The start of a brief biography

I grew up in the 1960s and was a teenager in the 1970s. The 70s still make me shudder--a bleak, depressing, and kind of hopeless time. After I barely graduated from high school, I worked in a factory for a couple of years. There was no interest, motivation, family encouragement or financial resources for college. When I wanted a change, I moved to Alaska and stayed for 10 years. At first I continued my working, drinking, sleeping around lifestyle.

Eventually, I began to tire of that kind of aimlessness, particularly the drain of working service jobs. I applied for a job at the post office, took the test and months later was called in for orientation. The job would be sitting at a machine that envelopes moved through. The machine operator had a fraction of a second to type in the zip code so the envelope went the correct bin. In order to actually land one of these jobs, the potential operator had to reach a certian level of zip code entry proficiency. The practice sessions were unpaid and even if I passed the data entry test, shift work was sporadic--on an as needed basis.

Driving home from orientation, I had an epiphany about what I wanted to do and it wasn't work at the post office. Interestingly, I was 25 or 26 at the time, and it was the first time I made a conscious decision about the future. Up until then I had operated on the fishing bobber principle--wherever I landed a job that is where I stayed and floated along until circumstances forced me to make a change. I knew several people at the post office and it seemed to be an awful combination of relatively good money (at least, I thought so at the time), and the worst of a random rule-filled, petty, bureaucracy. In my gut I knew I shouldn't go work there. And I didn't. I kept bartending, and started college full-time. I had no idea what I wanted to do, and went through several majors ranging from travel industry management to political science finally settling on cultural geography.

No, I did not graduate promptly. I maintained a modified partying lifestyle, did not always make great grades and in a spectacular flameout after the end of a ridiculous (but at the time it seemed life shattering) affair with a married man, dropped out of school mid semester and left the state for awhile. Within a year, I returned to Alaska, went to the University and begged and groveled my way back into classes and this time I finished.