Prologue

In my 30s, California’s ‘la la’ beach life droned tranquilly on happily basked in the sun, playing tennis, bike riding & roller skating the Strand, jogging the beach’s surf line, trying to fall in love for ‘real’, whatever that might have meant, occasionally hiking LA’s nearby mountains & skiing Mammoth Lakes slo 

I owned my apartment’s property & several others. I bought & managed more rental property incurring more debt, pushing back the financial insecurity fears lingering in my dreams, but always ‘believing’  they would increase in value finally making me ‘feel’ financially secure into & thru retirement decades away.

Occasionally I road-tripped around Western US for a few weeks in between my real estate management & freelance handyman services.  No excess cash for luxuries including foreign travel although honestly, I never thought about it.   

I thought I was living the dream. My future could only get wealthier & more comfortable. Ha Ha Ha

                          I could never have imagined the 5 adventures my life was soon to navigate:
                              A. Arts & Acting:
                              B. Return to Corporate Advertising Account Exec role
                              C. Law School:
                              D. Solo Law Practice:
                              E.  Quit law & move to Jackson Hole, Wyoming

Wings:

   1. Unlimited Intellectual curiosity:
         (Curiosity that leads to useful knowledge)
        Your Present Status: Have you recovered your natural curiosity, or is it suppressed by the intense 30s mix of career & family demands?

         Its rebirth can enhance your career, stabilize your marriage, illuminate your children's lives, and enhance your quality of life & satisfaction. 

   2.  Unconstrained imagination & creativity.
        Your Present Status: Hopefully, in your career, marriage, & careful children's mentoring your imagination & creativity will expand to illuminate them.  

   3. Self-worth & personal character traits:     
       Your Present Status: Perhaps your career, family & children have restored or strengthened your self-worth & esteem. Either way, it's unlimited & can be restored & increased.    

       Note: Character traits are acquired & enhanced by decisions YOU make in difficult moments.

Anchors:
    1. Knowledge & Experience base: Hopefully, by chance or design, you have --- 
        a. continually added to your practical,
            everyday knowledge, skills &    
            experiences. 
        b. continually added to your career's
            knowledge & skills competency.
        c. increased your financial literacy
            /investment skills.  

    2. Curated worthy, enduring relationships.

    3. Health: maintained good physical condition.

  4.  Lifestyle complacency:   Are you too comfortable in your secure, predictable lifestyle OR do you seek new physical & mental challenges?
       a. addicted to Fox News/football or
           wish for something more active
           & fulfilling?
       b. is your life written in stone or can
           you imagine more?
       c. does your couch’s comfort override
           any American road trips & foreign
           travel? 
       d. do your personal successes:
           career, sports, hobbies make you
           dream of more, more?

    5. Work complacency:  Does your current job fulfill your needs? No further ambitions?
        Or are you bored, antsy for a new interesting challenge, a higher level, or ... different field?

    6. Financial illiterate: Are you financially content) content with your current standard of living amidst constantly rising prices and 2) willing to work into & thru your retirement years?

    OR, are you constantly improving your financial literacy: personal finances (pay off credit cards) & investing (rental property & stocks).

Anecdote: Bedroom rental: 75 years ago, my Dad rented out a bedroom to a gentlemen to supplement our family's income.

   7. Intellectual complacency: Again, addicted to passive entertainment (manipulative MSM) & endless football?
OR —- do you ...
      a. relish new knowledge (Nat'l Geographic Mag/VID, Curiosity Stream DOCs), classical music, theater, OR history, tech or sciences (Space X /NASA) 
      b. imagine N American road trips thru national parks, small town museums and historical sites. 
      c. imagine foreign travel’s near infinite variety of unlimited exposure & exploration of our Earth’s culture’s, archeology, geology and environments.

1. Arts & Acting

A few years after college and once I had quit corporate advertising in my late 20s, my natural curiosity magically reappeared, perhaps as the educational system's destructive influence waned, and free of the corporation, ... I had the mental freedom to think. 

Arts, etc:

I chased Leonardo de Vinci's 😇 Renaissance Man ideal to learn about everything.  I began exploring everything creative from learning about classical music, throwing pottery, painting, singing and acting.

I read science magazines, played the Time-Life Great Classical Music Eras & Great Composer record series (remember ‘records), bought the 54-volume Great Books of the Western World collection of the world's greatest authors' works, and read the latest popular archaeology & anthropology books. All the knowledge my education's boredom had blinded me to seemed to pop up everywhere.

Acting

For several months, I aggressively and obsessively studied acting at Film Industry Workshop (FIWI) and Rudy Solari/Guy Stockwell’s acting school, took singing lessons from Richard Loring a respected vocal coach (Johnny Mathis), and carried the lead role in a small theater production.

