Follow the signs on the road of life

Here’s a story for all graduating seniors.

Since age 9, I have occasionally left my wallet or my keys or my money at home. But there is one item I have rarely, if ever, failed to carry with me.

I am never without a pen or a pencil, something with which to write.

As a boy, I did not attach any significance to this. When, for example, I took a pen to Santa Monica beach when my friends and I rode the bus for an hour to get there, I thought everyone did that.

In my late teens, I longed for a particular type of pen, one that at $50 in 1974 was considered very expensive. That pen today costs $175.

I even spent time in stationery stores looking at pens.

In college, I wrote hundreds of letters to friends. Sometimes I got a response, sometimes I did not, but in retrospect, I often was not writing for them. I was writing for me.

I have kept business journals in which I have been writing for more than 20 years.

In 1993, I started a small business that provided me with a reasonable income, but more important, it gave me ample time to spend with my family.

In 1996, several strange things happened at once, and I began the process to change careers. I had decided to become a writer.

What happened after that was not easy. My income dropped substantially, and some people questioned my sanity. (Writers of letters to the editor of this paper still question it but for different reasons.)

Among other things, I worked nights just to put food on the table.

After a period of nine months, I emerged from the other side as a professional writer, and I have never looked back.

One day a few years ago, I counted seven publications that were running contributions I had made. And I got paid for each of them.

I’m telling you all of this not because I am bragging but because you are at a crossroads, and I want you to get a complete understanding of the power you have over your own destiny.

You are about to enter college or take a job or see the world ? something other than go back to high school. For you, the biggest mistake you could make is the one I made from the time I was that kid at the beach with his pen until I became a writer relatively late in life at age 43.

I made the mistake of not following my passion, of not following the path to something I was clearly best suited to do.

Perhaps I didn’t follow that passion because I had no mentor, no one to tell me what to do. And I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out myself. Perhaps I denied a pursuit of my passion because it wasn’t practical. After all, think of writers and unless you conjure up the name of a best-selling author, you’re usually thinking about someone with holes in the elbows of his jacket.

The truth is, I ignored or missed all the signs for most of my life. I even missed the sign in college when I set up my schedule with classes whose instructors gave essay exams, not objective ones.

I love to write, and I make a good living at it. More than that, I have never had more career satisfaction than I do right now. I am excited about tomorrow and believe that at a time when many of my friends are starting to think about easing up, I want to pour it on.

I don’t recommend that you do it my way. Figure it out now, and start working toward that goal now. You will not regret it.

Remember that all of your school life, you have been groomed to shy away from independent thinking. You have been taught to follow the status quo and that going to work for someone else is about your only career path.

For example, you will find few, if any, classes in high school or degrees in college that are centered around becoming a small-business owner.

Advances in technology have made it easy to start a business, and I encourage you to pursue that option.

There is some old advice from someone wise: “Figure out what you love to do, and find a way to make money at it.”

Good luck.