Daily Inspiration: Meet Jacek Waliszewski

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jacek Waliszewski. He and his team share their story with us below:

Jacek Waliszewski (Yacht-sick Volley-chef-ski) is the first-born son of Leszek Waliszewski, the co-founder of the 1980s Solidarity Resistance movement. He and his family came to America in the 1980s as political refugees, and his dad personally briefed President Reagan and Congress on the plight of the Polish people. Jacek is now a dad, award-winning writer, Green Beret, and apiarist. He has written Air Boat, which won the #1 best adventure fiction of 2022 for Pen Craft, and top 100 in Shelf Indie books, and has penned four more books in the series, with his next book Midnight in Syria set to debut in early 2023. He was also featured in the podcast Opportunity Now, in which he described his journey from a child smuggling Solidarity paperwork in his diaper, to becoming a U.S. Army Special Forces Green Beret.

Jacek has also run with the bulls in Pamplona, lived around the world, and speaks several languages. He has deployed more than 18 times during his Special Operations military career and has worked on three different continents and trained more than 2,500 soldiers in multiple aspects of Special Operations. He was also on the last Special Forces Team in Helmand, Afghanistan, which was exclusively captured in Matt Heineman’s Award Winning Documentary – Retrograde. When Jacek isn’t deployed or writing his next novella, he likes to spend his time in Colorado with his kids, friends, and dog. Most excitingly, Jacek is preparing to go to Oxford University to earn a Graduate Diploma in Strategy and Innovation during which time he hopes he will become fluent in another language — British.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Life has been one challenge after another. I was born into it. My dad was in jail for six months before I first met him – his biggest fears were that he was going to get traded out from Poland to the Soviet Union as political fodder. After that, we came to America to North Carolina where I grew up as a third-culture kid – “Yacht-sik” is a pretty hard name for anyone in North Carolina to say.

But I made great friends wherever I moved, then ended back up in Poland in the early 1990s when the Iron Curtain fell, and again, was a third-culture-kid as an American in Poland. Once again and many great friends later, I traveled most of Europe and even spent a few weeks in Japan. I then joined the Army, and I have spent 17 years working as a “Warrior Diplomat” in some of the most complicated and dynamic reaches of the world. Suffice it to say, every adventure has been a challenge, but when looking back on them, most have been eye-opening and character-building.

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m a U.S. Army Special Forces Warrant Officer, and while I’ll never be as successful as many other Green Berets such as John Wayne or Rambo, I take immense pride in knowing that I have worked with some of the most amazing humans and Green Berets in the world – I’ve learned so much from my last Team Sergeant who holds multiple sniper records, and my last Team Captain who spoke four languages fluently – on the last deployment he used his German to speak with an Afghan Commander, who then translated from German into Pashtu – it was an epic exchange!

Furthermore, the people I meet on a regular basis have immense experiences and jaw-dropping lives, such as the founder of the Kenyan Rangers, the creator of Nordic Special Operations, all the way to General Sami Sadat, the last Afghan Special Operations Commander of Afghanistan. I’m humbled on so many levels to have worked with them.

What do you think about happiness?
Happiness is relative! I learned this when my team was dropped off by Chinook on a glacier in Alaska in the middle of February. We cross-country skied for three days over twenty miles to get to Anaktuvuk pass, all while surviving in -40F degree weather and battling 40mph winds. When we woke on the third day, with a few miles yet to go, we discovered wolf tracks around our tents. So the happiest moment in that experience was when we got into town. On the other hand, when my sons and I tend to our bees and we don’t get stung more than once, we consider that a huge success and laugh about that as well.

Most recently, however, I’ve found great enjoyment in writing. I often find inspiration while deployed, and I develop characters and situations that are near-real-world. My first novella, Air Boat, has done wonderfully, and I’ve written four more stories in the series. The Pentagon just approved the release of my next story, Midnight in Syria, and I when I got the approval notification, I jumped for joy!

Pricing:

• $12.99 – Air Boat (and all subsequent books)

Contact Info:

• Website: www.storiesbyjacek.com
• Instagram: @storiesbyjacek
• Facebook: facebook.com/jacek.waliszewski.73