I received a positive, ego-boosting newspaper review, but decided after the 3rd night that I didn't really want to act night after night. Apparently, the audience agreed because it didn't show up after the 2nd night.  Finally, one day, I quit.   Yet, I still fantasize 'What might have been.

I lacked the obsessive commitment. 

Anecdote: Shelly Winters: Months later, I met a man, a former aspiring actor who was rehearsing scenes for a movie. When everyone went to lunch, 1 woman stayed behind & kept practicing, practicing, practicing. She would eventually win 2 Academy Awards, etc

Anecdote: Mama Cass: At  Cisco’s, a 1970’s era popular Manhattan Beach live-band night club, a fat woman singer would barge on stage uninvited & sing, forcing management to remove her from the club.  She was later known as Mama Cass of the late 1960’s counterculture Mamas & the Papas folk-rock vocal-group.

My Point: Mama Cass & Shelly Winters had a critical acting attribute I lacked: 'A profound obsession and passion to relentlessly pursue their art." Also, I had met too many struggling wanna be-actors.  I wanted the glory, but I wasn’t willing ‘to pay the freight’. I didn't have the passion, only the fantasy.

1. At 30, did I think about my future?
   a.  I guess I imagined that my là là Beach life & US & Canada travel would go on forever, probably with a wife and children.  Only decades later would I reflect that at 30 I had effectively retired.

   b. I imagined more apartment rentals with more rental income to reduce my property's negative cash flow & my occasional debt-worry dreams.

Anecdote: Late 1 night in my 30s,  I awoke sitting upright in bed from a bad dream:  'I could not  pay my bills."

I panicked, jumped out of bed,, sat at my desk, wrote down all bills I had to pay, & then allocated a % of my available cash to each bill. Next day I called all my creditors told them my plan to pay. They all agreed.

At 84, with high net worth, I still dream that I don't  have enough cash.' 

    c.  After my first duplex rental, I NEVER lost faith in the ultimate net worth value of my rental properties AND my sweat equity I had invested that I believed would ultimately secure my financial future. I could do the math, had the youth, and had learned the trade skills. I made some serious mistakes, but on balance I've won ... so far.

    Yet, a subtle uneasy feeling of 'going nowhere.'

    2. Was I really happy & fulfilled with my lovely beach life?

I 'think' I thought so because everything looking forward was pretty much defined. More running on the beach, biking the Strand, more beach life, more US & Canada travel, more real estate & net worth. 

Manhattan Beach had a thin strip of land with ocean views. Any property in that strip was prized by the millions living inland and elsewhere, so real estate prices & rents just kept climbing, providing an ever-increasing cash flow.

    3. Is it irresponsible to quasi-retire at 30, just coasting for the next 50 years?

IMO, it is your life. You have the right to do what you want as long as it does not hurt others. However, it seems wasteful at the most fundamental level, analogous to burning piles of good $100 dollar bills.     What's the point?

    4. Is curiosity, important, even critical to personal Quality of Life & career success?  Yes, it's the drive force for discovering & pursuing advanced & new career options, renewing marriage bonds, inspiring your children's future, and improving your financial literacy to carve out an exciting, fulfilling, financially secure elderly age retirement.

Resurrect curiosity by: 1) becoming consciously aware of everything, 2) trying to discover its interest value, its essence, & 3) investigating & pursuing your discoveries (Google) until no longer interested.

Solo Words into Action: https://solowords.com/the-cat-killed-curiosity-15-ideas-to-revive-curiosity/

Anecdote: My Foreign travel itinerary creation: epitomizes my 'curiosity quest': 1) scan a guidebook's every page, 2) literally slicing out those pages of no interest, 3) then, I dissect what does interest me, & 4) Google EVEN more if it's that interesting, & 5) research all logistics required (transport, etc.)

This deep research inspires a great desire to see.

    5. Can learning or doing new things add to our quality of life? Long ago I warped this classic homily into, "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." Heretical, I know. Yet, oft times, people miss out on the pleasure of an experience or skill because they believe they would not be good at it. Who cares if it gives you satisfaction & new insights?

Anecdote: Painting & Pottery Classes:  I half-painted a 'barn' to on-going rave reviews, but put it aside for other endeavors. Same with pottery. Never finished or did well, but enjoyed & gained insights from the experiences. Just do it!

Is the Renaissance Man (person): an ideal for all humans? The human brain is stimulated by and enjoys all new knowledge in spite of pubic education's efforts to suppress.

Today's Google Search, Youtube & AI resources provide near-unlimited knowledge & 'How To' expertise if we simply choose to explore.

