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Post by Kramster on Feb 5, 2011 8:09:22 GMT -5
I growed up on a hay farm in Northern NJ where learned to work and play hard... uses every bit of time. Pa bought a charbroil burger kinda place when I was a senior in High School...so leaned to not like being a waiter type while still working the farm during the day and fitting in girlfriend time.. Went to Ithaca College 1 semester... all I leaned was there are a lot of Jewish Holidays. Went back home.. worked at Warner Brothers Jungle Habitat for season with lions and tigers and bears... yes I wore a pith helmet and was in the actors guild. Took over as manager of a lil motel my Pa bought at the same time as that burger place. Did that for a fun 15 yrs. Always had to do something on the side. DJing a little... then I wanted cable at my motel but was too far away from any town so started a satellite TV business in 82... second in NJ and maybe 10th in country... had to figure out a lot of things fast... did that for 5 yrs or so and then bought some houses over border in NY and a 4 apt building with a deli and 2 lotto machines... learned about handling a lot of money. Got tired of all that weather.. sold out everything.. goofed off a couple yrs.. came out to AZ (my Pa was here already 2 yrs)... tried s few jobs..car sales ...apt maintenance ... Sat dish sales... some roofing.. saw an ad for a route... up to $14 an hour and get a tan as a pool boy. Got the job after borrowing $200 from a friend for deposit on equipment (never good at saving) ... gradually built up my own pool business which I am still doing.... A few other things here and there
I learned I can't do 9-5 or have a boss.
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Post by theevan on Feb 5, 2011 8:22:17 GMT -5
"I learned I can't do 9-5 or have a boss. "
Heh, that's me, too. Now I work a lot more. Sometimes...
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Post by Russell Letson on Feb 5, 2011 12:08:41 GMT -5
I saw Satan when he looked the Garden o'er. I saw Eve and Adam driven from the door. Round the corner I was peeking while the apple they was eatin', And I'll swear that I'm the guy that et the core.
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Post by Deleted on Feb 5, 2011 12:39:31 GMT -5
For many years I thought I would like to be a novelist. I majored part time in English at one of the CUNY schools, worked part time, kept my own apartment, and finally went back to finish up my last 15 credits and earn my degree in 1981.
In 1979, two years after my kid sister died and I had spent two very difficult years living back with my parents and trying to kind of nurse them back to some level of functionality, I moved to Cooperstown, NY, and shared a farmhouse with an old friend from the old neighborhood and commenced to write a novel.
It was terrible. I was 26, I had not developed my literary voice yet, and in retrospect it occurred to me that at that particular juncture in my life, I had very little to say.
In the meantime, I had lucked into a part-time job at Newsweek magazine (RIP) that taught me a new skill: desktop publishing (then in its early stages). I worked in the Page Composition department for seven years, while spending my off days building up my photographic portfolio. Being the son of a photojournalist, photography came pretty naturally, regardless of the fact that I was mostly self taught (my father was not a particularly patient teacher, especially with me).
While I was building up my portfolio and attracting some commercial clientele, I made a very bad judgment call and married someone who had been pursuing me, even though my original instincts told me to run the other way. Her controlling ways, domineering character, and jealousy of my personal form of expression and extra income proved to be too much for her narcissistic personality, and she systematically hacked away at me with the sole purpose of undermining my photographic sideline and breaking my sense of self-esteem.
I spent less and less time in the darkroom, lost some clients, and spent more time getting fat and depressed on the sofa. I freelanced as a photo assistant in a still-life studio for a year after Newsweek laid me off in 1988. In 1989, an old friend from the magazine who had been working at Sports Illustrated called to find out if I would be interested in a full-time project position. My son was about to be born and I needed a regular paycheck; the wife heckled me constantly because she wanted to put more away in her 401K. (We separated in 1993 and ultimately divorced. I also changed my lifestyle and lost all my extra depression weight. And attitude.)
So, I took the job at SI and was picked up for the Page department at SI For Kids ten months later. I worked there for 16 years, most recently as the Editorial Production Manager, until I was laid off from Time Warner—my Christmas gift—in December of 2005. Thanks, Anne Moore.
Eleven months later, after numerous interviews but no offers, I was hired by a large photo/video/pro audio retailer here in NY. I spent three very unsatisfying years copyediting in the Advertising department, lorded over and stymied by a nincompoop director and a little bully of an art director.
Since last June, I have been working in the Creative Content group in the Web department, as their Senior Editor. I get on well with my manager (who is 26 years my junior) and my new director (who is also 20-something years younger). They appreciate what I bring to the table, and the writers respect my judgments (which have improved in quality since my first marriage). We are about to launch a great informational resource website for our customers. While it ain't dpreview, I think it will provide first-time buyers and neophytes with very useful information about technologies.
JohnB's new venture into luthiery, I must say, makes me very envious, as this is a craft that has intrigued me for many years. And John's switching gears in midlife and he's going to be doing it!
I am starting to believe that there might really be a novel in me, which will have to wait for me to be working less than full time, and for my four-year-old to get somewhat older. I don't spend much time taking photographs anymore.
Of course, through it all, I have played guitar—and it's the thing that has saved my psychological bacon time and again.
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Post by sekhmet on Feb 5, 2011 17:52:40 GMT -5
Well I started out as the runt of my litter and basically hung around the edges of the pride on the Serengheti for my first life. One day some Egyptians came along and dressed me in a tightly fitting star spangled dress, gave me a human body, leaving the lioness head in place and gave me a few hundred temples to lounge around in. It was a pretty good gig for a few thousand years but there is only so much incense and adoration a girl can stand. I had to grow up. I needed to make something.
So I decided to be a human being for a lifetime and found that it wasn't too bad. The pay sucks but you get these thumbs to work with. I also really lucked into the time frame - at the end of the tech era just before we mess it all up completely. So I get to have toilets and antibiotics and computers and cameras.
I find the cameras really intriguing - even more than pianos and guitars. So I am a photographer.
That's about it.
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Post by Chesapeake on Feb 5, 2011 18:06:26 GMT -5
For a photographer, not having opposable thumbs would definitely suck.
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Post by sekhmet on Feb 5, 2011 18:26:38 GMT -5
The very idea *tailtwitch*
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