The Emerald Rose

    As most of you following my blog, (yes it’s become a lot  less,…regular, in recent months because I’m looking for something ,…but I’ll get to that later.), already know, it has been an interesting year for me. But for the rest who might be new let me recap a bit.

PART ONE – The Early Years

     I started “blogging” on October 22, 2005. Back then I was only 59 years old, living “adequately” with my wife of 37 years, and managing a retail store at a huge “Outlet Mall”. Like everyone I was looking for a place to sort of “vent” without really embarrassing myself or anyone else. Even my wife, to this day, does not know where my blog site is or how to get there. (At least I’d like to think so, I hope).

       I blogged about my life, my trials and tribulations, the death of a good friend, and a lot of other feelings which I don;t think I could ever verbalize regardless of the volume of beer I might consume! Now back in the early 1970’s we lived as a young couple with two kids, in a “starter suburb” all young couples all the kids about the same age, the guy next door was a police officer, and the guy on the other side was an auto mechanic, while we had an airport baggage handler, a restaurant owner, an accountant, and a myriad of other young families. We all sort of pitched in and helped each other, for a few beers, taking down a tree, building a deck, all manner of things. The ideal life for a young couple, with one exception. I really had no idea at 30 of what the hell I wanted to be! At the time I was working for a large department store chain, which eventually got up to a hundred plus stortes, was bought out by a competitor (started by one of their old folks who felt he got screwed over), and we all hung together socially. We rode out blizzards together, icey cold days where the car would not start because the oil was congealed in the crank case, the inevitable sicknesses and we watched each other progress.

       The guy next door who was a police officer became a Sargent, and ultimately the Chief of Police for the city. The auto mechanic is still an auto mechanic and does less work every day (Thank God his uncle owns the shop and doesn’t come  to work but once a week to bank the money), the Accountant is now a CPA I believe, and me? Well the sun comes up, the sun goes down and my plate has been extremely full every day, but as the old expression goes, “nothing special”.

       Went to night school, got my Associates degree, kept taking courses that appealed to me until they told me that aside from “short hand 101” I had exhausted their Junior college curriculum, so they bundled up my 160 credits and transfered me to a full four year State College, where I began to specialize in History. All the while working as an accountant, a telecommunications specialist/consultant, and Administrative Services Manager (Every other jiob that was too small to be a seperate department or division that was a guyaranteed “no win” and was an absolute mine to anyones career progress who took the position,….but it was fun. I kept learning and learning, reading a couple of novels aweek plus school work , plus building a three room addition on the house, but yet,….nothing was really “clicking” with my “passionate” buttons in terms of a career I REALLY, REALLY wanted to pursue.

       About then was when I started looking for something really new, new career, new location, new horizons, something else, except I wanted to keep my wife and family and do better for them. Long story short that began the “Entrepreneurial” path I took for the next 25 years, but that’s anpother blog.

       Tomorrow I’ll deal with the second phase of life, “The Entrepreneur”

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