I wrote this in reply to a friend's thread on Tournament.com

  If you don't mind, I'd like to tell you of the lowest point of my life, and how having someone who believes in you, and being open to new (and risky) opportunities made all the difference for me. (for some reason, I feel like sharing)

My education was in Photojournalism. I wanted to be a newspaper photographer, which pays an entry salary of about $17k/year. My school loans were over $14k, and I knew it would take me forever to pay them back in my chosen profession. I decided to try to make some quick money and teach English in Japan or a year. I heard you could make about $40/hour doing that. I raised about $3k for the trip by going around the county in an old U-haul truck picking up people's donated garage-sale type items. I had put an ad in the paper asking for such donations to fund my trip and, surprisingly, got some really good stuff donated to me. I sold it every weekend on my Father's land.

I'd been in Tokyo for a month before I found a job. It wasn't as easy as I had thought. I had blown through all my money and if I'd been there one more week without finding a job, I would have had to come back. The day after I landed the job, and found myself an apartment, my brother phoned to tell me my Father had been killed in a car accident. Some dipshit had run a red light in a Ryder rental truck.

I came back to the US. It was the lowest point of my life. My Father was a hero to me. And now he was gone. I hadn't seen him for almost a year, so it seemed really strange to me. even today sometimes it seems like he's still down in Florida, making hurricane shelters, and all I need to do is hop a plane to see him, but it's not so. (tearing up, must... keep... typing... )

Stuck back in Hendersonville, North Carolina, my Father gone, no job, no car, no money and no plan. My future had this cloud of the $14k of school debt looming over it. It was the worst. I was living in a one-room cabin in the country surrounding Hendersonville, a retirement town in the mountains of North Carolina.

Then I got a phone call that turned my life around. "Dude, you have to get in here! This gorgous Australian babe just dropped off her film. She'll be back in an hour! She's just your type. Come on!" said my best friend, John, who runs a small one-hour photo in town.

With nothing better to do, I hit the street, trying to hitch a ride for the 4 mile trip into town. No such luck, I end up walking it.

I arrive too late, she's come and gone, and it seems I've missed my chance. But John tells me she's still in town, doing her Mom a favor by running the Australian clothing store on Main St., just a block away. Seems she's on a round-the-world trip, and stopped in the States for a few weeks to visit her Mom here. So off I go, to see this beauty for myself.

I open the door to "DownUnder" and am smitten. Her name is Kerry Fitzgerald. She's a beauty. I tell her I'm shopping for a good hat, because I know this will take forever, as I have an unusually large head, and most hat stores don't carry my size. We get to know eachother better and we start to date. John was right. She IS my type. Independant, passionate, adventurous, loving. And cute.

I tell her of my plan (which I had just pulled out of my ass ) to move to the Chapel Hill/ Raleigh area to continue my education (maybe something more lucrative than newspaper photography) and get a job using my photo skills. She hints that she wouldn't mind going with. So I move in with my friend John and get a job at the local supermarket mopping the floor and doing Produce. I really hate mopping floors, but we need some cash for our venture to Chapel Hill.

It took us 2 months to save about $500 for the trip. We took a cash advance on Kerry's credit card for the deposit on the apartment. Everything we own fits inside and on top of our 2 stationwagons.

It didn't start out well. It took me a while to find a job, and when I did land one, it was taking family portraits at Kmart for minimum wage. I'm sure I've read somewhere that this is one of the circles of hell.

On one of our trips into Raleigh, job-hunting, I ask Kerry to look up the address for the local paper. I didn't even know it's name. So we head down to the Raleigh News & Observer to see if maybe they have any openings. The security guard hands me a binder and I find one. Imaging Technician. Basically a Photoshop jockey.

Well, I'd never used Photoshop. I didn't own a computer. I had seen someone use it once, and I'd played SimCity on in college on my roommate's black and white Mac II SE, so I apply. Yeah, I had no hands-on experience in Photoshop, but I knew color theory and composition and newspaper photography pretty well from school. It's a long-shot, but Kerry thinks I can swing it, so what the hey.

They grant me an interview in 2 days, and tell me I need to bring a resume and portfollio, of which I have neither. I despair, but Kerry pushes me on, saying I can do it. We scramble to put these together. I hang out in a bookstore for an afternoon reading a Photoshop book (I couldn't buy it, it was $40!) and the next afternoon at the Chapel Hill student newspaper watching over someone's shoulder as they worked in Photoshop. I could watch, but not touch.

Incredibly underqualified and barely prepared, I'm about to head into my interview when Kerry tells me something very valuable: "Honey, they're going to see that you're assertive and have the photo skills for the job, but they may be worried about your lack of Photoshop experience. If you get the feeling they're not going to hire you, offer them 2 free days of work, no strings attached, to try you out. If you don't work out, they can just not invite you back, and it's no risk for them." Cute, and smart, too.

Well, it worked. The interview went well, but I could tell in their eyes I didn't have the job. I offered the 2 days ad they bit. I came in for the 2 days, hardly did any work (they knew I could learn the job, they just wanted to know if I'd fit in) and they hired me.

It was good timing, too. Kerry and I were on our way to sell my plasma so we would have some cash (no joke) when the call came. He asked what kind of salary I was looking for. My expert negotiating skills led me to blurt out $15k? (which was $2k more than Kmart was paying). He takes pity on me and says "How about $17k?". Well that just made my day.

I got a reputation for great photoshop work and after about a year, landed a job at a startup sports magazine as Director of Imaging for $30k/year, a big jump. That went under, but I'd gotten into web design making that magazine's site, plus a few others, and got a Web Design job at Nando.net for $35k. That led to my New York gig with GT, which led to Utah, which you all know sunk out from underneath me, which led here, San Diego and Verant. I now run a department of 4 artists (perhaps 6 soon) am happily married to Kerry, own 2 houses and am trying to start a family.

Moral of the story? Shit, I dunno. What did it for me was that I had nothing to lose after my Dad died and decided to take a series of insane risks. Kerry was a risk (she's 12 years older than me, many people said it wouldn't work). Going to Raleigh with her was a risk, what if I hadn't found that job? NYC and GT was a risk, if a smaller one, but later, Utah was a huge risk. Sure, it led to Verant and better things, but man, it was really hairy there for a while! And it was Kerry who made me brave and took those risks along side me. She believed in me, and I wanted to give her a secure life, which meant venturing out. I might still be mopping floors in that supermarket if I hadn't met her.

I am so blessed to have her and to have had these wonderful things happen to me. I know I will never take it for granted, because I have this feeling that if I don't appreciate what I've been given, it will somehow all slip away in a puff of smoke. I give thanks to God for rewarding me for my faith in taking those risks, and tell Kerry how much she means to me every day.

That, and I tell her she's a cutie.