“Let’s try it one more once…”
— Count Basie

A long time ago, I had a blog under my own name. And look at that, will ya?! You’re actually seeing that blog right now. But where at one time this blog was filled with all sorts of posts by yours truly, in the past few years those words of wisdom (cough, cough) were nowhere to be seen. Why, you ask?

Welp, at the time I was looking for a new job and, at the suggestion of a friend (a suggestion I still believe was the right call), having my wild and crazy observations, opinions and bloviations visible for all–including HR people who do Google searches for a candidate’s digital footprint–to see was probably not going to help me achieve my employment goals…especially when those goals were in content and digital content. Not that it should have mattered; I’ve been a professional journalist since I was laying out newspaper pages using X-Acto knives and wax, and I regard the vocation as sacred and having a very strict code of conduct. That code used to be able to be summed up by the phrase that has been co-opted by Rupert Murdoch’s hypocritical and treasonous (yeah, I said it) minions. But you get the idea: I was always able to keep my personal opinions out of the work I was writing, editing, publishing and broadcasting.

But appearances matter, so purging my blog of those personal opinions was a necessary step in my efforts to find gainful employment. Not that it mattered, apparently, because there was another appearance that mattered more but I was unable to keep hidden: my age. I put in for many open positions and got to the interview stage for many of them. Included among those positions were some for which I was an almost perfect fit. There were also a couple that were not only spot-on matches for my professional experience, they were seeking experience that could only have been found in a very small number of human beings–a number that includes me. Alas, all to no avail. I was particularly crushed when the environmental organization in my homeland of New England decided I wasn’t a fit for the director of digital strategy position.

Sidebar: Particularly aggravating in all of the job-searching process was the rude and careless behavior exhibited by hiring entities these days. Is it really so hard to send out a boilerplate “thanks, but no thanks” email after you’ve gone through one (or more) interviews? Where’s the courtesy?

Anyway, in light of the frustration I was feeling and the additional angst prompted by the impacts of Fat Nixon’s tariff stupidity on my retirement fund, steady income and benefits seemed like a good idea. To that end, I am now in my second month of employment at West Marine, a national retailer in the boating industry. I’m working in the rigging department, helping boaters and sailors with their rope and cable needs. I’m learning various methods of splicing lines and connecting wires so that masts and sails and other boating accoutrements work properly. It’s a skill set that I can put to use in my own sailing endeavors and it might even facilitate a future move with this same company back to New England (fingers crossed). Most importantly, I’m enjoying the work, the routine and my coworkers.

That’s where I’m at now, professionally speaking. But I have not been writing one bit, much to the chagrin of several very supportive friends. Thus, I have resurrected this blog as a canvas on which to slap a bit of paint, so to speak, in an attempt to regain my writing chops. And part of that process is putting my previous writing–good, bad and awful–out there for all to see.

So for the time being I remain here in Annapolis, Maryland. I’m living on board Further at the marina where we’ve been located since we got back from the Bahamas in May 2024. A lot has happened in the intervening year-plus, and a lot has stayed the same. Nowadays, I work, I sleep, I cook dinner. I play hockey weekly with the same great group of guys I’ve been skating with for several years now, and for another two or three games, I watch the Stanley Cup finals on select evenings. I’ll use this space to catch y’all up on some of those changes, and then, as mentioned above, I’m gonna get back to writing a bit. I hope.

I hope you’ll stay tuned. And please…feel free to say hi and let me know your thoughts on, well, anything contained herein.