This Secret

As I said in my About Me page, I moved back to Louisiana after being gone for 20 years. I had thought about life and death a lot during my "unfortunate illness". I realized that death was part of life and isn't something to be feared. What I did fear was not living fully. Not doing what matters to me. I realized that I wanted to spend the rest of my life fully involved with the guitar.

The first thing that I had to figure out in my new city was how was I going to earn a living. The local music stores were fully staffed. Also, the songlist that I'd been playing in Madison didn't seem to work in my new home. I found that I was playing out less and for less money.

I was able to land a job with a guitar maker. My job was to do the final inspection of the finished instrument, help re-work them where necessary and prepare them for shipping. O.K.! This was right down my alley. That was good for about a year. The manufacturer was having a variety of problems that forced them to lay off the manufacturing staff while they re-organized.

Now What?

So I had been laid off and needed to figure out how to pay the bills. I took a job for a company that changed A/C filters on commercial properties. It paid pretty good and I had been to vocational school in HVAC/R. Plus the work was mainly outdoors.

No crawling around in attics with my cancer damaged left lung. The biggest downside was that I wasn't doing what I wanted to do. But, I figured that I'd do it for a year or so for the money. That would also give me time to figure out a game plan with my guitar interest.

The territory that I covered was south Louisiana and south-east Texas. I was getting to see some pretty country and travel, which I like. Then I met a couple of really tough ol' gals.

The Girls

Both hurricanes hit in the area that I worked in. The damage was incredible. T.V. doesn't do it justice.

The area that I live in was very fortunate. We were right between both storms. We lost power for a few days and had a little wind damage. But it really started me thinking. What would I do if my home was totaled and my place of employment destroyed? How would my wife and I get by?

We'd already been through a similar situation with cancer. My being ill and unable to work had used much of our savings. My wife's job and her savvy money handling were what kept us afloat.

I started to try to figure out how we could avoid being put into a similar situation. We needed a source of income that wasn't tied to a physical location. It also needed to be somewhat self sustaining. And it needed to be something that could be worked on anywhere and in any kind of health.

I thought that doing something on the internet might work. The big problem was that I knew virtually nothing about computers. A less stubborn man might have given up. Fortunately, my biggest talent is being bullheaded.

I began searching for something that had all the things that we needed to create an online business. That's when I discovered this secret. I finally had the tools available to continue my journey.

So that's where we are. My website is growing and that's very exciting. It doesn't provide all of my income yet, but that's o.k. My mantra is "Play Guitar, Teach Guitar, and Write about Guitar".

And that's what I'm getting to do.