(repost from earlier today, sort of has a personal message from me)

Another Festivus story…

You know, I did it my way. I think the old-fashioned term was the “school of hard knocks.” Two days after I got out of high school in 1970, I started work as a office boy. An office boy, with all the image that the title carries with it, at Beneficial Finance headquarters. Get the company president his favorite cigars, hand run 3-4 million dollar checks into NYC to personally deposit, the whole office boy nine yards, like you’ve seen in the old movies.

I was in credit/finance for 7 years and then, after moving from the east coast to Texas, the State of Texas apprenticed me to a company to learn how to design printed circuit boards. While at that company, I had access to mainframe computers and the first thing called a PC. I self-taught myself to program that mainframe and PC.

And from there I went on to a career as a computer programmer, working full time, paying all my bills, AAA+ credit, a few marriages… the whole shooting match.

And during all those years I supplemented my career with my second love, entertainment. Working part time in live theatre, as a magician, a clown, played keyboards for 12 years straight with numerous “bar bands” on many weekends and writing some plays and having them published. A vocation and a advocation, good for the head and good for the soul.

Things changed five years ago, was laid off, a divorce and I had to take off and on contract programming work, still supplementing some of my salary with entertainment gigs, especially live theatre, and finally two years ago, I went on salary part time at a theatre, from 82 thousand a year to under 15 grand. But I was happy to be doing what I needed to do. I had been working off and on with this theatre for 10 years and they were family to me.

In Sept. 2009 the theatre cut my small salary by 55 percent, and I started to actively seek ANY sort of employment, since that was not enough money to even take care of my downsized life style.

Finally after 5 years of part time work, today I was offered and I accepted a full time retail job, at almost twice what I now make at the theatre, with full benefits after 30 days. A Christmas present to me?

Sort of. I had to resign from the theatre, resign from working with a group of people that I dearly love, and the theatre was the last “vestige” of what my life was over the past 20 years. This was a final break with a past that has now vanished.

I met a wonderful woman almost a year ago. I have a wonderful new family now, a new job, new adventures and the get up and go to go ahead and start again, a new game with new players.

But I have to be honest and say I feel numb right now, sort of hovering between two places. I’ve been here before, between the old and the new, the stogy familiar and the enticing unknown but it’s never easy, is it?

Merry Christmas.