Dan the man

I wouldn’t necessarily say lifelong, there were periods in my life when I knew everything and nobody can tell me anything, yeah a textbook asshole. It took a couple of very low points and a few people who tough loved me to open my eyes as to how I was behaving, nothing like a few good ass whippings to give you insight and perspective and it doesn’t happen right away it takes a while about as long as it takes for the black eyes to fade away or your ego to heal. I am a high school dropout, but I did get my GED about six months after I left school, I didn’t want to go to college I felt I wasn’t smart enough the classroom bored me to death, but I loved to learn hands on. Long before YouTube and Google we had to get our hands on repair manuals for all the different vehicles on the road and we had to read nearly every word and refer to drawings or photos and make heads and tails of it all, there was a bit of trial and error and we had to find people with experience to answer questions we had. It did however without you even realizing it give you confidence, that feeling of accomplishment that fills you with pride in doing the job right and everything is working properly. My dad had a woodworking shop when I went to work for him it was a whole new industry from automotive but the hands on was still there so I spent the first couple of years learning how not to cut my fingers off and respect each and every tool you handle, just like mechanical work the risk of injury is high so you must pay attention. When I left CT. for Florida I didn’t want to do the work I had been doing most of my life, I wanted to reinvent myself and that meant learning a new profession or trade. It was difficult to find so my first job was a golf car mechanic and I found a part time job at night at a rehabilitation facility I was a rehab technician which sounds good but the pay was disappointing at best, but I needed the money and wanted the experience. So I spent the first two plus years in Florida working those two jobs, I did learn a lot more that I thought I would, the golf car gig was a lot of in field work so I got to learn the area around my new home and meet hundreds of people from all over the country, the rehab gig helped me grow personally by learning how to relate to people so you can offer them help of nearly any kind, sobriety, career, housing and relationships, but to further that career meant I had to go to college for four years and I was already working two jobs and could not afford to quit one so I did what I had to do to keep my home and the bills paid and that was a huge lesson in life, how to survive in it, how to compromise the one thing you would like to do with the things that you must do to live a quality life, a life you’re happy to live.