My son, Tyler Fortin, is 16, artis­tic, and ambi­tious. I’m so proud of him, and here’s why.

As a drum­mer for 30 years (I started when I was 11–12), I fol­lowed in the foot­steps of two of my uncles who were drum­mers. I played in high-​​school and garage bands.

But at the time, I didn’t own a drum­set and played mostly on other people’s drumk­its. (I bought my first real kit in my mid-​​20s.) So I learned very s-​​l-​​o-​​o-​​o-​​w-​​w-​​w-​​l-​​l-​​l-​​y-​​y-​​y.

Last Christ­mas and on a whim, I bought my son an elec­tronic drum­set. I thought he might like it, but didn’t expect much. Plus, with an elec­tronic kit he can play on them with head­phones so as to not dis­turb the rest of the household.

Tyler wants to be like his dad. How that makes me feel is indescribable.

I play in a rock band. Granted, my son’s style of music is a lot heav­ier than mine. But the other day, I let him play on my kit and he took advan­tage of it to record this video (this is only after a few months learn­ing the drums, all on his own, which blew me away!)…

When it comes to double-​​bass — play­ing with both feet — he’s def­i­nitely kick­ing my butt. Tyler’s pretty good at pro­duc­ing videos, too! He even uses dif­fer­ent cam­era angles. Watch the whole thing to see what I mean. It’s only about three minutes.

(Tyler, I love you so much, Son. You make your Dad so proud of you.)

Recently, I was tagged on Face­book by a few friends on this new topic, “25 ran­dom things about me.” The rules on Face­book are dif­fer­ent. I’ve changed the rules slightly for the blogosphere…

Here are the rules.

Once you’ve been tagged, you are sup­posed to write a post with 25 ran­dom things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose five more peo­ple to be tagged. You also have to tag the per­son who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you. To do this, you sim­ply link to their blogs so that they know you responded to their tag.

(You may include the above rules in your post so that the per­son being tagged knows them, too. You may also want to tweet your post to notify them on Twit­ter, too.)

Let’s start with things you may already know…

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I recently joined a new band. It’s not a pro­fes­sional band by any stretch (I mean, not one in the sense of gig­ging all the time). It’s a hobby of mine. I’m the drum­mer, and I love clas­sic rock.

And like most of the bands I join, I love design­ing their web­sites. And this one, Dig­gin’ For Hoffa, is no excep­tion. Just like my main site at Suc​cess​Doc​tor​.com, this site is entirely WordPress-​​driven, even though it’s not a blog.

But I’d like to ask you a favor, too…

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Just a quick lit­tle post to let you know what’s going on. First of all, I had a blast this week. Here’s the scoop.

For one, my wife Sylvie has just com­pleted her final of eight chemo ses­sions last Thurs­day. It’s been a really tough five months, but thank­fully, we’re done. There’s a bit of a break before radi­a­tion treat­ments start.

But for now, it’s a huge relief and a much-​​needed break.

The tough­est part of it all is, chemo truly knocks the wind out of Sylvie for a few days after­wards. Aside from the com­mon side-​​effects of nau­sea, exhaus­tion, bone pain and hair­loss, Sylvie also often com­plains of “chemo brain.”

It’s when your mind seems foggy, and you have a hard time con­cen­trat­ing or remem­ber­ing things. But it only lasts for a few days fol­low­ing chemo. (The best part is, we’re finally done.)

How­ever, the chemo ward got a lit­tle surprise…

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Edited to add: For peo­ple who don’t know, there’s a meme (a new thought, trend or “buzz”) going around. It’s called “tagging.”

Looks like I’ve been tagged by Rob Sellen. Here’s the rule: I’m sup­posed to list 5 things you prob­a­bly don’t know about me, and then “tag” 5 other peo­ple who are asked to do the same. Okay, here goes…

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A few things to note today:

1. I love Word­Press so much, that I decided to con­vert my band’s web­site into a blog. (I’m not done yet. More web­sites to fol­low!) You see, it’s not really to use as a blog but as a con­tent deliv­ery system.

Why? Because the results (such as search engine rank­ings, the stam­pede of instant traf­fic using blog soft­ware, and par­tic­u­larly WordPress’s many plu­g­ins) are absolutely astonishing.

Go ahed and check it out Fortin​Drums​.com. (There’s a free video demo there, too. You’ll see yours truly ban­gin’ on them drums in the background.)

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