As far as the career thing, I’ve recently retired [helped by the economic downturn] early from what was my second career. My first career was in military and associated intelligence business. It was a great career in that it was IMPOSSIBLE for you to work from home, and that it allowed for travel. It was the author of my almost 10 years in England, for one thing, never mind stints in Crete and Germany [and also in Vietnam, so there was that].

Upon leaving that field, I took advantage of having a working wife and no children and became a full-time college student. I completed my BA and a Masters in International Relations [concentration-middle east politics/government] by the time I’d been out of the intel biz for 30 months. I was about to get a Ph.D in the field, when life intervened — John Lennon was correct. Life DOES happen when you are busy making plans. I was choosing among four offers of candidacy in universities in the Washington DC area, when my wife was sent elsewhere. Instead, I began teaching in public schools [I'm sure in this day and age, I don't have to explain the difference between our public schools and y'all's.]. I did this for a couple of years and then segued into college administration during my last trip to England. I had a nice little c.v. built up and a couple of very interested state-supported universities/colleges in the San Antonio area where we had planned to settle.

Unfortunately, while we were flying over the Atlantic, a class-action suit was filed against state higher education institutions because of alleged racial/ethnic bias in hiring. As soon as I discovered this, I realized that as a middle-aged white guy with a masters, my opportunities were limited. I went the private college route — San Antonio has three Catholic universities, and one supported by the Methodist Church — but to no avail. I was unemployed for the first time since I was 14 and it was a little weird — especially since I was sending the wife to college on my money — just as she had done for me 8 years earlier.

One Sunday afternoon, the wife was looking through the classified ads and said, “Hey, there’s someone called the Psychological Corporation that’s hiring people with history/poli-sci degrees.” I naturally replied, “When did McDonalds change their name to Psychological Corp.”  I worked for them as a temp for around a year and then got hired. TPC [later Harcourt Education Measurement, currently Pearson], as it turned out was an outfit that created and sold standardized tests to states for a living. Two things had converged to make the business grow: (1) Taxpayers/politicians wanted their school system “graded” and (2) Political conservatives had come out strongly against national education standards. Results? Instead of 1 set of tests, you needed 50. The business boomed. It especially boomed for people in what we call “the social studies” when a George HW Bush program called GOALS2000 came in. It mandated testing in History, Government, AND Geography. At one point I was the ONLY full time Social Studies expert on the payroll at ANY of the 4 or 5 major testing companies. By the time I left Harcourt to go into business for myself, I had a staff of four people and more work than I could handle.

While all this was going on, I was getting overworked and frustrated. I no longer had time for theater [primarily acting], and my writing had suffered. When I was in England in the early 90s working for an American university, I did about 4 shows a year and wrote and produced three plays. Anyhow, I went to a national convention where I discovered that I had a very good reputation in the business and that I was getting hosed in the paycheck department. After some discussion, I decided to create DPH Education Consulting and work for myself. This was November 1998. In the four and a half years I lived this life, I managed to make a decent amount of money while working a WHOLE lot less. I managed to write an unpublished play [STILL unpublished] and co-author a book. I also was constantly on stage and had a ton of fun.

In the Spring of 2003, I went to work for one of my clients. They were based in Minnesota, and I became one of the first telecommuters in our business — it’s about 50% telecommuter now. I was hired at just about TWICE the salary I was paid in Harcourt, and basically could design my own job. I had a small staff of three, and had Director rank — just below vice president. All was good until the impact of George W. Bush’s “no child left behind” program was felt in our business. There were two key provisions of this program: (1) While you got no government money to help pay for testing, if you opted out you could forfeit ALL federal aid to education in your state. And (2) The program consisted of Reading, Writing, and Math — EXCLUSIVELY. In our business, what doesn’t get funded doesn’t get tested. In the world of public education, what doesn’t get tested doesn’t get taught. By the time I was making very nice money, my area of responsibility had dwindled a lot. Both myself and the ONE subordinate I had left were earning most of our paychecks doing work in other areas of expertise. Since I had successfully trained her to do everything I could do, I had become less critical to the success of the company. With demand for my skills ebbing, it made sense for them to let me go and give my work to her for about half of what they were playing me. My position was deleted. It was a valid business decision and I have no hard feelings.

Since then, August 2004, I’ve picked up some more consulting $ here and there from old friends working for companies in California and Texas, but they’re retiring also, and the business continues to contract as funding is being cut everywhere. I officially retired about a year ago, although I’m not at official retirement age for another 3 weeks.

