I am one of those people who took the long road to what many would consider a successful life. It included being fired multiple times, trying just about anything to create a career, and eventually finding my niche in my late 40s. In my 20’s, I worked seasonal jobs for the USDA Forest Service and the National Park Service, leading me obviously to becoming a reporter for the Shelbyville Times-Gazette. After being fired by the publisher for not writing a fake news story, I left Tennessee to become a clerk-typist for the Forest Service in Washington, DC and was eventually promoted to…wait for it…secretary. At one point, after being asked to leave a porch I was renting in Maryland, I lived in a tent behind a church. You don’t make much as a GS-4 secretary, so deciding I needed a career change, I moved to Nashville, TN to become a songwriter. While there, I studied music at Middle Tennessee State University where I was admitted as a classical piano student…too bad I didn’t play piano…and apparently no one appreciated my songs, either. Having failed at music, I moved by paying some guy to slap some wheels onto my ancient ten by fifty (including the hitch) mobile home and haul it up to Bowling Green, Kentucky where I became a master control operator and production assistant at WBKO-TV. Yes, sir. I was living the dream on minimum wage at the Skyline Mobile Home Park. I then moved to Toledo, OH, where I was let go from not one, but two television stations. Being desperate, I cast my morals to the wind, graduated from the University of Toledo College of Law, and became a sleazy bottom-feeding lawyer. And that’s how I became a storyteller.