Reinvention. My Hero’s Journey

Reinvention 101. Challenge and Triumph or Gotta Reinvent Yourself? One Path or I Never Expected to Be an Author, but I Love It

In many ways, the impetus for my recent reinvention of myself was born out of adversity and the need to dive deep into Spirit to deal with that adversity.

Getting Fired. Trial by Fire.

My trial by fire and my deep dive into higher consciousness began in earnest in early 2012 when I took a promotion and moved to San Diego to become Associate State Director of the San Diego Small Business Development Center (SBDC) Network. I had worked in the SBDC system, sponsored by the US Small Business Administration, for 19 years in North Carolina. I was very good at my profession and had worked my way up through the ranks with great success. San Diego was my next stop to the top of my profession — State Director.

Unfortunately, my experience in San Diego was professional hell. The San Diego Network was being managed by a poor leader and manager. She had been running the program into the ground for nearly 10 years, abusing employees, manipulating money and confusing her lackadaisical overseers with a smoke and mirrors game of monumentally devious proportions. Program performance was abysmal. I tried to find out what was going on with the program before I accepted the job, but nobody would tell me the truth. And my wife, Lynne, and I were anxious to get back to California, after being away for 20 years. Both of our boys, their wives and our grandsons lived on the West Coast.

For more than 6 months I tried to learn my new, complex job, and use my knowledge and experience to improve the situation. I knew what needed to be done, from my previous time in North Carolina, but my ideas were rejected. I ended up in a pitch battle with my supervisor over survival of the program. She began to blame me for all the problems with the program and she threatened to have me fired as a way of diverting attention from her own incompetence.

I blew the whistle on the situation, revealing to community college officials who were supposed to be monitoring the program what was going on. And thus, ensued another 6-month period in which an investigation was done. She got demoted and eventually fired from the program. Unfortunately, I was fired too as a “troublemaker” one week before my one-year probation was up. The program is now, 4 years later, finally under competent leadership but is still at the corrupt, dysfunctional community college that is its host.

Searching for Work. Fruitless.

My next 12 months were very difficult, as well. For nine of them, I tried to find a suitable job in my profession. I came very close to becoming a State Director several times, in the final group of two candidates twice, but with no success. The same thing happened with Associate State Director and Center Director positions in California for which I interviewed. Each time, I came up empty handed after traveling quite a bit and interviewing a lot. I’m sure it didn’t help that potential employers would contact my former employer and hear…who knows what. I also filed a whistle blower action with the California State Personnel Board but lost after a hearing in which college officials accused me of incompetence and blatantly lied about numerous facts in the case.

Meditation Kept Me Sane.

Throughout this whole episode, my meditation practice was one of my key anchors to maintaining a sense of well-being. It enabled me to “keep my head about me while others were losing theirs” (If by Rudyard Kipling). I was able to return over and over again to a reasonably peaceful state of mind, no matter what insanity was going on around me.

At times my heart would soften toward those that I saw as my tormenters. I began to recognize that they were acting out of personal pain and projecting onto me the things they were not able to accept about themselves. I could see that they were doing the very best they could muster under the circumstances of their work and their lives, which had nothing to do with me. It wasn’t personal.

I managed to stay “in the moment” much of the time, though there were times when I was very annoyed and upset.

I went deeper and deeper into my meditation practice and began to have amazing insights and experiences, including experiences of Illumination. And of developing a relationship with my Soul, my Higher Consciousness. I began writing about my experiences, with no thought of publishing, but as part of my healing process.

I Began to Write as Therapy

The idea that has been taught by the world’s Master Teachers for centuries of Spirit being Within us, and that when we turn Within It will come flooding to meet us, began to make a lot of sense to me. In my case I think my Higher Consciousness had waited lifetimes, many lifetimes, for me to begin to Awaken and has been such a great, and patient, teacher.

This saga began to remind me of the “Hero’s Journey” that Joseph Campbell speaks so eloquently of in his book Hero with A Thousand Faces. In the book he argues that many successful stories follow the same storyline development. According to Campbell, the archetypical journey begins, inevitably, with the reluctant hero launching off into a new reality (San Diego for me); having difficult, life altering adventures; discovering treasure in a far-off land; and bringing the physical treasure, important information, back to ordinary reality to share with the village s/he left.

In my case, I have done a very deep dive into my inner Self and have discovered the gold of my Higher Consciousness. I have returned to share what I have learned with the village, so we can all celebrate in our good fortune at what I have discovered. I now see the bigger picture of the whys and wherefores of my Journey and have found that I am exactly where I was led to be, where I subconsciously wanted to be, and that I created a scenario that allow me to let go of my previous life.

Now, right this moment, I am doing exactly what I should be doing, sitting here writing these words. My tormenters were my liberators. They forced me to step into a world of the unknown that I only had an inkling existed — a life that is enlivening, and fun, creative, and ever expanding. I am beyond forgiveness at this point and over into “Thank you, thank you, thank you” for my new life.

Fast Forward 7 Years

My journal is now over 600,000 words long. I am in the process of turning some of those words into 5 books of prose and 1 book of poetry. The first two books are done and published on Amazon Kindle. Homage to Spirit, my book of spiritual verse is about to go live.

Oh, and I found work as a business consultant in at the Contra Costa Small Business Development. I’m back to what I loved doing most, working with clients. As a part time, independent contractor, working from, consulting with client by phone and loving working part time while developing my writing career. Yea!

I met a Center director who was willing to take a chance on me despite my reputation as a trouble maker. Perfect. He and I became great friends, I made him look like a million dollars with my level of proficiency, and I got back into that game.

Writing is where my heart lies now, though. And publishing. The mantra in self-publishing is “Ya gotta spend as much time marketing as you do writing”. I have had to learn many new skills: editing my website, email marketing, Facebook advertising, doing a podcast (about to be launched) and, even, a bit of graphic design. As we used to say in North Carolina when I was growing up, “I’m as happy as pig in slop”. Writing and business marketing.

Though the reinvention is not yet complete, and may never be, I, the hero of my journey, have returned to the village and something to offer to others who are interested in personal growth and transformation.