Some of the Ways I Meet Strangers
Meeting strangers
By being someone else
This book is about who I am
My life is about who I have to be
I've met tons of strangers all through my life but I didn't send them to a single place
The people who know me - don't understand
Why I'm not some famous person yet
To me it's very obvious
Yet also very difficult
To explain
In a two words, what I haven't had yet is, "continuity" and "focus"
I didn't start working on something and stay with it for a long time
Thing is - it's not that I don't have ready life-based achievements
It's that when I have achieved things - I moved on before harvest
Imagine you're in the middle of a movie and you get a phone call
So you answer the phone and then never get to finish the movie
Because you had something that was somehow more urgent
If you did that your whole life and never finished a movie
What if you then didn't finish the movie nor the interrupt
What if you got interrupted from your abrupt interruption
What if you got interrupted from doing that one as well
All of this is a train wreck and a complete disaster
It kind of explains why my life is the way it is
It's not that I have a problem with attention
It's that I was pulled in too many directions
Some but not all of it was my own fault
It made me look like I couldn't finish
That however is far from the case
So with the understanding that
I, you and perhaps all of us
Were somehow interrupted
From doing previous things
I am asking for a new start
Perhaps that is how I can explain that I'm a big person in a small situation
I like to refer to myself as an extremely late bloomer - 50 years is very tardy
As I write this book today from a public library, I'm not exaggerating when I say
That everything I have and need for right now is stowed neatly in the trunk of my car
Why did I have to go in reverse direction before I could fulfill myself - sorry but I just did
That car is where I do almost everything I need to do - including sleeping every night
It's true I have access to a home but it's thousands of miles from my present location
This choice came about because I firmly have decided it's best to be near my own son
What is happening with him will be the awe-inspiring topic base for a different literary work
It's not so much that I'm homeless - it's more true to say that I'm, "disenfranchised"
It's a choice I made and once that choice was made, there was no going back
Having made that choice, the way I end up meeting people is affected greatly
Let's just say in my present incarnation, I don't seem as a mighty presence
It's true that I have health and humor radiating out of my every pore
What I don't have however is a big resource base or powerful story
I am fine with what I am and I don't really need to impress anyone
The main people that I meet are the people at the gym in the pool
It's with older people that I chat and converse - less pretentious
The world class people in So Cal are too busy to notice me
What I don't do is to present myself to women - too needy!
Yes it's supposed to be a team effort - before that, it's not
I have a history of losing perspective while pleasing others
For that - I have stayed away from romance and fraternity
It will be fun to find those things again later in my life
For now I meet very few people - that is ok with me
One of the saddest things about my life
Is that I don't have a central platform for success and fame
I don't point my friends and strangers to a central location which explains myself
This is why I have decided my first written work is about proving I can swim a mile
Without that central thing
It's hard to know what I'm doing
It's impossible to even understand
What I might be winning at or thinking about
It's hard to see me and understand how I make sense
Until you see how I stay strong under adverse conditions
It's hard to think of me in a specific way or generate vision about my interests
This literary work is a focused attempt
To centralize all of my interests and expertise
Into one consolidated opening introduction
Now with this book I can say - Hi I do swim
It might sound like such an obvious thing
Until you realize I didn't have that thing
Before this it was - Hi I'm worthwhile
One day I realized that I've been working so hard at this hobby!
No one knows what I'm doing! None of my friends nor loved ones see it
That was a sad truth and especially with my bachelors degree in Marketing
A person who is academically trained in Marketing should be way better at packaging self
That has been a very foolish condition for me to live with considering my skills
Marketing is branding & association - I was doing neither with the product of me
In the absence of having a little jingle that I use to sell myself, my interactions were flat
It is no exaggeration that despite my gifts and talents, I was making terrible impressions
Her: Nice to meet you!
Her: What do you do?
Me: I don't
Rideshare
Driving rideshare is how I kept my life together for many years
I did it very well - but I keep having my cars wrecked
Six times I've been struck by another vehicle
It was 100% their fault each and every time
Driving rideshare got me exactly nowhere
When you wreck a car you can't drive it
There is no compensation - no paid time off
So without your moneymaker, it's lost time without pay
I worked so hard at not earning respect, then literally crashed and burned
You never see it coming, then it takes all your resources to survive after that
Having driven Uber and Lyft for around 6+ years
I made okay money when I was doing it, but with those breaks
In the end, I didn't make much money overall for a lot of hard time driving
Plus that job - is not an in-road to other opportunities - it's not supposed to be
Especially I was a tremendous fool to not-cultivate a side hustle within the side hustle
You can get a little respect as a rideshare driver but not much - same with money
It's been surprising to me that as a technical recruiter people would suck up to me
But then as a driver people think I'm either an idiot or something is wrong with me
What I was needing is a better, legitimate way
To make best use of those special instances
Where as driver I meet a kind passenger
They sincerely ask - what else do I do?
