About Chad S Sides
I began writing poetry in high school. It started out as a joke, but so many people went out of their ways to compliment me that I started recognizing that I might have an untapped talent. As I continued to write I continued to be encouraged by those around me ultimately winning first place in the poetry contest my senior year.
As a radio/club disc jockey and speech minor in college I was often praised for my speaking talents even to the point of making it to finals in national speaking competitions. Therefore, I combined my talents and found opportunities to read my poems to the public. I was astounded by the response. I will never forget the time I read "These Feelings Rise Again" at Barnes & Noble in Mobile, AL. I had a small audience, mostly other speakers and their guests, when I started. About half-way through I looked up to see that the crowd had grown so large it was spilling out of the little area designated for us and into the isles of the store. They left when the next speaker began confirming that they had walked up just to hear me. That was years ago, I'm still amazed by it.
I have never had much confidence in making money as a poet which hasn't bothered me; I want to make a profit as a storyteller if I can, but I will mostly keep my poetry circulating among anyone that is interested in reading it. I did get the opportunity to write spots, promos, and commercials for a few TV and radio stations, but creative writing is what I love most. My problem is that I am too easily distracted. I will start a project then set it aside to work on something else. Before long, I have numerous unfinished works with nothing to actually show for my efforts. Poetry is less daunting a task since I can generally finish them within a few days if not a few hours. I have started on a trend of finishing a few short stories and will shop those around for publication while I continue to move myself towards finishing more and larger projects.
As I have grown older and more aware of my mortality I have begun to question what good my writings are sitting in a dusty notebook. If this is truly a gift from God, and responses from others suggest that I'm not being arrogant in thinking that it is, then I need to share it. That's the primary reason why I've built this web page. I went through several stages of web page ideas: music to which I dedicated more time when I was a DJ, DVD reviews which was simply too time consuming, a page dedicated to further my chance of selling stories for larger profits, and finally this one more focused on sharing my religious poetry and talking about whatever pops into my head (though remnants from the other ideas will show up, as well). I can only hope that my essays and stories are as touching as my poems have proven to be.
My current profession is an IT tech. for a poultry company. I get to stay in the midst of technology and meet geeky friends that will face off against me in Starcraft, Dungeon Siege, and other favorite video games, not to mention talk Star Wars and Stargate with me. I'm the biggest Star Wars geek I know! My most important hobby other than writing is working with the audio and video systems at my church. I love editing video in creative ways, and the church provides a perfect channeling of my interests there.
As a video editor I have worked on projects for Marriott International, Coca-Cola, APCO, and various smaller groups. When I was younger I had made several movies with my mom's video camera and whatever happened to be laying around the house at the time so I have enjoyed my chances to work with higher-grade equipment. My best works have been a Matrix parody for Mariott (in which I also played Neo), a crazy video set to Black Sabbath's The Wizard, and a collage of video clips set to Kirk Franklin's song Revolution (along with songs by Student Life's Michael John Clement, Avalon, Stereo Deluxx, and The World Wide Message Tribe) for Campus Outreach's Summer Beach Project 2001.
Though I have missed a couple of exciting chances to be on the silver screen (the most notable of which was The Patriot which would have been a notable enough role to put me in the end credits) I did appear as an extra in a movie with well-known singer/actor Meatloaf and Zachary Ty Bryan from Home Improvement. Rustin is currently available on DVD. You can read an essay I wrote about my day on the set on this site and a review I wrote of the movie here.
So now that I've summed my life up in about a page you know more about where I come from when I write. Here's a link to a list of my publishing credits not including what I post on this site. It's meager, but it's a start.