My story begins on a small barrier island off the southern coast of North Carolina. I grew up there in the newly segregated south. That was the mid-to-late-60’s and as a youngster I identified with the older hippies of that era, who were surfers and loafers and were living a lifestyle that I longed to emulate. I grew my beach-blonde hair long to match the lifestyle.
Later on in my early middle and high school years I decided my future was with a round ball, a basketball, and I focused intently on making that a reality. During this period my friends were mainly of a different color. That made me very unpopular with others of a more similar skin tone, even some in my own family.
I woke up from the basketball dream to not much else and decided that self-destructive behavior, ala Jim Morrison, was the key to enlightenment and self-discovery. However, the only thing I discovered were problems in school, with the law, with my health (physical and mental) and with pretty much everyone else around me.
So I decided to change career aspirations. That eventually led me back to school, to a girl, to a short-lived legal career and ultimately to entrepreneurship.
That last part, the entrepreneur part, led me to my current home of Costa Rica. I came here on business and as it worked out, I probably will never leave.
But then again, who knows.
I have been blogging for the last 10+ of my 20 years in Costa Rica, 15 of which I have also earned a meager living (in U.S. terms, but pretty damn good in Costa Rica) designing and managing Costa Rica vacations.
I have been married twice. The first one lasted about 18 years and produced the 4 greatest “kids” the world has ever known. I say “kids” because none of them are really kids any more.
I am currently married to a wonderful Colombian lady, about 10 years my younger, who speaks not a word of English, which helps keep the peace among us. She has 3 daughters, so together we are the proud parents of a brood of 7, only 1 of which currently lives with us.
At the risk of redundancy, here is a list of things I count as highlights of my 60 years on planet earth…
Born in North Carolina (Moses Cone Hospital in Greensboro, N.C.) on December 5, 1960…
Survived a serious bout of intussusception of my large intestine that was misdiagnosed early on and therefore required emergency surgery to save my life…
Moved to Holden Beach, N.C., when I was 6 and began a life-long surfing passion at age 7 when my dad brought home an 11-foot fiberglass behemoth that was standard for its day, but today could better be used as a barge than as a surfboard…
Became engrossed in the idea of basketball stardom. I practiced incessantly and did get fairly good on the playground with the bros…but organized ball?…that was a different story…
Turned on (to drugs of all sorts), tuned in (mainly to 60’s style rock-n-roll) and dropped out (of everything except surfing and partying) in my late teens and early 20’s…
Found a girl, got married, cleaned up my act and miraculously was accepted to law school in the late-80’s…
Oh, I forgot to mention proudly that I was a golf-ball diver for 4 years prior to law school…a death defying job that I cringe when I think today that I actually did that. I was never in the military (tried once and was rejected), but the golf-ball diving was surely the closest to a combat-style life threatening occupation that I have engaged in…
Graduated from law school in the top echelon of my class (cum laude), took a job with a firm, hated it, decided to go for another year of post-graduate law to get “specialized” (taxation), took another job, hated it, then another, hated it too, and then finally decided a legal career might not be for me…
During the whole law thing I also attended night classes and received my M.B.A. in finance…
Entered the business world with a part-ownership and management position with a vacation packaging company in Myrtle Beach, S.C. (we sold golf packages). The company was owned by my mom’s then crooked husband…needless to say, it ended in disaster…
Walked the beach trying to decided what to do next (by this time all 4 kids were in tow and my severance from the prior business fiasco was running out quickly)…
Came up with the idea to start a boutique mergers and acquisitions advisory…
Did a bunch of deals in the late 90’s with internet service providers…rode that wave until it crested and crashed and then got desperate for deal-flow…
That led me to an attorney who led me to a deal in, of all places, Costa Rica (with a private for-profit university no less) and my current journey began (in late 2001…just a month after 9-11)…
I closed that deal on my birthday (December 5, 2003) and made a very high six-figure commission, but after paying the help, the bank and the divorce, I was close to broke (again)…
I did mention above the divorce…yes, after 18 years I lost my marriage, my family and pretty much everything else…
So I move to Costa Rica, started another vacation packaging company and here I sit…
Oh and throughout the course of the 18 years in Costa Rica I have experienced wildly ecstatic emotional highs (some chemically induced), adventures that would make Indiana Jones envious and stomach turning emotional upheavals…but all that is too much to fit into this “short” bio…
I decided to start blogging in 2008, mainly to drive traffic to my vacation site, but as I wrote day after day, year after year, the act became more one of personal catharsis than any viable SEO strategy…
I am now trying to decide what to do next, especially with the (at the time of this writing) 602 posts and some 300,000 words that I have bled into cyberspace…
Currently I am reveling in obscurity and using this blog as a great experimental laboratory for finding my art, my voice and my way. Bleeding on the page seems to be a specialty of mine. Hope you don’t mind all the mess.
Sometimes I am a bit too anxious to hit the publish button…which can be both a good and a bad thing.
Oh and sorry for so much 1st person lately…I am a bit obsessed with myself (you know way finding and all)…but in a good way (I think?).
What it all seems to be leading me to is in being and encouraging others to be, a Revolutionary Misfit.
Hope you join me!