I grew up in a little town in the east bay of northern California. My dad was a research administrator at a well respected laboratory focused on biochemical research at UC Berkeley. Dad’s boss was a Nobel Laureate My mom was a well trained and skilled secretary. She was an excellent typist, took shorthand, had superb phone skills and kept an accurate calendar for her bosses. Mom did not work while my brother and I grew up. Things were tight, but we lived in a nice house in a great neighborhood, with tons of kids our age. There was a big community swimming pool only a few blocks away and spent many of our summer days hanging out there. We played in little league, learned musical instruments and were active in Boy Scouts. At one point my dad became our scoutmaster and my brother and I both became eagle scouts, just like our dad.
Throughout my middle school and high school years , I had a bit of a body image problem. This was because at the time I was what was called “husky” or “chubby”. Basically, I over ate. After school snacks mostly, but at dinner my mom was always pushing seconds on me. You see, she didn’t like having leftovers and I was a pleaser, so I said yes when she offered what was left in the pot or pan, rather than quitting when i was full. This body image issue led to some insecurities in high school. There was a shyness when it came to talking with female classmates and a sense of not being desirable. In my junior year, I was playing a lineman on the JV team. The varsity coach who was also the track coach like my size as a lineman and also for shot put and discus. My distance and form in shot put was good and I was even better at discus. But after football season in my junior year I became interested in tennis and decided to try out for the tennis team instead of the track team. Well that just infuriated the football coach and he told me “don’t bother showing up for football next fall”, and of course I did not. It was for the best I realized, football wasn’t for me, especially playing interior line on offense.
Tennis was good for me. My body began to change and for the better. I stated to slim down and began to feel better about myself. My school counselor encouraged me to go to junior college rather than a a university. That was for the best too, as my high school grades were pretty average. In junior college i really applied myself, earning a B+ average and really got into working out, and my body responded nicely. I lost my gut and built some well defined muscle. My self image improved and felt more confident. At the age of nineteen, I also began to explore my spirituality. I had friends at school who were born again Christians and attended a few of their church services. For some reason that path did not work for me. So next, I decided to look into eastern religions. A teacher from my high school was a Zen Buddhist and he invited me and a few other young students to his home to meditate once a week. It was an eye opener for me, and set the stage for a life long spiritual journey, only interrupted in the child rearing years. A journey that grew to embrace Christ-centered love and both eastern and new age spiritual practices.
Next for me was life after junior college. My dad, as a life-long University of California, Berkeley employee, was very supportive of me getting a degree UCB degree. However, my brother had already chosen Berkeley , and I felt that we needed space. My current interest was psychology and I decided on UC Santa Barbara, who’s Psych department was nationally recognize. My dad was more that happy to pay for tuition and living expenses at any UC, so off to Santa Barbara I went. As a transfer student, there weren’t many housing options, so I packed up my car and headed south. I had my sleeping bag and planned to spend my first night on the beach. As I was driving through town a saw a guy I spent the summer playing volleyball with. His name was Mark and I didn’t know anything about him, other than he went to a rival high school. Mark saw me and asked “What are you doing here?”. I told him I was going to school at UCSB but didn’t have a place to live. His house was a fraternity house and he offered me a place ont he living room sofa until I found a place, which was awesome!
Anyway, I found an an apartment and a great roommate and everything worked out. That year I also joined the same fraternity that Mark lived at and before long I had a whole houseful of new friends. UCSB went by far too quickly, but I did make life-long friends there. Because I was so active and no longer food focused, I also trimmed down and for the first time I felt good about my body, I also began to attract the attention of coeds, One of them, Deborah, became my first wife a year after we graduated. After graduation, I wanted to stay in Santa Barbara. Unfortunately the job prospects were not that great. My original plan at UCSB was to graduate in two years(I transferred from junior collage as a junior) with a degree in psychology. Halfway through my senior year I decided that another year at UCSB would be great! Although the subject of psychology intrigued me, I decided it really wasn’t what I wanted to do for a career. So, I convinced my dad to cover another year of school and I hustled and got a double bachelor’s degree, psychology and Business/Economics. Anyway, even with the Business Econiomics degree, my options to stay in Santa Barbara were not great, I ended up in a management training program at Mervyn’s Dept Store, folding teeshirts. It wasn’t pretty. I was living my girlfriend and future wife at the time and wanted to stay, but I decided to leave her and move back to the bay area, moving back in with my parents. It was temporary and I wanted to make sure of it!
