CHILDHOOD
I grew up in Phoenix, Arizona. All my life I have had ADHD, and a mild case of OCD (that seems to have intensified in recent years). ADHD is probably the one of the most defining underlying characteristics of my personality. I am also manic depressive. Some people can tolerate me in my manic, excited moments, some can't. I am not manic or hyperactive when I am depressed.
While I have always been considered to have a well above average intelligence, overall I did poorly in school, unless I was studying a topic that interested me, in which case I excelled. I had troubles at home, and in general I was socially awkward in school. I related much better to adults than I did to children my own age. While I consistently scored well above my grade level on aptitude tests, the fact I did not apply myself in class, and did not like to do homework, or even classwork, is most likely why I was never advanced to a grade more commensurate with my knowledge and ability.
I have always been plagued with significant concentration difficulties, and I... OOH, shiny thing... What was I saying? Ah yes, concentration. I am easily distracted by any sound, thing, object, conversation, movement, or activity going on around me at all times. I simply cannot filter or tune out any of the input that is being sucked into my head at all times. In addition, my thoughts are always racing so quickly and are so fleeting, that I often cannot keep up. Consequently, I have always been very scattered and unfocused to say the least. Throughout my life I have found (and then lost again) many various methods of functioning in spite of these difficulties, with varying levels of success.
I had a brief reprieve from my ADHD and Concentration difficulties in the 4th Grade (or was it 3rd?) when I was treated for several months with Ritalin. This was a miracle cure to me. I could focus deeply and concentrate like I never had before, and while I was not lacking in energy, I exhibited no hyperactivity. I was still aware of most of the things going on around me, but it was as if my brain was operating faster than the flood of input, and able to keep up for the first time in my life. I was very calm, and my thoughts, while rapid, were no longer fleeting. I could even filter or tune things out if I so chose. When working on classwork I could create a sort of a figurative "tunnel" around myself, effectively tuning out all the distractions, which allowed me focus on just one thing. It was phenomenal. I have never known such clarity and order before or after Ritalin.
Unfortunately, I apparently did not properly convey my feelings on how much Ritalin was helping me to my parents and my Psychiatrist. They saw only what looked like a subdued, possibly depressed child who no longer had an appetite. It's true that I was never hungry on Ritalin, but inside I was not depressed or subdued, I was merely calm and/or engrossed in thought most of the time. A few months later they took it away, and I went back to the way I was. (Which is largely the way I still am today)
I did try taking Ritalin again later in my adult life, and it did help quite a bit with my ADHD and concentration, but not nearly as well as it did in my childhood. I eventually stopped taking it mainly due to the expense, and the trouble (and expense) involved in finding a NEW Doctor and getting a NEW prescription (for a controlled substance) every time I moved. I have moved around a lot in my life. For years I have been meaning to try to find a new doctor again who can prescribe Ritalin or perhaps something new to treat my ADHD, but as with many things in my life, I haven't gotten around to it yet!
EDUCATION
I never graduated from High School. I left school during my Junior year. I took a G.E.D. pretest in San Diego when I was 19 (to determine if I needed any additional education before taking the test) and scored a 97%. At the time, based on this, I was satisfied that I could always take the test when and if I needed my G.E.D. Certificate for a job. So far I have never needed it. Over the years I managed to take several community college courses in LA and SF without showing proof of a high school diploma or G.E.D., and on job applications it always asked "what is the highest level of education you completed". I always circled "Some college", and nobody ever pried any further.
OFF TO CALIFORNIA
At the age of 18 I moved from Phoenix to San Diego, CA, where I lived for about a year. From there I moved to Los Angeles for about a year, and then on to San Francisco for another year. From there I moved to Tokyo for a little under a year before I returned to Los Angeles, where I chose to settle and find a job.
COMPUTERS
I have always been very interested in and very proficient with computers. My first computers were, in order, a Timex Sinclair (with the MEGA 16KB RAM upgrade!), a TRS-80, and then an Apple IIc. I also had total access to the the Commodore 64, the Acorn, and the Apple IIe computers owned by my grade-schools.
In the 8th Grade, I was invited by my computer teacher to actually TEACH an after-school computer class to other students. My class was a success, in that I had a packed classroom of students, but a failure in that my teaching style was not very polished. I jumped around a lot and had no real set lesson plan, and my students were apparently finding it hard to follow my lessons. We ended the project after about 2 months.
I was also quite proficient with DOS on the PC (and windows when that came out), but my true love was the Macintosh. The first time I saw that crisp black and white screen, the graphical user interface with it's mouse and cursor I was hooked! I loved the HARD and SMALL floppy disks that at the time were unique to the Mac (the rest of the computers at the time were still using 5 1/4" SOFT floppy disks) and the unique sound the Mac floppy drive made as you ran programs was great! My first Mac didn't even have a hard drive, until I eventually added a whopping 20MB hard drive! Wow! That's like 15 floppy disks on one drive! Think of all the programs you could STORE on that without having to load from floppy disk every time you wanted to use them! Since then I have owned many Macs over the years, and even a couple of Dells.
