Hello, my name is DerangedVisions

@anomadsoul announced a new contest that is sponsored by @blocktrades and @ocd is partnering as well to help with the contest. The contest is pretty simple, introduce yourself to the Hive Community.

^{Photo taken by me @derangedvisions}

So who is DerangedVisions?

Well, the name @derangedvisions actually gives a background of who I am and what I actually do and has a whole story behind it. There was a challenge a while ago where we had to give the origin of our username, so I think that may be the best introduction to everyone here on Hive.

Well, my real name is Wes and my last name is West, so Wes West is my name. Easy to remember, but most people get it confused and don't know if I am saying my first or last name to them.

When a lot of people sign up for Hive they may not have an idea of a name already picked out and are forced to come up with something on the fly and not put much thought into what name they choose. That was definitely not the case when it came to my name.

The origin of Deranged Visions tells a story of my life and everything I have had to overcome in the past 38 years.

Military Life

I joined the military at the age of 18. My first job in the Army was a combat engineer. In a nutshell, I built and repaired buildings and bridges, but I also used a lot of different explosives and blew things up. One of the other job duties was to set up minefields and to actually disarm enemy mines and clear enemy minefields.

I didn't really like the idea of blowing myself up playing with mines, so I was able to switch my job to Apache Helicopter technician and that is what did for the majority of my time in the military.

During my time in the military I spent A LOT of time away from my wife and kids. The majority of it was spent in combat zones. I turned 21 right before I crossed the border into Iraq as the US began it's invasion. I was in one of the first groups of trucks to cross since our helicopters were supporting everything going on in the front and clearing the way for everyone else. Most people's 21st year is spent partying and having a good time, but mine was full of death and destruction.

Fast forward to 2007 for my next combat tour where one of the soldiers in my platoon died on the airplane to Iraq. They said it was a blood clot, but we all took this as a bad sign of how the next 18 months was going to go. During this deployment one of my soldiers killed themselves out there and it was just an all around bad 18 months.

Life in Law Enforcement

After that last tour in Iraq, I got out of the military and became a police officer in Texas in a city outside of Ft Hood. At first it seemed like a dream job. I wanted to be someone who was making to make a difference in the community where my family lived and make it a better place.

My very first night I was exposed to the brutality of the people I would be dealing with in my community. A jealous ex-husband kicked in the door of his ex's home to find her in bed with another man. He shot the man 4 times in the chest, killing him instantly, and shot her times in the stomach and left her to bleed out and suffer.

My time as a law enforcement officer was action packed, but also full of devastation and death. I have held dying children in my arms, seen victims of unspeakable acts of violence, and have had to deal with the scum of the earth. My department even responded to Ft Hood in 2009 when Nidal Hasan shot and killed 13 people and wounded 32 others.

But not all of my time as serving the community was bad. I have said many lives as well. One instance was when I ran into a burning home and saved a deaf toddler that was trapped on the top bunk of her bed. I've done live saving measures on several people before the ambulance was able to arrive. A lot of the stuff I have done in my life may seem like an action movie to some people, but I guess this is where I draw a lot of my inspiration for a lot of my works that I do.

So why Deranged Visions?

Things started to get really rough for me mentally. A mind can only handle so much and I was reaching the point that I couldn't handle any more. I was becoming closed off from everyone in my life.

With the help of my wife, I was able to get help and start getting treated for post traumatic stress and other injuries that I had sustained in the military. I was in denial about a lot of the stuff I had gone through during combat, but the experiences in law enforcement were triggering factors and bringing back so many of my repressed memories.

After therapy and several balances in medications I started to feel "normal" again, but I still needed to find myself. I had quit law enforcement, because I had realized that I would not be able to handle it mentally anymore, and I started going to school.

Then that is when I found photography. I had always been big into appreciating art and photography, and I understood the concepts of photography and had owned cheaper cameras growing up and even played around in the dark room in high school. I bought an entry level DSLR camera and became obsessed with photography and wanted to learn as much as I could.

During that time I had people recognizing my work and started asking for family pictures, so I decided to start my own photography business and just charge people enough to cover the cost of gas and a little extra for my time.

As I got better and more and more people wanted pictures taken, I had also ventured off into more creative works with photography and began to do more conceptual pieces. I started doing horror work and darker themed pieces and decided I needed to have a separate company for that work so I wouldn't "scare off" future clientele.

I started brainstorming on a cool name for it because I wanted it to be original. I wanted to incorporate the fact that I was a disabled veteran somehow in the name, but also keep a dark theme to it. Then it hit me "Deranged Visions". It had the DV for Disable Veteran, and I could show the deranged side of how I see the world through all of the stuff I had been through.

Deranged Visions is more than a name

I started Deranged Visions about a year ago and it has begun to evolve. It has now become Deranged Visions Media where it is no longer just photography, but it is my video and design persona that I create my films under and do my design and art work with.

Deranged Visions is a coping mechanism to help me make it through the day to day of this life. I have been shot at, my helicopter almost shot out of the sky, a rocket land next to me and luckily not go off, watched helplessly while a woman almost burn to death in a car wreck because we couldn't get her out, seen horrific crime scenes and dealt with too much death in my life that all I want to do is take my deranged visions from my head and make them into beautiful works of art that have a positive impact in this world.

Thank you for reading

I am looking forward to seeing where we take the Hive blockchain from here. These are exciting times for all of us and I want to thank @anomadsoul and @blocktrades for this opportunity for everyone to get to know each other with this contest.

Make sure that you check out the Challenge! - My Introduction to the Hive Community post by @anomadsoul for more information about the contest.