Home Office: Loving Your Work With Your Lover
I used to joke facetiously that the maternity nurse brought me to my wonderful mother shortly after birth and said “Congrats Ms. London; It’s a real estate tycoon”. I was the oldest male child in a 3rd generation profitable real estate firm in south Mississippi about sixty miles north of Biloxi. As it turned out, after trying it several years in my twenties, real estate was not my thing and I later learned after indulging in big market media and public relations in Washington and N.Y.C. The shark-like environment of any type was not my thing. It took a major heart attack to figure it out, but as they say it takes what it takes’. They put me “on the bench” and onto Social Security disability.
The year was 2001. I pinched my skin to discover I was still alive and having been the active person I perceived myself to be, started getting busy. Step one was to learn golf. That lasted about a month. One might think that since I grew up near Tiger Wood, perhaps by osmosis some of his golfing genius might have rubbed off. That was not the case. I spent more time in sand traps, pine tree-filled woods and shallow lakes than on the green grass. Mark Twain had been right. Golfing was a good walk gone bad.
I struggled seventeen years in the corporate world, and the longer I was there, the more I realized it was creating a sort of imbalance between who I really was, and what I was truly becoming. I did not like who or what I was becoming, that is, a person willing to give up my real friends in pursuit of keeping the bottom line black, and basically sell my soul all the while, growing tired of even the highest paying positions; some of them others would have run over me to sit in my corner office chair.
On a day off, I decided to sit down and write out a fantasy of what my “dream life” would be if I could have anything in the world. I already had “things” that alerted society that I was okay, such as a beautiful home in the Foxhall neighborhood of Washington, D.C. a new Mercedes, and all the other “goodies” that says “I’m doing just fine, thank you very much”. I had read in a self-help book that the process of writing a dream or goal onto paper was/is actually the first step of action; that is bringing it from the subconscious into the universe. It sounded a little hokey to me but I was willing to do anything to have a life that had meaning. I wanted to live again. I wanted to feel again. I was doing neither. I was existing.
The change was not a neon light egad experience; in fact totally the opposite. Within twelve years one thing led to another. Today I work at home, sometimes in my jammies if I wish. I work next to the one I love, my finance’ Lee. We run an SEO (search engine optimization) firm that is unique in that it offers not only organic SEO, but Twitter custom designed backgrounds and branded products as well as Internet optimization.
In 1997, as a hobby, I launched (what later became) the #1 offbeat cartoon on the Internet (Google rankings) cartoon and has kept its number one position for five years. . I have built numerous Internet shops featuring my funny gifts and collectibles bearing my cartoon images from tees to mugs and more. I founded, design and create the world’s only famous love quote shoes. I co-founded Mariel Hemingway Healthy Gifts ) with Mariel who has become a wonderful friend) and am partners with and she has enough faith in me to design her licensed merchandise which I enjoy doing very much. Aside from being so multi-talented, she is a salt-of-the-earth nice soul.
Through Twitter, Lee and I have met many wonderful people. I became officially adopted by someone I had always admired greatly, Kathy Ireland as her brother, and it is a closer kinship than any I’ve had with any real sibling. She has another adopted brother Jon, and Jon and I are the brothers Kathy never had and Kathy is surely the sister I never had and always wanted. We can and do talk about anything on our minds.
Meeting my better half is the most important thing that ever happened to me on Twitter. I met Lee of whom I had waited a half a century to meet the right woman; even after being engaged twice before. I knew it was not right. This time I know it is right. They say there is a reason for everything. Now I know why. If either of them had, I would never have met Lee, and nothing and nobody in the world means more to me than Lee and my love relationship with her. We work together. We love our work and we work hard at it. We wear many hats. Lee is a graphic designer but she is also the love advice columnist at the Herald de Paris. She did not know SEO when we started our SEO firm, but now knows it as well as any guru (we don’t use that word as we don’t believe it exists) of whom I’ve read their writings. Working with Lee is always a pleasure and feels more like fun than play. It reconfirms that Everything I ever needed to know, I really did learn in Kindergarten. Though we work in a very complex business and world, we keep things very simple, and treat each other (and our clients) the way we wish to be treated. Our love grows stronger every day. As my friends remind me, I am a very lucky man. To love ones work while working with ones lover is as close to utopia as it gets. And I’m there. I can finally say “lucky me”.
Tagged with: a • arts • c • cartoons • celebrities • Comedy • g • graphic arts • h • home office • home;accessory • humor • Humor Articles • i • internet marketing • l • love • Marriage • o • Relationships • s • search engine optimization • seo • social networking • t • twitter • W • work-at-home
Filed under: Humor Articles
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Possibly related posts
