- Image by Ewan-M via Flickr
Some of you that have been here for a while may not know that I have been out of my profession for a lot longer than the time that I’ve been a stay at home dad. Officially, I am creeping up on three years since I have last held a full time paying job, which in many ways has been weighing on my mind recently.
To frame all of this, here’s the back story on my disappointing career. I stopped going to school full time when my college internship turned into my first real job. With a crappy car and other material needs calling, I became an analyst at a brokerage firm when someone was foolish enough to pay me $30K/year without having completed my degree. After a few years of that I went to work for another financial services company all the while going to night school to finish my degree in finance. Eventually, I had some crazy idea about starting my own business around the same time the dot com bubble was ready to burst. In retrospect, I had absolutely no business trying to start any business, but the arrogance and ignorance of youth got the better of me.
Not long after I found myself forced to scrap my dreams, ultimately leaving Boston in hopes that new scenery would resuscitate my career that was clearly on life support. In early 2002 I got into the mortgage business about two months after moving to Charlotte with about $500 to my name and more debt than I knew what to do with. Things were good for me, I made decent money and got myself out of the hole I put myself in. I bought some property, but ultimately the urge to do my own thing started to rear its ugly head.
For a number of reasons I left the successful mortgage company I had worked at for three plus years to help start a new brokerage. If you’ve made it this far, you’ve figured out that this move didn’t work out for me and, after a six week stint on the wholesale side of the business, I found myself hammer in hand ripping apart the home I had recently purchased with my wife, who at the time was still my fiancée and probably didn’t know what a nut job she was about to marry.
Shortly after finishing the house I made one last futile attempt to revive my mortgage career, but I just didn’t have it in me. The passion and drive I once had for what I did had vanished somewhere. Maybe I never had it, maybe it was just the obscene paychecks I had grown accustomed to in the years since I rolled into town, hat in hand. What I do know is that is that since my son’s birth and the year I’ve spent as a stay at home dad has provided me with some clarity, but still no real sense of direction.
I joked back in February in an post about my ‘second career crisis‘ that Lloyd Dobler was my hero. To some degree this is very much true. Why? Because as deluded as he may have been, he followed his passion. For much of my career I’ve tried to shoehorn myself into positions that I don’t think I really ever truly belonged in the first place. I’m disappointed that I wasn’t honest with myself all those years ago, but the reality is that I have no regrets. I would have not made the friends I have today if I hadn’t attended the college I did, and, more importantly, I wouldn’t have met my wife and had my son if my career had gone the way I had originally planned.
Still I continue to look to the future and what it may hold for me. I know at some point I’m going to actually have to start earning a paycheck again, only this time doing something I enjoy rather than something that can make me a lot of money doing while at the same time makes me miserable. While the money would be nice, especially right now, it would just put me on the same career suicide carousel I’ve been on one time to many. While I have a few things on the horizon, nothing terribly concrete mind you, I do hope one day I can actually fulfill a recurring dream I’ve been having for the past year or so. Right now it is just a dream, but I’d like to share it with you nonetheless.
If you’ve read my blog before you know that cooking for my family brings me a lot of joy, but I know that I don’t have it in me to work in or own a restaurant. No, what I would really like to do is open a Salumeria. A what, you say? A Salumeria, loosely translated, is an Italian deli, but more specifically is a cured meat shop. I would offer up my own creations, especially when it comes to homemade sausage, be it fresh, smoked or cold smoked. I’ve had the menu in my head for the longest time and, while it would take a lot research, time away from my family and money I don’t have to put together, I know it would be something I would be proud of and be happy doing.
I’d love to be the guy in town that everyone in the neighborhood comes to get everyday and holiday specialties like a purveyor from a bygone era. There is a lot of imagery of the big old Italian shopkeeper, who knows everyones name and is happy to see them all, racing through my mind as I envision it. Sure we live in different times, but I can still see a need for a place like this, even if it is only in my head. A lot of developments here in Charlotte have been designed to evoke memories of years gone by mixing retail in walking distance to high density residential complexes.
The place would need it’s own website, blog, Facebook fan page and Twitter account, obviously. And, of course, I wouldn’t want to start out as a retail establishment. The failure rate for those are tremendously high and I’ve done enough failing for one lifetime. No, if I were to actually do this I would try to start out supplying restaurants with the homemade provisions for them to serve to their customers and work to build a wholesale base that could support a quaint little neighborhood retail shop. Nothing fancy, just simple fare at reasonable prices.
As you can see, I’ve thought a great deal about all of this. I even have a name – Harry’s Salumeria. An Italian deli named, ironically enough, after my Irish paternal grandfather who himself was a butcher for over 50 years.
Yes, this is just a dream of mine, but dreams are important whether they are big or small. And, who knows, maybe someday all the forces will align and I’ll be able to say to you:
“Welcome to Harry’s”
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