europe. So my family and I moved, again. This was a challenging move, and I realized it was time to re-name the blog, again. To something that more matched what I was doing, a life Outside the Comfort Bubble. But somehow my blogging had changed to mostly just travels and odd thoughts.

Our European travels were informative, entertaining, and rewarding, but life goes on. Family issues back home had us stretched between where we were, where we wanted to be, and where we needed to be. At times all three of those were the same and all three were separate. So during the pandemic year we moved back to the hidden jewel of the State of Alabama. If you thought the pandemic was tough, trying making an intercontinental move during it. Challenges abounded, but we weathered them and settled back in to life in side the bubble.

But by now I have realized that no matter which way you split it up, this website is full of the Byrd Droppings I have dispersed literally around the world. The thoughts, the musings, the collected works of fiction, non-fiction, and untested stand-up comedy are contained in here. Some serious, some not so serious, but all a part of the story of Byrdmouse.

There are links at the bottom of each page to some short stories and some works in progress, my allegorical novella, If, and my historical fiction novel Seafood Capital of the World.

I would love to hear your thoughts on any of my work. Maybe I'm a young Faulkner, maybe not, maybe I just shout into the winds of a hurricane and remain a legend in my own mind. You don't have to tell me which is the case; I think we both know the answer.

It may be that I'm too attached to the website name to try something new. Maybe I've re-named and shifted by blog too many times and it's time to start over. Or maybe I've just been too busy growing and becoming who I should be. Whatever it is, I'm still up for the ride. Let's see where we head to next.