This Is Where It Begins - a tough look inward.

Sometimes, life conspires to make you rethink everything.  Here I am at age 50, rethinking everything.  I want to say up front however, that this is not easy for me.  I’m generally a private person, a guy who has most often channeled his thoughts and feelings through his writing or music, spinning an emotionally difficult day through some lyrics or melodies, or through the narratives of the short film startup that I helped get off the ground.

Earlier this year, my beloved father passed away.  Immediately, unresolved conflicts of personalities and values and beliefs, however minor, morphed into guilt.  I’m a med-school dropout.  I chased my artistic ambition instead, working crazy hours in the restaurant business in downtown Chicago to fund those creative dreams.  No matter how much my father loved me—and make no mistake, he loved all of his children and grandchildren—you might imagine there was probably a lingering disappointment.

Before that, my girlfriend of 5 years and I broke up, kicking off 2018 with a kick in the teeth. I mean, what is love anyway?  Yeah, THOSE kinds of questions pop up.

After leaving the startup, I worked for a small but well-recognized ad agency.  The guy who I thought I was going to work for left after my first two weeks, likely forced out, but it left a hole unfilled by the Execs and chaos ensued.  I was not in a place emotionally to be wrangling adults again.  The creatives there were gifted and smart, but leadership was anemic.  I simply could not abide this and quit.

Here I am, questioning everything.

Some dark nights of soul-searching, perhaps with a little too much wine, made me realize that I cannot work for anyone any more.  If I’m going to exist in some kind of chaos, then it needs to be mine and mine alone.  I can bring order to chaos, but not to make someone else rich.

Here I am then, grateful for having landed on Bigger Pockets, where the unabashed enthusiasm of someone like Mr. Turner is refreshing and honest and pragmatic.

Here I am risking nearly everything I have to make this leap.  And I feel accountability is paramount, so this blog will be just that.  I’ll chronicle and share the journey—everything from financials to the folks I consult and work with to the properties I buy (will buy, Brad, WILL BUY).

Even if I am a spectacular failure, I always hope I can pass along mistakes big and small, so that someone else will not make them.

I never thought in a million years that something like RE investing would excite me.  All of a sudden though, I AM excited by this.  The challenges are mine.  And the payoff is mine.  My efforts come back to me, not someone else.  But I know it cannot be done alone.  This all sounds incredibly gratifying.  I want to be there.  I want to share how I got there, even at this late stage of my life.

NEXT UP:  The plan and the work.