Saturday, August 26, 2023

More thoughts on my life

 By the time I was 30 I was a single divorced father with a 3 year old son. My wife married another fellow and left me to raise our son. Though I was glad I didn't have to fight for custody it was hard on my son a lot, especially because eventually he didn't see his mother at all between ages 5 and 9 years old as she was traveling a lot then to places like Florida and Alaska.

So, I got a C-27 Contractor's license and moved to San Diego and I was a contractor in mostly La Jolla and Rancho Santa Fe because there was a lot of money to be made then there as a contractor.

Though I liked being a contractor I found myself not hard nosed enough for this profession. But, what I learned about myself was that I LOVED owning businesses because then I could set my own hours and do whatever I wanted to in my life. I prefered businesses that were some kind of contracting or services so I didn't have to rent or buy a storefront. So, I preferred businesses that I could run out of my garage or den or office in my home. At this time I remarried a lady with 2 children and we lived a lot in Mt. Shasta and bought 2 1/2 acres at about 4000 feet up on the mountain but without electrical lines to it. So, we had a septic Tank and a stream running by but we didn't drink the stream water unless we boiled it first as a precaution. But, we took baths in this water and my father built me a wood burning stove out of an old water pressure tank from his 2 1/2 acres near Yucca Valley in southern California up on the high Deserts where he retired to in 1980. He and I had built a retirement home for my mother and he between 1968 when he bought the property and when he retired there in 1980 when he was I think 65 when he retired from the Electrical Trade which is what he did both as an electrician and as a Contractor during my lifetime. And from 12 to 17 and from 21 for about 8 months I also worked as an electrician with him in Los Angeles when I burned out working midnight to noon 7 days a week working as a computer operator doing Automated Accounting for Car dealerships all over the state of California. So, since I couldn't really do what I wanted to in the computer field because robotics wouldn't be useful to me for another 50 to 75 years like now I decided to change professions around age 21 and went back to college to become a psychologist. But, then my live in girlfriend got pregnant in 1973 and we got married and had a son in 1974 so I needed to go make money rather than finish being a psychologist to support us all.

So, once again by 1980 I was divorced and raising my son and then remarried in early 1980 in Mt. Shasta to a lady with two children from her first marriage and we both got divorced the same year which was 1977. So, my first wife and I were together from spring of 1973 until Summer of 1977 and we were divorced by 1978.

I began writing about Arcane as a way of healing the traumas of my life caused by whooping cough, concussion which caused seizures at night between ages 10 and 15 and going to public school which I found traumatic on many levels. However, the last year of high school may parents shipped me off from Glendale, California where I attended Glendale High School to Santa Fe, New Mexico where there was a church school created by their religion. I got to spend time with a buddy who had a car there, (a VW Bug) and we had a lot of fun with our girlfriends there going places and doing things. I remember riding a truck inner tube down a snow area up in the mountains above Santa Fe and some little kid ran in front of me anad I was scared he was going to die because I was going pretty fast and he was in an area he wasn't supposed to be. So, in order to save his life I grabbed him and threw him over my head so the inner tube wouldn't run over him or kill him. He landed surprisingly on his feet and started crying. His mother apologized to me for not watching him better and scaring me and him half to death. Luckily the only thing injured was his pride and his confusion as to what happened to this 2 or 3 year old wandering aimlessly in the snow where he shouldn't have been on a Truck inner tube run with jumps in the snow there near Santa Fe.

My wife I married around 1980 started buying our own businesses around 1982 or so and continued to operate one or more businesses ongoing until we broke up in 1994 the last time. I'm not sure I would recommend running a business with your significant other, even though we both were quite a team. She was better talking to people on the phone and more social in this way coming from an affluent family and I was always the engineer of whatever we were doing making sure that everything worked properly and doing whatever needed to be done in whatever businesses we were running during this time.

But, by 1994 I realized there was no salvaging this marriage and we separated for the last time. I met my next wife by 1995 and we married in December of 1995 in Yosemite at the Chapel there and had our reception at the Awahnee hotel there. Within a few years my wife and I got to go to Bracebridge.  it is an event at Yosemite at Ahwahnee hotel in December which is a recreation of a medieval 12th night celebration with entertainment. This was a truly wonderful Christmas event if you can get tickets for it and a place to stay there in the winter because it's just too cold to camp out there that time of year unless you have a trailer or a motor home with a reserved campsite. Yosemite Lodge and the Awahnee Hotel and a few other places like "Camp Curry" if it is still there might be available. However, I wouldn't want to stay in any of their tents there that time of year unless you want to freeze to death at night.

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