Life Transformations
I Would NEVER Do that!
I went 35 years with nothing life changing. It is never too late.
Synopsis
I went 35 years before doing anything life changing. I sort of went where life pushed me. I thought I was in control, but looking back, I wasn’t. I was fired in 1977 due to my wife’s mental condition. She hid my keys so I couldn’t go to work.
We went through a month of food stamps and years of her therapy. I also got a maintenance job where we lived to keep us fed. Then, in 1980, I made a conscious decision to change things, starting with RCA.
If you told me at age 25 that I would do any of these things, I would have said that you were nuts!
1. Get a Job Because of the College I Attended
I hand-carried my resume into RCA for a job as a statistician. The HR manager said, “You don’t meet any of our requirements, but I can give you 5 minutes.” That was to convince him to set up a full interview with the hiring committee. I’m sure he only saw me because my degree was from Rose-Hulman.
I worked at RCA for more than 5 years. My work was fun, and I did it for the rest of my working life. The following three actions happened while I was there.
2. Teach a Class
Nothing terrified me more than public speaking, even if only in front of people in a meeting at work.
Around 1982, I volunteered to monitor a computer concepts video class to a mix of secretaries, engineers, and managers. All I had to do was show the video and answer questions. The first day I said, “Please fill out these forms.” Those papers rattled and shook as I handed them out.
The videotapes were far too technical. After the end of the 2nd class, I wrote and presented a 2-hour class and was comfortable by the end of the second hour. I added 7 more sessions. They had me give that highly popular class 3 times.
3. Publish a Magazine Article
In 1982, I wrote an article for the RCA Engineer magazine (print, no internet) entitled “Computer programming and systems analysis in the rapidly changing VideoDisc environment.” It was about a database management product called Focus.
In today’s language, it went viral around the world and sold tens of thousands of reprints. People had the reprints mailed to them and had to pay for each one.
4. Give a Public Speech
In 1983, I asked my manager to send me to a national Focus convention in Florida. I had never been to a convention. He said the cost ($6,100 for the fee and travel in today’s dollars) was too much.
He agreed after they waived the fee when I agreed to give a one-hour speech about my article. Imagine the publicity RCA got for that speech.
5. Dancing
The evening after the speech, I went to the hotel’s bar which had a live band. I asked one of the attendees to dance. I had never been dancing, even in high school or college. So I copied what she did. She said I was a good dancer.
Now, 40 years later, my wife and I go dancing almost every night. It was the primary reason we moved to The Villages — nightly dancing. I still don’t know any dance steps.
6. Get a Divorce
Not every event in my life was positive.
I hated to give up after 18 years. We went to three different companies for marriage counseling. The third one said, “You two should have never gotten married.”
As my lawyer was walking out of the courthouse after filing my divorce papers, he met her lawyer coming into the courthouse to file hers. We both came to the same conclusion at the same time.
7. Move Out of Indiana
I expected to live my entire life in Indianapolis, Indiana. However, during my maintenance job, the high temperatures reached -3F or lower at times. Even when I moved back to office jobs, I still had to travel in those temperatures. Then at times we would have 4-foot snow drifts.
Finally, when I was working for EDS in 1988, a subsidiary of GM at the time, I went to my boss and said, “Anne, I want to move south. Find me a place.”
They had 3 places in Hawaii and 20,000 requests to move there. Instead, I wound up in Houston, TX.
8. Visit Foreign Countries
I eventually met my current wife on the internet, Match.com, while living in Houston. She traveled — a lot and knows 4 languages. She asked me if I wanted to go to South America with her.
I said, “Sure. What do I have to do?” I had to get a passport. She had already filled two and was working on her third. I now have been to 11 or 12 countries.
9. Allergy Shots
My sinuses were miserable most of my life. I would go through a box of tissues some days.
My wife badgered me to get allergy tests. I was allergic to many things, including house dust. So, I got 4 shots, three days a week, for several months. I couldn’t even whine about them because my diabetic wife got 4 shots per day plus 4 blood tests.
The allergy shots worked perfectly!
10. Read Romance Novels
I read sci-fi from comics as a kid to novels as I got older. I sneered at romance novels in the bookstore and wondered how anybody could read them.
A few years ago, when I was in my 60's, I read Starstruck, a Science Fiction, Teen, Romance novel by Brenda Hiatt. It was so good that I read all 19 of her other romance novels. I reread Starstruck a couple of weeks ago.
Now, I have almost 300 romance novels on my Kindle.
11. Work Past Age 65
At age 65, I was forced to retire from GM. However, my wife was too young to retire, and I didn’t want to sit home alone all day.
So, I got a job with Argus Media for 5 more years supporting their Excel environment. I had never worked for a publisher. They asked me why I wanted the job during the interview, and I said, “The job sounds like fun.” It was.
I was out for my first and only surgery a couple of years later. They flew my replacement in from London. When I returned, I received this email from one of the editors, “I never knew how spoiled I was until you were out!”
12. Live in a Motel for Months
We gave our 3-month notice that we were retiring. Our house sold in 2 weeks! So, we stayed at a Marriott for 2 and 1/2 months. Its total cost was the same as living in the house, and our Houston daily work commute was cut from 1 hour to 5 minutes each way.
13. Retire to Florida
The stereotype in the US is that everybody retires to Florida. We looked at Florida, but wound up in Lima, Peru.
It turned out different than we thought, so we returned to The Villages, FL where we could go dancing on the square to live music every night.
Early in life, I always thought I would retire in Indianapolis.
14. Go to a Bar Daily
I had the usual vision of people who spent their nights at a bar. I never dreamed that I would be one. However, City Fire is not a typical bar where people just sit around and drink.
For us, the drinks are secondary. I have only one glass of wine per night. They have a different live dance band every day. They even have weekly karaoke.
15. Karaoke
Public singing wasn’t even on the horizon for someone who wouldn’t get up in front of coworkers and speak. I did sing in the car where there were no witnesses, but nowhere else.
Then at age 72, I decided to try it. Why should I care what anybody thought. Now, 4 years later, I have 12 songs and look forward to being on stage every week.
Conclusion
It is never too late to make changes in your life. Hopefully, most of them will be an improvement like mine were. My biggest one was when I signed up with Match.com and met my future wife.
It’s possible to do something new or overcome a hindrance, no matter the age. I may have one or two more new actions left in my life, too.
Things I Never Did
- Smoke - Get Drunk - Take drugs - Go to jail - Adultery (outside sex while married)
References
- #1 in the U.S. for Undergraduate Engineering (U.S. News & World Report)
- All Rankings
- Science Fiction - Teen - Romance novel (free in Feb 2023)
- So good that I read all 19 of her romance novels
- What I learned and links to songs
- Nearly every section here maps to another article
- At this point I have posted over 205 articles
