2008-02-05: What's My Line?

Day Books: What's My Line? - Tue 2008-02-05 03:34 EST - Washington, DC

My life was easier in many ways when I was a photographer … when someone asked me what I did for a living, I would answer, "I take pictures of naked women." But I gave that up in 1975, and got into computers … that's a little harder to explain.

I left my last W-2 employment in 1994, where my job description was, "Examines bleeding-edge technologies and finds ways to integrate them into corporate products in order to improve productivity and profitability" … in other words, I wrote my own ticket. My manager was a Director (who reported to the VP of Research & Development), and he said that I was worth my salary just in the public relations garnered from having me on their payroll, because of my international reputation in my field … I had an annual travel budget that was larger than my salary, and I only had to be in the office 20 hour a week (although I usually worked 30+ hours a week from home in my underwear. :-)

One of the seminal events while I was growing up in our Nation's Capitol was the Cuban Missile Crisis … I was 12 years old in the Autumn of 1962, a few months short of becoming an Eagle Scout, and although I knew that I was better prepared than most to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, I had read enough science fiction to know that I did not want to "survive' in a distopia … I resolved to end my own life rather than try to live homeless, on the mean streets … I honestly did not expect to live even to the age 50, or see the 21st century … I thought that the world would end before then.

I guess you could call me a recovering suicide survivor … I first tried to kill myself at the age of 15 (I was a 16 year old college drop-out), and my last serious attempt was at the age of 49, after a stroke and several years of unemployment … by that time, I had been diagnosed as having Bipolar Disorder (which explained a lot about my earlier life problems), and I could no longer live with the shame of relying on my parents to pay my rent and bills for me.

I'll add more later. :-)

Last update: 2009-09-05 by Dennette@WiZ-WORX.com
<Who is this "Dennette" person?>