I stopped drinking.
A spiritual experience gave me a sudden desire to live and a new direction.
Sean Short | The story behind the work
I learned the power of words when I had very little else.
My path into writing, publishing, science, farming, and business began through a difficult chapter. There was a time in my life when I struggled with alcohol. What began as belonging, rebellion, and social status became a false identity that nearly consumed me. I had to decide how much life I would give that chapter.
Author. Farmer. Systems builder. A life rebuilt through useful work.
Clear words create movement when a person, idea, or truth is stuck.
Before the books, I wrote for the men around me
The jailhouse scribe
Words became a way to find what mattered.
I learned the practical power of words in jail. I began with poetry and the story of my own life. For the first time in years, I could hear a voice I had suppressed since I was young. Then I became the guy other men asked to write their letters, requests, and arguments when they could not find the words themselves.
Some brought facts. Some brought frustration. Some brought a few pieces sketched on paper and a result they desperately needed. My job was to listen, find what mattered, and return something another person could actually use.
Only later did I recognize that I was learning the work I still do today.
Clear words can turn scattered pieces into useful movement.
Rebuilding in the real world
Recovery changed my direction. Daily choices rebuilt my life.
My turning point unfolded across ten months working at The Aquaponic Source, Easter 2017, stopping drinking on April 19, 2017, a suicide attempt in jail, the promise I made afterward, poetry and writing my life story, becoming the jailhouse scribe, being released on probation in late July 2017, entering Oxford House, and losing my brother Kyle.
Released on probation.
I entered sober living and started rebuilding through work, responsibility, and service.
Kyle died.
Losing my brother changed my perspective, spiritual practice, and sense of identity.
I bought my first home.
An ordinary, concrete milestone in a life being rebuilt one choice at a time.
Accepted into Johns Hopkins.
Science, systems, and evidence became a deeper part of how I understood the world.
I met Ryan Smith.
That relationship helped turn personal rebuilding into a larger mission.
Blooming Health Farms began.
We built around agriculture, entrepreneurship, mentorship, and justice-involved youth.
The farm became real.
We received 501(c)(3) status in March and sold our first produce in August.
During that period, I experienced what I can only describe as the presence of God, pure love, and a sudden desire to live. I had never experienced anything like it.
The transformation was sudden. The rebuilding was daily.
My old pattern was to sleep on a friend's or family member's couch and promise that everything would change. This time I entered sober living. I volunteered at the food bank. I ran food at a burger restaurant. I worked in quality at a machine shop. I took on responsibility before I felt impressive.
I describe that chapter this way: there was a time in my life when I struggled with alcohol. Sobriety began a longer process of facing my record, repairing my finances, and working through residual anger.
The practices that still hold
- Exercise and meditation
- Writing often
- Listening to other people
- At least one selfless act for another living being
- Teaching and selling what I know
- Giving my best to the work
- Communion with the Tao and community with mankind
Grief, ordination, and identity
Losing Kyle changed everything again.
My brother Kyle died on December 17, 2017. His loss put life in a different perspective. It influenced my decision to become ordained and deepened my effort to connect with my higher self, Source, God, and the Tao. Grief forced me to ask who I was beneath attachment, performance, the criminal record, and the false identity alcohol had supplied.
Growing food and growing people
Then the work became bigger than my own recovery.
I met clinical counselor Ryan Smith in February 2019, and we founded Blooming Health Farms on April 12, 2019. We wanted to use agriculture, entrepreneurship, and mentorship to give justice-involved young people a practical path forward.
I brought home the backyard chickens at the end of 2021. One young person who struggled in a classroom took responsibility for a flock, learned the work, and sold ten dozen eggs at market in minutes. He told me, “Chickens are the way.” He was right.
The farm became a place where science, animal care, sales, responsibility, and second chances could exist in the same system.
Kids stuck in the cycle are my why.
I talk about incarceration because I was once a kid stuck in that cycle. I have spent the next chapter building the kind of practical path I once needed.
Accountability continued after 2017
Every future choice remained mine to make.
If someone pays for a court-record search or hires an investigator to look into my past, they will find more than the chapter that ended when I stopped drinking in 2017. They will find criminal charges and convictions. They will also find a later case, a plea agreement, a deferred sentence, probation, the revocation of that deferred sentence, and another period of incarceration.
The court record shows legal allegations and outcomes. The complete actions, context, and human nuance live beyond those entries. I accept the record as part of my history while keeping private details and other people's lives off the public page.
I made another serious choice after I stopped drinking. I received probation and disagreed with some of its conditions. I treated that disagreement as if it made the judge's order optional. The order still applied.
I refused to comply. The deferred sentence was revoked, and I was sentenced to 60 days in Larimer County work release. I began serving that sentence in October 2023.
The resulting record continues to restrict parts of civilian life. It affects my firearms rights and licensing, kept me from government-contract opportunities, and still influences professional and personal decisions.
This chapter belongs in the story because honest rebuilding includes later failures, responsibility, and continuing consequences.
Transformation changed my direction. Accountability still depends on my next choice.
From field knowledge to books
The ideas kept outgrowing the room.
Farm, feed, water, and systems work kept producing explanations I had to give again and again. Writing gave those ideas a durable form.
JUNE 2022
I began Thinking Outside The Soil and finished the manuscript in 29 days.
OCTOBER 2022
I published the book and began a professional turn toward writing, publishing, and intellectual property.
FALL 2023
I ran for Greeley City Council at-large while serving my sentence at the Larimer County Alternative Sentencing Division and published the revised edition while in work release. Who runs for public office from work release? Apparently, I do.
NOW
That path became Author(ity) Unleashed, IP to Print, and Blooming Scribe Media.
Expertise becomes a manuscript when the expert chooses the argument, organizes the evidence, tells the stories, and puts their name behind the conclusion.
AI can help carry the labor. The author supplies the lived experience, accountability, and final judgment.
Media and public proof
A body of work built in public.
Sean's work has been covered through local, regional, trade, radio, podcast, and national outlets. He has also presented it on civic, university, agriculture, and industry stages.
Axios Denver
KUNC In The NoCo
BizWest & Voyage Denver
Weld Said & Bawk Tawk
Your scattered experience can become useful work.
Courage and a working system can turn lived experience into useful work in your own voice.