Life Should Be an Adventure

I've been really fortunate in my life. 

It didn't begin so well. My dad made $40 a week when I was born, working in a cotton mill in Mooresville, North Carolina. He had an 8th grade education, and my mother, who did finish high school, worked at a similar job until I was born.

In high school, I discovered amateur radio and built my own equipment, got licensed as K4SAM at age 16, and wanted to design radio equipment. I had no idea how to go about that, but a friend said, "I think you study electrical Engineering." 

"You mean go to college," I said.

"Yes."

Well, that lets me out, I thought. There was no money for college. In fact, my father thought I should be a TV repairman, because a local fellow had come out of the Navy and was the local TV guy, and I worked for him in the summer doing minor repairs on TV and Radio sets.

But I didn't want to repair broken sets. I wanted to design them.

Long story short, I borrowed the money to get an electrical engineering degree at NC State University, and designed communications equipment for 15 years. During the last few years of my industrial career I returned to NCSU while working full time and got a MS and then Ph.D. in psychology. 

In 1981 I left my job and began a new career teaching seminars. Leadership Skills for Project Managers eventually led to Project Planning, Scheduling and Control, and I have now written 12 books (published by McGraw-Hill, AMACOM, and Perseus), taught 60,000 individuals in 30 countries, and made more money that I ever dreamed possible when I was a boy.

So I am writing this blog from experience. My life has been an adventure, and even now, at age 77, it continues to be an adventure. I don't plan to go out having lived a life a quiet desperation, and I want to help you make your own life an adventure.

We'll discuss how to do that in the next installment of this blog. Until then, Be a Dev!ant. The good kind, of course...