My Story
My Story
Think, Create, Build
I was born before anything cool was illegal and grew up tearing around the neighborhood in holey jeans and Converse All-Stars. The world was safer back then and our parents weren’t concerned about our whereabouts until dark. It was the age when the role models transitioned from Cowboys to astronauts and the controversy raged about how handheld calculators would destroy the minds of our youth.
My father was a maintenance man with lots of tools and a habit of bringing home extra building materials and parts of things that “might be useful later”. I wanted to be an inventor and create technological marvels like James Bond had in all of his movies. The combination of my imagination and my dad’s stockpile created a habit of thinking and creating and building the stuff I imagined, of course as a 12-year-old without an arc welder or precision milling machines my projects weren’t exactly as I had imagined, but the process I learned has been invaluable.
My Youth
Music, Music, Music
Music was always really important in my family and every patriotic holiday my father (who was perhaps more in love with America than anyone I ever have known) would play recordings of military bands and I drank it in like honeydew vine water. I couldn’t wait for the 5th grade so I could start playing in band. I started on the trumpet, and worked and struggled and got nowhere until I found the euphonium. I tried playing it and it was almost a religious experience. Everything that I had ever wanted to play on the trumpet I could do easily on a euphonium.
(About now most people ask “What’s a Euphonium?” (It’s the instrument in the picture next to this block of text) )
I practiced for hours each day and it paid off with a college scholarship. I studied Music Education and eventually taught in the public schools for six years. However, I learned that if you have an aching loathing in your gut every morning thinking about work, then it’s time to get a different job.
My Careers
Do What You Love
I quit teaching realizing that what I really wanted is to play music. A good friend introduced me to a US Army Recruiter who was the liaison recruiter for the Army Bands. I’d finally found the perfect job! Then after 16 years performing music with the US Army band, “life happened” and my professional music career was over.
My Today
I know stuff, I fix things
Thankfully I had been studying throughout my military career and had developed a deep interest in the Internet, marketing, and building digital properties. When my music career ended, I poured all of my mental resources into learning web design, search engine optimization, and a host of other information technology stuff in order to make myself either self-employed or employable.
Today I’m a blogger, SEO expert and technology specialist for our local school district.
Whenever I can I like to let the adventurous spirit of my youth take over and lead me rambling through the mountains, canoeing lakes and rivers, gazing into campfires with family and friends or peering into a clear night sky and marveling at the works of God.