Arvid Paul CroonquistWordsmith. Mentor. Poet. Storyteller. Survivor.

How the Tumbleweed Diaries Came to Be

I roll through life much like the tumbleweed I named my little Airstream after. I pick up things along the way — seeds and stories, strangers and memories, heartbreak and grace. And then I spread them around. That, in its simplest form, is what the Tumbleweed Diaries are.

I didn't set out to be a writer. For most of my life, writing felt like the enemy. But here I am.

A Mind Wired Differently

I carry four neurological characteristics — dyslexia, dysgraphia, aphantasia, anauralia. For most of my life I called them disabilities. What I know now is this: they shaped everything. The suffering, yes. But also the gift.

My brain has no inner images of the past. No inner voice rehearsing the future. I am structurally forced to live now. That's not a disability — it's what meditators spend decades trying to achieve.

The goal is not to become neurotypical. The goal is to stop interpreting neurological differences as moral failure. That distinction changes lives.

The Road Here

I built a moving company and ran it for 25 years. I fell deeply in love and got married at 59. Then came “COVID, divorce. and the decision to sell the company” and the day after I signed the papers, an esophageal cancer diagnosis that changed everything.

Stage 3. Chemotherapy. Radiation. The preparation to die.

And then, inexplicably — full remission.

I survived something that kills most of the people it touches. And then I had to figure out what to do next. That was harder than the cancer.

The Optimist Between Breaths

The pessimist was the voice of accumulated trauma. The optimist is the voice of conscious presence. The ego compares. The soul observes. The frightened mind lives in yesterday and tomorrow. The peaceful mind lives between breaths.

Here I am — rolling around in my Airstream, using artificial intelligence to unlock a part of my creative self I didn't know existed. Writing things down for the first time in my life. Telling the truth because, with this particular brain, I don't really know how to do anything else.

I will be the optimist, between breaths. Not because life is easy. Not because cancer is fair. Not because trauma didn't happen. But because this moment is still alive. And so am I.