Not including a picture of myself was a conscious decision. While publishing a picture of myself would allow a greater chance of being “humanized” by the general public, I wanted my ideas to stand on their own merits. I enjoyed the freedom of writing my first book without the specter of social judgment on a personal level looming over my shoulder. In many ways, the writing process is very personal and very intimate for me. Throughout my writing, I felt like I was the client in a counseling session. And for the client in a therapeutic relationship to feel comfortable to discuss and explore personal topics, a degree of confidentiality is required.

I chose the pseudonym “Adoré” because to adore something means to love it deeply with certain kind of understanding rooted in a certain kind of reverence. In our modern day and age, I believe that there is a growing imbalance between reason and passion in relationships between men and women. No longer do men and women adore one another. Instead each sees the other as a “utility” or as a “means to an end.” The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. The relationship between man and woman, however, has become increasingly “transactional” and “shallow” now more than ever. Pleasures of the flesh have become their new god; man worships woman, woman worships man, or each worships themselves — all chaos begins with breaking the first commandment.

The discord between Adam and Eve in Eden is still with us today. We inherited their strengths and weaknesses and every feeling in every relationship since their time is something that they experienced first — not exactly, but generally. By using our imagination and our own feelings and thoughts as a “mode of access” in relationships to seek a greater understanding, we might be able to uncover the nuances between them, within ourselves, and between ourselves and our fellow human beings.

Anthony Adoré was born in El Paso, TX in the late-1970s and moved to Odessa, TX in the early-1980s due to the oil boom happening at the time in the Permian Basin. He comes from a blue collar family background and knows what it means to work with sweat on his brow. He entered the public education system in Ector County and graduated from Permian High School in the mid-1990s. He expressed an interest to apply to Holy Trinity Catholic Seminary out of high school, but his spiritual advisor at the time felt that he needed more time to discern what God had in mind for him before moving forward with the priesthood. Since he had already applied to the University of Dallas in Irving, TX because of the University’s association with the seminary, he started classes at UD in the mid-1990s. His favorite subjects during his undergraduate years included philosophy, theology, and psychology. He graduated in the late-1990s with BA in Psychology.

He returned to Odessa, TX after graduating from college and immediately began working for his father’s business. For the next 10 years, Anthony’s experience in the world balanced between contemplating personal matters of the mind and spirit discovered during his time in academia with tangible “hands-on” services provided to members of the community needed to put food on his table.

Eventually, he re-entered academia at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin in the late-2000s while still working for his father’s business. He was accepted into the Clinical Psychology graduate program where he took all the classes necessary for the MA degree and accomplished the 150+ clinical hours in the counseling center. He, however, stopped short of writing his master’s thesis, which was a necessary component for graduation. 🙁

Anthony is now self-employed and still finds excitement and fulfillment contemplating matters of the mind and spirit. He began writing his first book, Fractions of the Soul, as a means of “putting into words” all the thoughts and emotions he had encountered throughout his life.

He does not claim to be an expert on anything. Instead, he considers himself to be an observer who forms opinions on the observed and seeks to understand the underlying systems of reason and thought that shape the observed’s motivational framework. Much of what he writes describes “himself” as much as it aims to clarify the subject matter about which he writes. He has no formal training in writing, except for college papers and various other scribbles from years ago. He has always appreciated the master-apprentice dialectic found in the dialogues of Socrates, in The Divine Comedy, i.e., between Virgil & Dante and Beatrice & Dante, and between the character of Philosophy & Boethius. As the master observes and teaches their subject matter conversationally to their student(s) in the writings mentioned above, the reader absorbs, through proxy, fruits of the conversational dialectic indirectly as it were, and benefits from “overhearing” the exchange. He attempted to emulate the teacher-student conversational method in his writing, at least for now, using “the empty chair technique.”

Writing a book is something that most people want to do and many include the act as part of their “bucket list.” I wrote Fractions of the Soul over the period of several months after confronting and meditating on my own mortality. For some reason, I thought about my great-grandparents. I couldn’t tell you anything about them: how they liked their eggs, their favorite color or song, or how their lived their beliefs. I thought that if I didn’t know much about them, even though I owed my existence to them, that within a few generations, no one would remember me in much the same manner. Writing this first book is my “protest” against being forgotten by my progeny in the manner that I do not remember my great-grandparents. I wanted to communicate with my successors after I’m gone. Writing my first book accomplished that to a large degree.

Anthony Adoré is a West Texas indie author, truth seeker, observer from afar, and whetstone. He studied psychology at the University of Dallas in Irving, TX and again at the University of Texas of the Permian Basin in Odessa, TX. He humbly considers himself to be a blue collar academic.