I got my first job when I was in the sixth grade, while at elementary school in Fresh Meadow in Queens. I made fifty cents a day as a waiter at the nearby delicatessen, serving many of my friends, who came in for franks and fries. At the end of the week, that two dollars and fifty cents felt like a fortune. As a kid, I was very worried about my newly widowed mother having to take care of me and my brother. Allowance for doing nothing just didn’t seem right to me, plus I loved the independence of money in my pocket.

I have worked ever since then and never asked my mother for money until I was much older, buried by a mortgage and a life I couldn’t afford, but that’s not the story i want to tell now. Right through college in NYC, I had a slew of jobs, very often during the summers, to bank enough for the coming school year, including the ’64 World’s Fair.

After college and a hysterically brief stint in the US Army Reserves in ‘67, I returned to the NBC Television Network, where I had one of the best times of my life as a page/usher for the Tonight Show, when Johnny Carson was at 30 Rock. I fell in love with the crazy people, who were attracted to the show part of show business. However, as a Jewish kid from Queens, a conventional, career path was mandatory, especially considering the sacrifices of my mother, engendering predictable choices on my part. It was bad enough I crapped out of being a doctor, so a career in broadcast advertising had some status about it.

I was promoted at NBC to Station Clearance, making sure that all network affiliates carried Bonanza on Sunday night at 8PM, etc. Subsequently, for nearly twenty years, I worked at four major advertising agencies, three cable networks and finally, a distributor of TV shows. I ate at the best restaurants in Manhattan and most of the guys were mortgaged up to their asses in Connecticut. I worked in the “business”, which is how that industry was referred to. After a while, it seemed like I was living someone else’s life, filled with incredible expectations of success and increasingly important titles.

My life had devolved into this cauldron of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. Before this becomes the story of some hero’s journey, escaping a suffocating life, I had divorced, a father of two boys I loved as much as I could. Having lost my father at an early age, the idea of leaving them to pursue some crazy dream was a weight that seemed impossible to lift off my chest.

When I started thinking about getting out of this professional straightjacket, I couldn’t do it on my own. I needed a heavenly tap on the shoulder and it came to me without looking for it.

I visited a NYC girlfriend, who had gotten a part in the New Mexico Repertory Theatre. I met Santa Fe NM and fell hopelessly in love with the prospect of a completely different way of being. On June 1, 1987, I gave up my life in NYC and moved to the high desert country, having bought a small adobe home in the middle of nowhere. I had been in therapy for ten years and started reading books on Zen Buddhism, but I swear to God, I have no idea where my new found feeling of blind optimism came from.

I was up to my ass in memos and bureaucracy and saying anything I had to in order to make sure the check came on time. When I finally got into my blue Dodge Colt to make the one way ride to the magical southwest, I promised myself to never have another job, the conventional kind.

Now, I need you to hang in with me for a little, because i want to run through the incredible experiences I had out there, carving a path uniquely my own.

Within days of arriving, I got a job marketing a John Huston Film Festival. It lasted for a handful of months, introducing me to some absolutely wonderful people that slowly mushroomed into a solid connection to the community. When the festival ended, I was hired by a former page buddy, who was working at a fairly high level at McGraw Hill, a huge publisher. They published a magazine called Careers and he put me on the payroll to see about launching this magazine in New Mexico. I spent nearly a year creating a potential advertiser and editorial base for it. He got fired right around Thanksgiving of ’88 and that was the end of that venture.

Next, I found myself involved with some wonderful guys, who had a company called Lotus Press. One of them was involved with books on Ayurvedic healing and the other was a terrifically talented author, drawn to Native American culture. He was a special guy and I enjoyed our connection very much. I even went to a huge book sellers convention in Vegas to try and sell our product. Ultimately, I arranged for the company’s sale to a distributor.

In the summer of 1989, I promoted a huge concert series called Music in the Pines. I got to be in charge quite by accident. I took on the responsibility, dealing with every conceivable aspect of staging a concert series on the side of a mountain, creating musical magic every Sunday and disappearing it that evening. It is one of my great stories, but I must leave it here for now.