Foreign travel: Why didn't my Dating Game's free European trip inspire foreign travel?
   1. Lack of money? slim cash flow on real estate.
   2. Lack of interest?
   3. Fear of Loneliness? 
   4. Lack of time: 

2. Advertising Account Executive, … Again”

While I happily languished in my comfortable beach lifestyle I was becoming subconsciously uneasy …  believing that I had perhaps become one of the beach’s familiar denizens.

Anecdote: Typical Beach denizen: James, was a 40-50-year-old weathered, but handsome man with shock of white hair working as a liquor distributor’s sales rep. He apparently spent all his free time in 1 of 2 places, either lying on the beach working on his rich dark tan — a true mark of ‘beach’ cred, OR, languishing at any 1 of several beach bars.    His image had haunted me for years.

At 33, all flowed well UNTIL my rental apartment tenant, a high-level account major LA Advertising Agency executive, knowing that I had quit advertising years before, asked me to Account Exec their new client: a national consortium of wary, highly competitive, mildly paranoid health spa owners.

My friend alleged, “Scott, you are the only person I know who can handle our new client’s tough & ballsy female Product Manager. The challenging ‘hook’, and the money, of course, worked.  This was ironic because I didn't smoke, drink, or spend much time in bars, but .... she did.  Melded by a common goal and mutual respect, we got along great …. until the health spa consortium of squabbling health spa owners disintegrated the account. 

Anecdote: “Let me go”:  A tenant /friend who was also an advertising executive for a large LA advertising company induced me to abandon my beach-bum lifestyle and re-enter my prior Advertising role as the Account Executive on "European Health Spas.  Months later as the account's consortium of bickering spas began its rapid disintegration over 2-3 weeks, each Friday, I gently begged my friend to “Let me go because I had nothing to do.”  

He was visibly disturbed by my willingness to quit & tried earnestly to reassure me that “All was OK.” But, on the 3rd Friday he entered my office, downcast, to inform me that, “They had to let me go because there was no work.”     I chuckled, shook his hand & Thanked him and, feeling like a willing Moses, was gone within the hour.

The final irony: — Late that afternoon, he arrived at HIS HOME, to discover me in my torn beach shorts, ratty tennis shoes, etc., unloading some antique furniture I had promised his wife she could use/store in her home for me. He quipped good naturedly, “Didn’t take you long to get back in your groove?”      Indeed.😀

!. Is switching careers a bad thing? 
 Depends. If career frightens you, undermining your character and self-worth, this may be more a question of character building.

Anecdote: Boy Scout Camp at 14: the job I had enthusiastically applied for had been changed in description without my knowledge, making the experience unrewarding and frustrating. I told my father I wanted to quit and come home. He replied, "if you quit this job for that reason, you will quit everything, whenever it is slightly distasteful. "I stuck it out and learned to endure what should be endured."

Anecdote: USAFA > college:  At dinner, I challenged ‘something’ (regulation, practice, etc - don’t remember). An upperclassman forcefully responded, “You don’t question. You just follow orders.” I understood the military's need for that mindset, but it rankled me.

I shot pool for 2 weeks before exams to ensure I would be kicked out honorably on grades, rather than discharged dishonorably for an honor violation, which would have me off-campus in 24 hours.

Only much later would I fully appreciate the contradiction between my academic inadequacy and my rare & difficult-to-get appointment to USAFA. Only later would I realize how USAFA had bolstered my confidence in my capabilities. 

   b. from corporate sales (Thermos Company) to Advertising

Anecote: A young German in a European hostel asked me what I had done in my life. I went through my history. Gobsmacked, he responded, "In Germany, you can't do that. Once you commit to a career track, you stay there."

Quote: "America is the land of opportunity." There is no other country where I could've done this.",  Elon Musk on American opportunity.

   b. In advertising I switched 3 times every 18 months, because I was getting bored.

Anecdote: in my 20s, I worked for 3 advertising companies, switching jobs because my uneasy stomach warned me that I was getting bored. Is skipping between random opportunities that pop up a display of poor work ethic & deficient character or is life to be exciting & challenging? I chose the latter.  

   c. Law to Wyoming horses & hiking

2. Should you wait for career opportunities to pop up, if they do, or proactively seek them?

Procrastinating cowards wait; wise achievers act.

3. Are dual work/career and investment tracks a wise strategy?

ABSOLUTELY YES! Whatever your career, you should have a companion parallel investment track because:
   a. If real estate rentals, you will always have a job, maintaining & upgrading, etc. & retirement cash flow once loans paid off.

   b. if Stocks, etc.; wisely bought & prudently monitored, they can yield greater & greater net worth over time.

    4. Do multiple career and life experiences generate new, valuable, and unforeseen opportunities?

 For example, 1 foot in white collar work and the other in blue-collar work have synergistic or cumulative value.

