Who is this guy?

My name is Jeffrey Poehlmann and I care about the world I live in. Much of this stems from a genuine compassion cultivated in my early childhood from good role models and a balanced education. A lot more evolved through my emerging interest in politics and society after graduating from college and living out there in the “real world” for a while — I think most people open up their eyes a lot once they are on their own, so to speak, whether that happens at 15 or 25 or whenever. For those of us lucky enough to live in the land of hypothesis and research and the pursuit of some relatively meaningless degree, it does occasionally happen later than it should.

I was fortunate that my university had an outreach program called the “Joint Educational Project” (sharing my initials, which I took as a sign to join), with which I participated when I was still new to the Big City of Angels. This program invited perspective that I had formerly been denied, allowing me to mentor a child who had absolutely none of the environmental support I had enjoyed in my own childhood, except for the lucky fact of his caring parents who wanted him to find guidance from outside his usual realm of influence. Perhaps not surprisingly, I was the one who walked away from the experience with the more greatly expanded world view.

Nothing, however, compared with the changes that occurred in my perspective after two of the most significant events of my adult life: getting married and becoming a parent. While these two things are valued (over- and under-) at varied levels throughout our society, to me they served to highlight the ways in which the outer world influences the things that are important to me. Where I once was able to see something recognizably bad and blow it off because, hey, I could deal with it, I was now forced to consider the fact that this or that bad thing was in the world to possibly affect the members of my family. And I could see ways in which bad things were actually causing unnecessary harm, as well as ways for that harm not to occur by making simple choices. But there was Corporate America, doing everything it could to insinuate more bad things into our lives — and there was the Government, complicit as usual — and there were the millions of people who did not seem even slightly aware of what was going on around them.

Now, my wife is exponentially better at policing a lot of this stuff around the home than I am. So I give her credit where it is due. She has educated me about a fair amount of things I was not aware of, or expanded my knowledge and offered more research support, because it is in her nature, too. So that is really good. And hopefully, after you read along within this Blog, you will find it also in your own nature, and then I will have been successful in my mission (and better educated still because of you and your input).

Then, at some point (which you probably know by now if you’ve read any entries since 2014), I was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. The diagnosis arguably changed the focus of this blog from the loosely personal mouthpiece it had been originally, now reflecting my mission to spread awareness and education about lung cancer, while striving to change the narrative on cancer in general. I still write about other things, but I devote most of my time with this blog to issues related (if just tangentially) to cancer.

That said, I’m just a guy who makes his living writing and working in film and video production out in the general “Hollywood” area, both creatively and not-so-creatively as the tide changes. And I like cats, too. Plus, you can book me to speak at your events.