I had a musical segue, getting myself involved with a British record label, called RunRiver Records, which I worked on for nearly three years. The label was started by an aging, trust fund, alcoholic, who had a Hemingway fetish and would end up just like his idol. We had some truly great British folk artists and a stable of young guys, who were into a kind of Country that would really have worked in the States. I traveled to the UK to see some of them perform and actually ended up going to LA to make a distribution deal with a music business legend. The contract clearly stated that the more product we sold, the more money we’d lose and I shit you not. Eventually, the owner of the label joined Hemingway and that was the end of RunRiver Records.

Somewhere along the way, i fell in love with Belize. I started an unfunded company called Planet Patrol. I visited the country a few times and ended up importing herbal remedies and crafts, which I sold at the Tesuque flea market. I started a school exchange program between a school there and one in New Mexico, which was a very fulfilling experience. I maintained my connections for several years after that.

I had a solid media background from my time in NYC and it was quite impressive to broadcast people in this small town. I broke with my rule of never having a conventional job and spent three years, launching a very successful radio station, called Radio Free Santa Fe. We had absentee owners, so I was responsible for sales and creating the community personality for the station. The other guy was a solid music programmer and together we created a very important presence in Santa Fe. It started making money and eventually attracted the attention of serious buyers, which meant it was time for me to go, because I knew their world.

In my Belize travels, I stumbled upon an opportunity I was totally ill equipped to handle. I found out the Wildlife Conservation Society, the folks who own the Bronx Zoo, amongst other things, were interested in setting up a network of ecolodges on land they owned throughout Central America. Through a series of phone calls, I had ingratiated myself to the head of conservation at the WCS. The next I know, I had bullshitted my way into him setting up a meeting with their board of directors, some terribly serious people in the world of conservation. I knew nothing and was screwed. I ended up finding one of the most fascinating people it has been my privilege to meet. Alex couldn’t believe I had gotten this far in the process. He found a third person with superb nature tourism credentials and Naturegate was created in quite a hurry. We had our meeting in the Bronx and ended up with a contract, in spite the legendary head of their board, wondering out loud, “ who are these guys?” I spent two fascinating years traveling throughout Central America. We were grossing several hundred thousand dollars a year, but a divorce happened, because of personality clashes.

After that, I promoted some yoga workshops in Santa Fe and Baja, Mexico. but we’re running out of time. Around then, I took on a consulting job that involved learning all about desalination and the looming, global water shortage, publishing a report shared by members of Congress. I made some money and received worthless stock from the company that hired me.

When I was working the flea market, I met a colorful guy, who was a video producer and into Native American mythology and the Blues. He became a good friend. We came up with an idea to secure and sell Gospel music videos on Black Entertainment Television, which actually provided some decent income. I worked from home and it became a portable business, which ultimately helped underwrite my relocation to Kauai. I met some absolutely remarkable people in that world and it is yet another fabulous adventure.

While working with Sagebrush Productions, my friend’s company, I met a fellow with a product he wanted to market. I know you’ll think I’m full of shit, but I swear it’s true. He had created and manufactured a Breast Bottle Nurser, a silicone, breast shaped bottle. I worked on creating distribution for it. He was a sweet guy, but terribly troubled and years after parting company, I found out he had taken his life, which unfortunately didn’t surprise me.

As it turned out, the last thing I did for a living in 2002 was to actually get paid for writing, which I thought was the absolute coolest. I was introduced to the Sikh community, living in a huge compound in Espanola, NM. Amongst other businesses, they had a product line called Yogi Tea. I was hired to write short travel stories that would be put on the packaging as Tea Stories. I fabricated first person adventures about visiting the pyramids in Egypt and the Taj Mahal, etc. I loved the project.

Well, I have even left some things out of this story, like nearly producing several low budget films for Roger Corman, because this is already dangerously long. Honestly, I didn’t know another way of doing this, without sharing all of it, because pieces wouldn’t have done it justice. Trust me, each one of these adventures is a story all by itself.

I left NYC in June 1987 and I didn’t want to live the life I had been living until then. It came with huge sacrifice and pain, but I was terrified I’d live my life in the well trodden path of the armies of conformity that had come before. I took hold of my life, placed it in the palms of my hands, in prayer for whatever the Universe had already planned for me.

Here I am.