Background Information #1

The first inklings for the Wisdom of Age came to me several years ago. Despite having successfully negotiated graduate school and obtaining a Ph. D. in Analytical Chemistry from Purdue, things were not going very well in my personal and professional lives. I figured that after 22 years of education I would work for my initial employer as long as I wanted. A downsizing cured that notion, and it took me 12 months to find my next job. A second "rightsizing" from job #3 was followed by 8 months of unemployment.


Needless to say, things were also not going well in my personal life. My wife and I were growing apart on a daily basis, due to my being inept at innerpersonal communications and my mishandling of our financial matters. On top of our five children, I found myself ill prepared for the life I was living. At that time, I began to write down some of the lessons from my life that I wanted to be sure I taught our children before they left our daily care for college. There were quite a few! A new job, a new city, and the activities of a wife and five children put those musings on the back burner, until this summer.


Things have not improved much between my wife and I, and in mid-June, 2008 she relocated herself and the children 700 miles away, near her father and sister. Yes, it was a blow, but about the same time I started a tele-class called "Manager as Coach Boot Camp" led by Tom Heck. The initial classes encouraged us to do some soul searching into our values, and there I discovered my life purpose and the fuel for The Wisdom of Age. I also suddenly had a lot of free time to think, read and learn.


I discovered that my passion was not in the product development world I had been in for 20 years, but instead in teaching and helping others become successful. Curious, but that was the original reason I had gone to grad school 26 years ago, only to become jaded by the politics I saw on a daily basis. Additional reading led to the idea for a book around the Wisdom of Age, with contributions from many successful people. The book will be the financial backer of a move from the realm of working for other people to working for myself and my family. Author, personal coach, adjunct (or better) professor, blogger...? Who knows where it will all end? And if I catch the right breaks with our children, they may have a nice little business to take over some day!!


My next post will share the current proposed format for the book. Thanks for reading! Hope to have you visit again!

Julius