Does Your History Matter?
I Celebrate & Recall How One’s Personal Past Can Teach More Than ‘The Past’
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I told people on the most recent Sunday Buffet that all holidays are “made up holidays” and that you don’t need anyone’s permission — especially not government permission — to celebrate what you want to celebrate.
I’m going to take my own anarchist/voluntarist advice for this week’s article.
June 25 is a special day for me, because two big achievements happened on this date, 15 years apart. One has to do with music, and the other has to do with software. They involved lessons and growth that I brought with me to other ventures, and that I pray will continue the rest of my life.
And in telling you tales from my personal history, I hope to encourage you to reflect on the richness and value of your own past.
So much is made of learning from the all-encompassing “history” of the world and its inhabitants, but I think there’s at least as much worth remembering about the personal history of one inhabitant: yourself!
So, let’s begin with my story of June 25, 2006.
Remember CDs?
When digital recording became less costly in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was a big deal for indie musicians (like me!) to record their songs and either burn or press their own CDs.
I had demo-quality recordings that I would tote around to gigs, but decided I wanted something better that I’d feel comfortable sending to indie radio programs. The finished product, called Along the Way, was in my hands in the late spring of 2006.
I asked the owner of a local cafe if I could have a CD release party there on a Sunday evening, and went about making arrangements for June 25, 2006, at Crescent Moon.
It was a tangible marker of taking my music more seriously and gave me something that eventually earned me radio airplay and interviews, and with those promotional vehicles, more gigs!
But the journey had almost ended as soon as it began a few years earlier.
My first time getting on stage by myself was at an open mic at a built-for-music bar across the river in Philadelphia. I wrote my name on the list — only “Dom” since I didn’t want to burden the possibly inebriated host with having to read and pronounce “Scarcella” in a poorly lit, smoky room — and played when it was my turn.
As soon as I got on stage, I learned something about myself: I have stage fright! What a time to discover this, eh?!
I managed to get through my two songs, knees shaking the whole time. It was so bad, I promised myself I would return the next week and do it again, because I didn’t want that initial feeling of near-crippling fear to be my only memory of trying music.
And then I went back a third time, and on and on, and to other venues, too.
Eventually, my stage fright subsided. I left my newspaper job — it was a dying industry, anyway — and devoted more time and energy to music. My level of comfort on stage had grown to where I hosted open mics and featured shows for other musicians.
By 2006, I had quite unintentionally developed skills that I still have today:
marketing/promotions,
event hosting,
greater cognitive empathy and attention,
and more confidence to stand as a lone individual and communicate to crowds of people (which translated to volunteering more at my parish, especially in the religious education program; yep, I started teaching!).
Oh, and I got better at music and writing and being my own audio engineer (“sound guy,” as we called it), and met all sorts of people, some of whom became longtime friends.
A new kind of school
Those new skills and connections led me to freelance work in broadcast engineering and operations in 2014. Over the next six years, I earned a couple of promotions to full-time work and was even teaching my colleagues how to use our latest digital platforms.
An ownership change late in the first year of the #COVIDHoax meant the elimination of my job. But my experience there gave me a taste of the technical side of digital media and a desire to upgrade my skills even more.
For me, “learn to code” was an opportunity, not an insult!
Not wanting to enroll at a traditional college for courses, I found a six-month bootcamp that held all courses online and taught students how to succeed in remote and hybrid settings.
I excelled at the math and logic tasks, and at the human side of remote work (thanks, music, for the confidence to engage with others!). I struggled with the visual-creation and language-heavy aspects. All told, I did enough to graduate on Friday, June 25, 2021.
It was an achievement that demanded another beginning, like my big day exactly 15 years earlier.
A bootcamp-aided job search followed, and I landed a short-lived but valuable entry-level Software Development Engineer role.
As with music, my time in software bootcamp taught me much that I added to my toolkit, including a sharper, deeper awareness of my weaknesses. And my ongoing curiosity about modern media prompted me to explore on-demand publishing platforms, which spurred me to write a book (that I tell you about every week on Substack, heh).
The present and future (and Comments)
On this June 25, I find myself nearly 150 posts into a publishing venture on Substack that includes writing, podcasting and teaching.
Yes, I’m still looking for more work, but I’m doing so as the most well-rounded, good-neighborly version of me that I’ve ever been. And I’ve honed my process to where I could keep doing Substack even with a new full-time gig to pay the big bills.
I’ve learned from history, and especially from my personal history.
What have you learned from your past, that’s worth celebrating?
Let me know your thoughts in the Comments section below …
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My book, Good Neighbor, Bad Citizen, is available at:
Amazon (paperback & Kindle)
Barnes&Noble (paperback)
Lulu (paperback)
Find me on X: GoodNeighBadCit
And, as always: Be a good neighbor, even if it makes you a bad citizen.
Good stuff.
By my freshmen year in high school I was playing drums for the half time show at basketball games and pep rallies, etc, literally just me and a drum set making a racket for a crowd. By my Junior year in high school I was playing drums in a country band that had paying gigs and rock band that played originals at parties. I'd get nervous before gigs but not really stage fright.
In college I had speech class and found out that speaking in front of a crowd was more nerve wracking than being in a band. It was a large class in an auditorium, getting up there the first time was knee knocking for sure.
An instrument between myself and the people still makes a difference. Talking off the cuff is harder, even doing interviews makes me more nerved up than playing or singing.
In the Army I ended up having to do some speaking, you give talks to your team or give classes to groups of green guys. Then I got promoted to S2 and had to give briefings to the brass, talking to Colonels and Generals was very nerve wracking at first, not at all by the time I left.
I used those speaking skills to become a salesman, for an employee owned company, but I wasn't fully vested before they closed our territory due to a "cow buyout" program.
Then I worked at a hospital, It closed, then a factory, it closed, thanks NAFTA.
The sales job was the one that led to my last on the books tax paying job, which was about twenty five years ago. The owner had worked selling for the same feed company that I had years before.
So, I started over as a salesman again, this time selling farm implements, for two grand a month plus commission, but sales truly sucked, he was paying too much for inventory, we kept getting outbid by everyone. He gave me free reign to try whatever I wanted to save the business.
I ended up restructuring and owning half of the company within a year.
We got completely out of implements and turned it into a valve business, we imported from Italy and sold directly to about fifteen thousand businesses nationwide within two years. My best friend worked for a company in Buffalo that was doing the same thing and he'd shown me around. The place was called DMIC and they were growing like gangbusters. By chance I turned on the TV and his company was featured on a PBS show. That night it hit me, why not us?
So I decided to do the same thing on the West Coast and included direct sales, no middlemen at all.
Two years later we sold out and well, I've kind of coasted along ever since making money here and there on-line with a half dozen businesses.
Selling guitars was the most profitable of my later businesses, E-cigs were next in line, then flashlights. I used my coding skills for the e-cigs and flashlights. I designed my own drivers and the code for them.
But truly, getting the valve business set up right made my whole life different in a short time, it paid for a house and a couple degrees, money for more businesses and made it easy for my wife to remain a stay at home Mom.
One idea late at night was what my entire career really came down to, well maybe a few night of hard thinking about how to save that business and my job and then two years of problem solving and incredibly long hours and non-stop hustling.
Having the confidence to Go For It, has to be the most important aspect of my life, but being able to talk sure didn't hurt. I'm positive it helped me find a good wife and that makes a huge difference too, more than I'll ever know I'm sure.
Happy Anniversaries! Grace and Shalom to your home!
I have learned a lot from my past as well. And I encourage every one to take a look back at how good God has been to us without our even knowing.