STARTED MY FIRST BUSINESS
When I was living in LA, I did some work for a friend of mine who was working as a Printing Consultant to some Japanese Companies. Through him I met a great man named Yasuo Yamaoka who owned a Color Separation (for photos that were to be printed on a 4 color printing press) business in Japan. While doing some research for my friend I discovered that the prices being charged for color film separations were so much more competitive in Japan at the time than in the US (partly due to the Yen to dollar exchange rate, which was 88 Yen to the Dollar at the time), that a business could be made in selling Japanese color separations in the US. I calculated that Japanese separations could be sold for twice as much in the US as in Japan, and STILL be 50% of the going price in the US.
Over dinner one night while Yamaoka-San was visiting my friend in LA, I proposed that we start a business selling his color separations in the US. He agreed, and soon after we went into business together, creating a new business together which we decided to call "Advanced Color Technologies". With the use of DHL's overnight service to Japan, we could offer a 3 day turn-around to clients.
While we initially wanted to focus on both the Los Angeles and San Francisco Printing markets, we decided to headquarter the business in San Francisco. Due to it's smaller, less spread out size, we felt it might be easier for me to go client hunting.
Unfortunately, just as I was getting our ads into the yellow pages in LA and SF, the market was already shifting. As the Yen grew in value, the US Color Separation market became more competitive, forcing prices down, and slashing our profit margins. It proved to be too difficult to convince prospective clients to allow us to ship their valuable original photos off to Japan to be scanned and separated for only a slight reduction in cost of getting the work done locally. Also, it seemed that Designers were always behind schedule with their work, which meant that RUSH separations were usually needed. Our 3 day turn-around time was not suitable in many situations. We gave up within a year.
OFF TO JAPAN
Thankfully, I was not out of a job! The printing industry was just starting to enter the digital age, and my former business partner, Yamaoka-San wanted to be the first shop in Tokyo to offer a complete range of digital prepress services to his color separations clients. This meant he needed someone proficient on the Macintosh, and I just happened to be the perfect person for the job! He soonflew me off to Japan to handle photo-retouching (on the Mac and the AGFA Pix retouching station that he purchased). We did relatively good business for almost a year, before realizing we were ahead of our time. The local Typesetting companies in Tokyo had managed to convince all their printing clients that Mac-based typesetting using computer fonts was inferior to their conventional methods of typesetting, and while we were busy, we weren't busy enough to pay for the millions of dollars of equipment that Yamaoka-San had just bought to be able to provide the most cutting edge digital prepress services in Tokyo. Yamaoka-San went bankrupt, and lost his company, and I returned to the United States.
BACK TO L.A.
I returned to LA, and using my newly gained knowledge in digital prepress, I quickly landed a great job with great pay at a Commercial Printshop in Burbank. I soon proved myself to be the most adept person in my department in performing the tasks of photo retouching, page layout, illustration manipulation and design, and Macintosh systems and network administration.
BOUGHT MY FIRST HOUSE
2 years after starting work at the Commercial Printer in Burbank, I bought my first house at the age of 24. I also bought 2 expensive new cars simultaneously, and added a 2nd and 3rd mortgage to my house to pay for the remodeling of my new house (which was a fixer-upper).
LIVING AS A YUPPY DOESN'T PAY OFF
in the blink of an eye I found myself owing $5000 a month EVERY MONTH in payments that had to be paid every month before I could spend a dime on food, clothes, vacation, entertainment, or anything else. It was a tough struggle. I had to work overtime every month just to pay the bills. Too late I saw the foolishness of "Biting off more than I could chew." After 3 years of utter financial strangulation, I wanted OUT. I had two choices. #1: Rent my house to a tenant for about $1200, which would not come close to covering the $2200 a month I had to pay between all three mortgages, the insurance, property taxes, and homeowner's fees, not to mention repairs. #2: Sell it and try to break even.
Since I was already in foreclosure by that point, I had to do something fast. Unfortunately, by the time I made up my mind to sell and try to break even there wasn't enough time to find a buyer and close a deal. I ended up surrendered my house to the bank. At the time I was relieved. Between the 3 mortgages, I owed as much on it as it was worth, so I figured I wasn't really losing anything, and I was more than happy to get out from under those payments. The court even let live there free for 8 months after the foreclosure which would have cost me almost $18,000 if I had to pay the bills during that time, so in a way I actually felt like I was coming out ahead.
Unfortunately, within 2 years, the property quadrupled in value, and the interest rates came down. If I had held onto it, I could have refinanced my mortages to a payment that was HALF of what I was paying, and I would have ended up with $200,000 to $300,000 in equity. If only I had known! C'est la Vie. Hindsight sure is 20/20!
MORE TO COME...
