Life & Career Overview

Relating to others is not only a powerful crucible for personal growth but our most important and omnipresent activity in life. Relationships virtually define human life, as our interrelatedness is what makes life both possible and worth living. The quality and conduct of our relationships fill the entire range from loving and nourishing to damaging and even life-threatening. Connecting with others is what we both covet and fear most. Quite a vessel for growth. So naturally the relationships in my life have offered countless opportunities for deep learning.

Some life history basics:

I am the second of six siblings, three brothers and three sisters, all from the same parents who remained married till death did they part, Dad in 1999, Mom in 2006. My birth family has always been a source of strength and comfort, notwithstanding inevitable family misfortunes, difficulties, and sometimes stark disagreements. We siblings remain close to this day. I am extremely fortunate in this arena of life.

I am married and have one adult daughter from a previous marriage, the person on this earth I am most deeply bonded to. I also have two adult stepchildren I am very close to. All three of our children are happily married to spouses I likewise greatly admire and cherish. Each couple has two kids – six grandchildren! Ages four to fourteen as I write in Fall 2023, they are a source of joy and amazement too profound to adequately express in words. My cup truly runneth over in my family life, and I count my blessings for that every day.

I had a son from my first marriage who died in an accident in 2002 at the age of 34. I also lost a step-daughter in an accident in 1992 at the age of 19. The losses of these two truly exceptional young adult children were, needless to say, devastating, and they remain deeply painful. And while both of these deaths were occasions, indeed demands, for accelerated personal growth, I would obviously reverse them in a heartbeat if such were possible. There are many ways to grow that do not involve such profound suffering. But when tragedies like this strike, you either open up or you close down. That’s the choice. Maintaining status quo is off the table.

Key engagements from my professional career to date, in approximate but not precise chronological order, include:

• Commercial products marketing manager for an aerospace company in Los Angeles, my first job after graduating from UCLA in 1968 with a B.S. in Quantitative Methods.
• Wall Street-trained, NYSE-licensed stockbroker in downtown Los Angeles in my early 20s.
• Account manager for a well-known medium-size advertising agency, then co-founder of a boutique ad agency, in my mid-20s, both in LA.
• Manager of a regional ballet company in Santa Barbara for eight months in my early 30s, guiding the dance troupe and school out of a pending bankruptcy and mounting a successful California performance tour.
• Helped start and manage a community radio station in the Sierra Nevada foothills in my late 30s, where I also hosted several radio shows including a bi-weekly one-hour live interview program called “World Views” that ran for three years (a prelude to the Wise Talkers podcast!)
• Co-founded and directed a rural hospice in northern California redwood country in my late-40s/early-50s.
• Wrote and produced fundraising proposals for a number of nonprofits, including an NGO serving rural farmers and women-owned village banks in Central America.
• Marketing director for a producer and mail-order catalog of children’s music in northern California.
• Marketing executive roles in several entrepreneurial technology ventures, including an upstart automobile company, a developer of a new technology for oil well logging, and a wireless telecommunications equipment maker.
• Closed out my full-time business career with 10 years in marketing management and consulting in the solar energy industry, mostly in the Bay Area, including owning and managing a small advertising agency dedicated to renewable energy clients.

A plethora of other stops populate the pathways of my career as well. I feel fortunate for the opportunity to have played key roles in a wide variety of enterprises and causes, and to continue to work with talented, dedicated people from many backgrounds and cultures.

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My business career contributes to my quest for self-knowledge in important ways. First, this is true of any and all life events, as each and every experience can be a learning vehicle and testing ground for growth if one is so directed. In particular, reporting to a supervisor, managing people, serving clients, and working with teams provide continual opportunities to develop invaluable skills in listening, understanding, communicating effectively, and collaborating.

In the expandable section below, I offer some additional insights about how my primary professional skill – business writing – has contributed to my personal writing efforts. And I briefly expound on how journaling and writing has infused my process of seeking self-knowledge.

My professional work recurrently involves writing and editing – everything from names and taglines, advertising in all media, brochures, press releases, and websites to research reports, articles, funding proposals, and business plans.

Business writing is often regarded as rather pedestrian in comparison to ‘real writing’ like novels, poetry, or journalism. And perhaps it is. But it is nonetheless exacting and demanding, with the dual curse/blessing of clients to please, deadlines to meet, and, ultimately, results to be measured by.

I have often been tasked with writing about products, services, technologies, and industries that are initially unfamiliar to me, and frequently highly technical or otherwise complex. Gaining expertise in understanding, synthesizing, and then effectively communicating difficult concepts and subjects has proved to be of great benefit to both conducting and writing about my personal quest.

My pursuit of self-knowledge and writing about the journey have always been deeply intertwined. I will sit for hours at a keyboard or with a notepad, typically late at night, digesting and contemplating my experiences and explorations, thoughts and questions, discoveries and insights, and document the process in voluminous notes and writing fragments. When so moved I strive to connect and weave these snippets of thought and language into wider perspectives and cohesive narratives, always seeking interlinking patterns and a deeper understanding.

My consistent impulse is to integrate what I am learning, to continually distill material – subjects and perspectives that may initially be complex, contradictory, or murky – into an increasingly clear and simple comprehension. The holy grail of clarity and simplicity has always been the lodestar of my quest.

This contemplative writing process has been the crucible of my pursuit of self-knowledge for five decades. I estimate that over that span I have devoted approximately thirty thousand hours to this activity. And I continue to this day.