I wasn't mastering the key response to that type of person asking me that question
Going into my bit about doing 40 laps in 40 minutes definitely gets people's attention
It's got just the right blend of providing credibility to myself and showing I'm organized
Without some story like that I just couldn't network as well
With those people because I hadn't done my own part
On having something ready to share when it arises
That is how I improved my personal packaging
I was needing to better foster those instances
Where a friendly connection can turn into
An interesting back story and opportunity
Good chemistry needed an ice breaker
I needed to cultivate a topic of surprise & intrigue
Now, "Hey you're a cool guy" can be replied to with,
"Yeah I'm also a tech swim coach" - it gets me looks
Being a driver while unimpressive created a new in-road
By grooving a ready-response I improved my elevator pitch
High School Sports Coach
Being a high school and club sports coach
Was a nice way to make a few extra bucks
While staying fit and sharing my athletic training
Especially during my 20s and 30s when I moved a few times
Doing that job was a nice way to stay in shape
Also I would end up meeting other coaches
Plus those jobs are always available
If you know how and where to look
If you ask most public school sports coaches
You'll find out it's not a great source of income
It's a nice extra way for teachers to make extra money
Most of the coaches don't have specialized background
By the time I'd reached my 40s
There was mostly no point
In putting time into that
Too timely, no payoff
It's been a great source of experience
It's been fun too but it gets wasted every year
It's not like you're going to network with the kids
They are too young when they graduate and I'm too old
It's just not a sensible or worthwhile way to network
They just move forward - we never see them again
I was needing to upgrade my expertise to online
I was needing to parlay the time into.. curriculum
It struck me as true - long before I acted on it
Then I identified an incredible physical feat
To both begin and accomplish a challenge
Then prove I can do it beyond age 50
Being a tech swimmer is a challenge
Doing it well - great memoir notes
Reclaiming physical fitness with weekly miles
Is a topic that I can embody with pride and joy
You have no idea how proud my son is of my continued fitness
It will be fun to produce my notes around being a rideshare driver too
Those are some of the funniest stories - that will all come back around
For now, I hope people don't think swimming is a weird start
It's my fitness thing right now and that's why I'm sharing it
I'm a natural coach and world's best sports dad
I know what I am - you can take it to the bank
I can coach what I know - that includes swimming, rideshare and many other things
My project queue is huge - there are many topics behind this that I'm excited to share
I've decided that my next publication will be about my mom's interesting and untold story
When I publish my response to her publications - that's going to start a lot of conversation
Team Sports Coach as a paid position
I have been the central leading team figure
On a few professional athletic coaching squads
This type of position is public-facing and highly visible
Many people in roles like this do ultimately choose
To present themselves in suits and ties
With cabinets of other coaches
Also trainers and advisors
All around them
At all times
No matter how a coach dresses - whether it be in a suit or a bathing suit
A head coach interfaces with many different types of people all the time
That includes the athletes, their families, school faculty, the media
Not to mention entire squads of opposing teams and referees
Not to mention custodians, security and office administrations
I hope the idea of me running around
In my form fitting swim trunks
Won't stain anyone's mind
Toward the idea that
I'm a great coach
I preach longevity
Generation X
Me being the age that I am
Is a big part of the production of this material
I've gotten beyond this idea that I need to impress influential people
I really don't need to impress people who work in big fancy named companies
A lot of that feeling does come from me being my current age and I'm proud of that
What is great is meeting other people who are +/- a few years from my own age
My mom was a professional writer and I've lived through a lot of strange things
I've learned much about who to think and talk about - and present those things
Healing Circles
Somewhere along the way - I started browsing - new age sections of book stores
I started reading healing ideas that help me be more in tune with myself
A lot of things taught me about being a celestial receiving instrument
Some of us know things like that - we should share those things
While we all do live in the same physical world
Clearly we don't all live in the same dimension
At least not at the same time - I'm cool with it
For those special people who I have somehow met
Or encountered or been referred to via a spiritual path or connection
Thank you - I hope we can recognize each other and discuss everything more
If you are a light worker or an empath I'm certain we have many things in common
One of the places where I used to live
I can't believe how out of hand my life got
I can't even believe how quickly I went
From being able to keep in touch
With all of my friends
To being a person who can't remember
Where any of them live any more
Or who has time to talk to me
As an adult - may I leave open ticket - for anyone I was ever friends with -
I'm still the same guy but I'm a lot sharper than I was when I was younger
Telegram
You know who you are
You are that special breed of person
Who can deal with and handle the full truth
I don't remember what my life was before Telegram
You, dear people, you are my people and you know it.
Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
I need to do a much better job
Harvesting traffic from these places
There's a funny little two step - you ready?
So you have a social media business page? -YEP
So you have likes on your social media business page - YEP
What are you doing with with the likes on your social media business page - ERRR
Again, I actually have the skills to put systems behind that
With being a stay-home parent, divorce and death of two parents
I got so severely set back - getting through all that took me over fifteen years
I owe it to myself to create a single place
Where I can refer all the strangers I drive
All the people who I've coached
All the street people I have met
My people from social media
All the studs from Telegram
My many healing friends
All my old IRL friends
My family of course
As I get more organized I aspire to bring all of the people to a single unified place
That unified place will hopefully reinforce my talents, experience and express purposes
Until that happens it seems to be my destiny to be the guy who failed to package myself
It's not such a rare problem - hopefully others will do this much faster that I did it for myself