How all this will help you with your career arc, I don’t know. I do know that my staffing skills and my ability to work alone as well as a functional team member/manager stood me in good stead throughout my working life. I always created a positive work environment and excelled at keeping tensions under control in a HUGELY stressful pair of careers. I took as many management courses as I possibly could and already had a firm supervisory philosophy in place before I ever supervised anyone in the public sector. It’s pretty simple; I’ll give it to you for free: (1) Your job as a boss is to create a work environment in which your subordinates are able to succeed and excel. (2) It is your specific duty to ensure that you people have everything they need to accomplish their assignments while you simultaneously eliminate everything that stands in the way of getting the task completed. It sounds simple, but the education testing biz is run by scholars — the very antithesis of team players — and they don’t value such mundanery as supervision and management. I wanted to hurt people many, many times. I knew how to do it as well, but I AM a Southern Gentleman, so … .

As for how I found the jobs — it was purely karmic. There was no particular reason why Mary Lou and I decided to make our permanent home in San Antonio. The low cost of living and lack of snow certainly contributed, but we had no family and only one family of friends. Had we NOT chosen San Antonio, I would never have gotten into my second career. How’s THAT for planning. I just basically fell into testing. I DID learn that you always need to be aware of your actual value to your employer and to use that knowledge to your advantage. There’s also a lot to be said for good will. I gave my original company a full SIX MONTHS notice to help them secure an adequate replacement [as if ] and also so as not to jar several newly won clients with my departure. The good will I got by doing this meant that my old company was always willing to use my services as a consultant.

ABOUT THE BAND. I have always been musical, but I’ve always been a singer. I’m getting better as a guitar player — which is a HORRIBLE thing to admit for a guy that’s nearly 65. I hadn’t been in a band since 1979, and I don’t think I’d taken my guitar out of the closet more than three or four times in the decade before the wheels started rolling for the band. We got together because Mary Lou and I were in a play with Kathy — the wife of my now band partner. We began to socialize and Steve HATED theater parties [conversations there become recitations of resumes all too easily]. Steve had just recorded a CD of songs he’d written over the years and, in the process, had his beloved Taylor acoustic nicked. Once he got a replacement, he began to play more. Mary Lou encouraged me to bring over my guitar and play with him [while the ladies drank wine and talked theater]. When you get a new guitar, you play it a lot. When you play a lot, you get better.

Once I decided to get a new guitar, the idea of the band was already percolating. By the time we played our first gig, 6 years and 2 months ago, we had both improved and were a fairly competent duo of singers who played instruments — rather than guitarists that sang. The women gradually got into the act as singers, Kathy began playing bass and Mary Lou took up percussion. Where when we started Steve and I had a repertoire of about 30 songs — with about that many more that one could sing alone should the other have to repair a broken string — now we have around 300 songs in the repertoire, and of the 42 songs that normally encompasses a three-hour gig for us, I’d say that more than 35 have at least one of the women performing.

Are we any good? Well, I always tell people that if you like our kind of music, you’ll like us. We’re very serious about how we sound vocally, and we’re heavily into harmonies. Steve is a very good guitarist and I’m certainly serviceable, but Kathy is VERY new to bass and just about any other cover band who does 60s/70s stuff like we do will blow us off the stage with their musicianship, but I’m not bragging when I say that NOBODY in America’s 7th largest city can compete with us vocally.

How do we do it? Well, Steve’s a CPA and we’ve been on a sound financial footing from day one. Every penny we make in salary, sales, and tips goes into our bank account. We use the money to upgrade/replace equipment and, once a year, we push the boat out for a huge anniversary dinner that the band’s credit card takes care of. We paid 100% of the costs of producing our CD — studio/engineer/packaging/pressing/advertising — up front. As a result, every penny we have taken in on the CD has gone to us.

Early on we developed a philosophy about performing with the band: You get paid to get to and from the venue. You get paid to set up and break down the equipment and do the sound checks. That stuff is paid work. PERFORMING is fun, and if you’re not having fun, you’re wasting your time. People always say that we look like we’re having fun up there, and we are. As we get older, we’re discovering that we can’t do all the three hour outdoor gigs in 95 degrees F temperatures that so often are where the big money is. We’ve settled down into smaller venues that best fit our sound and footprint, played before smaller crowds, and made less money less often because the pace of say, 2009, was killing me. I also have to try NOT to get too dependent on the band. I’m a worrier, you see. When I got fired, I went into a bit of an emotional tailspin. Had the band stopped performing during this time I would have been shattered. I’ve done my best NOT to be so dependent on it.

So, although I don’t do conventional theater any more — haven’t since 2002 — I have joined a volunteer troupe of actors/singers who perform at retirement homes. I haven’t produced a major piece of writing since around 2001, but I’m still writing lyrics for our original songs, and have done a lot of other prose writing — some of which you’ve read. It’s the same with the music. If you are an artist — a writer, a musician, a painter/sculptor — you are always that at your base and in your soul. If you’re not engaged in your art, it’s only temporary. What your parents told you when you were young is still true: the more you practice, the better you get. My advice? Playing guitar is like playing tennis. You’ll get better if you play with someone who is superior to you, but whom you can still challenge.

I have no idea if any of this is useful to you, but you DID ask.