1) My white collar salary a) funded my real estate's fledgling growth, b) provided another challenging diversion, & c) a little white collar 'suit' prestige. (ego). 😀.

2) My blue-collar real estate repair & construction skills underwrote my 'sweat equity' in the Jackson Hole house I built & much later (60s) in my stock market blunder's recovery.

Did my real estate investments give me the confidence to change & pursue new directions?

Yes, my knowledge, skills & confidence in my real estate investments gave me a long term foiundation for confidence & security.

3. Law School & Solo Practice ...

then, quit law & moved to Jackson Hole, WY

Anecdote: Young girlfriend changed my life: At 34 years old, I & my wise, young girlfriend were sitting in an upscale Manhattan Beach bar. I was pompously pontificating as usual, when having had enough, she challenged me, “If you have such strong convictions, why don’t you ‘put up or shut up’ by becoming a lawyer?" In fact, my young girlfriend had struck directly to the core of my intelligence & character's self-esteem.

I laughed at her suggestion, recounting for her how I hated all school AND my narrow escape from college 13 years earlier with a sub-par 1.88 GPA. How could I now get into law school let alone survive 3 years of difficult intense study? 

Law School

My young friend's idea was idiculous, of course! ... 😇  ...... 3 years later I graduated from Loyola-Marymount Law School in top percentile.  (go figure) & passed the California Bar on 1st try.               She changed my life.      Thank You, M'Lady!

Anecdote: towards exam bomb: believing I was running out of time I raced through the balance of my mid-term tort exam, delivering it to the professor, and wondering why no one else in the class had finished the exam. Suddenly, shockingly, crushingly, I realized I had completed the test in 2 hours instead of the 3 allotted. I was devastated, thinking I might have just destroyed my law school opportunity. 

Shortly afterward, I spoke with the professor who offered me a deal:
        1)  participate in class with questions, &
        2) do well on the final and he would pass me. I did and he did.    

Whew, damn that was close, ...  and, boy, did I ask a lot of questions.

Solo Law Practice

After graduation, I continued to volunteer with  LA City Attorney’s Office (San Pedro), occasionally doing simple DUI trials. After passing the Bar Exam, I graciously declined a rare ' fast track' LA City Attorney’s Office attorney position, believing it would forestall my solo practice ambition. My solo practice included court-appointed criminal defense work & real estate.    

Quit Law,.....  moved to Jackson Hole

Having practiced law for 1 1/2  years,  5 to 6 days a week, I was already burning out. I've gone to law school to test my intelligence, character & self-worth, but the client responsibility, pressure & workload did not justify it. Life was too short.  Even my là-là  beach life seemed too phony & trivial.

Anecdote:  My 1st possible solution:  1 week in Jackson & 3 weeks in LA. I flew to Jackson for 5 days to test my solution. Then, returning to LA at the Salt Lake Airport, I phoned Dad, "I am quitting my law practice & moving to Wyoming."      1 1/2 months later I had moved to Jackson.

I sought a more manly, physical & authentic lifestyle of Jackson Hole's Teton NP & Yellowstone NP's surrounding outdoors. I really didn't know what I would do, but I couldn't wait to start doing it. 

Law School

1. Are apparently spontaneous decisions less valuable than long-term wealth thought out decisions?

Anecdote: Rather than MODIFY my law practicee work schedule, my Jackso Hole visit's decison 'quit law & moved e to Wyoming.

Often what seems spontaneous is in fact, a consequence of long-term growing internal dissatisfaction is merely triggered a specific moment

    Anecdote: Miner Wetmore, Thermos company 'boss', mentor & surrogate father seriously belittled my law pursuit, but I was committed.

2.  Are big apparent failures, always failures? 

Anecdote: Tort exam

4. Did I waste the three years in law school?    
    a. Law is useful in everyday life, real estate & small businesses I later owned.
    b. Enhanced my credibility & MY selfworth & self-esteem.
    c. Unique personal experiences: criminal trials, investigating crime scenes, helping people, LA Co Child Porn task Force. 
    d. Enriched future movies/series crime/legals series.

5. Was my Jackson Hole move worthwhile?  Yes!
   Very Physical:
summer's frequent hiking & solo horse riding Teton NP's little used trails near my new house,
winter's daily JH Ski Area skiing,
dude ranch wrangler,
summer hiking in Teton's high mountain trails, later kayaking;emodel rentals, buildin large log house, started a Garage door  business, 

    Arts & Creative:
weekly Teton Village symphony,
Designed my large log house
8 year curricuum design from scratch

    Travel:
Domestic & Mexico/Central American RV van roadtrips, 
many short/long SOLO backpacking/kayaking Foreign travel: 18 years