Good lord, what haven't I done!
When I was barely squeaking by in college, my folks essentially said "We're not gonna pay for you to barely pass, party, and whatever else you're doing - pay for it yourself!" When I couldn't afford it, I joined the Army National Guard to help fund my college education. Suddenly, with my own money on the line, my grades improved markedly to the point where I graduated Cum Laude! After college, took a break from the academic world (I wanted to get a
real job. The Army taught me that hands on experience is better than else. So, I graduated, found a job at a stock brokerage house in their records dept. Moved my way up that chain, passed the Series 63 and Series 7, then the stock market crashed. Figured that might be a good time to leave the financial world and decided to go back to school for graduate work.
To pay for school this time, I took a job at TWA as a ramp rat on the afternoon shift (3-11). Did that for 2 years when my grandparents were diagnosed with ALS and Alzheimers. So, I took a break after the M.A. to assist in their care. At the time I met a hot girl and moved to Ohio to date her instead of returning to grad school. While waiting for in-state tuition rates, per residency requirements, I took a job at AT&T helpdesk. Never went to school for CIS or anything but taught myself how to tear down, build computers, and started working my way "up" the IT ladder. Build tech, network tech, exchange administrator, systems administrator, website administrator, IT director, etc.
When working as an IT director for a small private firm (and managing their web presence, saw how crappy the images were on their site and said "I could take better pictures than that) and got into photography. On the side of the management position, I started a photography business which I loved! That led to teaching others how to use cameras, photo editing software (Photoshop at the time, then followed by Aperture and Lightroom).
Got sick of being in management and all the hours it took up (which limited my time in photography) so actually left management to get back into the trenches to training (since my original goal was to teach - why not teach tech. From there I taught systems installations and utilization for multimedia streaming systems. I had
much more free time to do my photography bit, so spent a fair amount of time traveling and teaching at workshops and seminars freelance.
At the same time as I was doing that, my CCH expired, and I needed to take a refresher course. When I went to the 2 day class, the instructor was
horrible, and I said to myself "I could teach the class better than that", so I went and got my NRA Instructor certification. I had an incredibly lucrative couple of years right after Obama was elected where I was teaching:
- Firearms Safety Courses
- Photography Workshops, seminars and conferences
- Multimedia streaming systems installation and usage
My wife (that hot girl I'd met while taking care of my grandparents) missed her family and wanted to move back to Ohio. I said I'd moveif she could find me a job paying $X (meaning a boatload, because I'd be leaving a lot of revenue streams). She found it, so we went back to Ohio (I know - who would go to Ohio willingly
twice?!?!) for a lucrative salary as an IT Project Manager, which included training as a secondary job duty. Never saw the classroom, and after 2 years there my boss said he wanted me to move into a team supervisor position. I passed, asking instead if I could just keep my current job and work remotely. My wife was not as enthralled with Ohio after returning, and we both wanted to be back in Colorado.
After working remote for 9 months, saw the handwriting on the wall that they wanted me to open a satellite office in Colorado, and I reiterated my non-interest in management. Ultimately, decided that working for that company was not what I wanted despite the salary, so gave my two weeks notice and took a few months off to find the
perfect job. Found one!
Now, I am at my current job as a Sr. Technical Trainer in the telecommunications world teaching telco providers about the company hardware, setup, deployment, troubleshooting and administration. Still in the onboarding phase as I've only been there 9 months, but get to work from home, teach a week or two a month, and travel as needed to customer sites. As such, have not really had time to devote to photography and firearms instruction yet, but once I am up to speed, those certainly will come back into the picture!
Okay, so maybe that was more than what people wanted in this thread, but I am taking the week off to finish some home renovations, and I don't do well without a bit of surf time and the morning java, so here I sit for another 10-15 minutes before I tackle the tile flooring in the basement! LOL