I hit the pavement immediately with resumes in hand, I took BART to San Francisco and went job hunting. My plan was to find the headquarters of a large company and walk in, and see if they had an entry level personnel job(it was called “personnel” before it became HR). You see, the Business part of my degree meant that I had management potential, the Psychology part meant I would be good at handling employees. One day, after doing this for over a week, I was getting a bit discouraged. Funny thing, but I ran into a former Psyche classmate from UCSB somewhere near Market and Pine. She had just landed a computer training job with a computer distributor. I told her that I thought that sounded interesting. I thought maybe I could be a trainer too!
Training was not in the cards for me. I met with the head of sales and he offered me a computer sales job. I nothing else that looked promising so I said yes! It turns out, I not only like computers but the whole idea of selling them was rather cool. I remember selling one to a doctor who was paying other doctors to staff emergency rooms. He just need to run a payroll and print checks and reports. Seems so simple now but in 1979, it was really a novel idea. There were days when I was literally going door-to-door handing out brochures and asking for a meeting with the boss.
It was the start to a long career in high tech. I’m still consulting to software companies 40 years later. Not long after getting into computer sales, I met a beautiful charming woman and after a year of dating, we decided to marry. Rather than spend big money on a big wedding, we decided to have a small wedding on the Island of Kauai in Hawaii.
After working for a large computer company and doing really well in sales, I was attracted to start-ups. The first that really made a name for itself was Silicon Graphics (aka SGI). It was a great job and I was very good at selling computer graphic workstations. Eventually, I was ready to really make it big and I joined Steve Jobs at NeXT Computer. We bought a house in a golf course community in Half Moon Bay and the money was good even though the work was hard, and Steve Jobs was a challenging boss.
Raising kids in Silicon Valley is difficult. Everything is so expensive! Not to mention it is tough to find good public schools. When it was time to leave NeXT, basically I just burned out, we made a decision to move to Denver Colorado. Here we found great schools, inexpensive real estate and lots of recreation options, including excellent skiing. Ultimately, we were able to afford a cabin in Breckenridge that we used year round. The kids became excellent skiers and even skied on the ski team one year at Copper Mountain.
Our next move was to Boulder Colorado and I made the career shift from selling computers to selling software. Boulder was a great place for the kids to grow up and they made it through their teen years there. As our first child was headed off to college, we were face with the near term probability of being empty nesters. Boulder was where I first got into fly fishing. Unfortunately, my wife and I had grown apart and I decided I wanted to be single at 51.
Shortly after getting divorced, I was now doing consulting for various clients and I made the decision to take a job in Orlando, Florida. My job was challenging but enjoyable and I met woman and fell in love again. I also got into salt water fly fishing, My home waters were the Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River. We fished for redfish, snook and sea trout. Unfortunately 2008 hit and the recession put me out of work, which strained my relationship and eventually, made the tough decision to move back to Boulder, where the job market for my skill set was much better. However, I ended up taking a job that was iffy. The pay wasn’t great and the CEO was a narcissist and we disagreed a lot. He ultimately fired me and I ended up being out work for awhile and struggled financially.
Then Adobe came along and I was hired into an excellent role and decided to move to Utah for the job. My finances recovered and I was able to purchase a home. Soon after, I also met my life partner and after a few years of dating, we decided to marry. We honeymooned in Costa Rica and even got into some salt water fly fishing there. Wanting to take my trout fishing to another level, I decided to buy a drift boat, a Hyde High Side. I also took guide school in Montana. And I made regular trips back to Montana each summer, fishing my way through Idaho and towing my drift boat. One summer after floating the South Fork in Swan Valley, I stayed overnight in Driggs Idaho and fell in love with Teton Valley.
Thanks to investments I made in Adobe stock, we were also able to buy a cabin in Victor, Idaho, after selling my Utah house and moving in with my wife. We have now owned the cabin for six years and stay there often. My career working for Adobe ended a few years back which was actually a blessing. I still work as a consultant but only 12 hours a week. It has freed up a lot more time for fishing and thankfully, have averaged about 60 fishing days per year the past few years. Life is good!