Congratulations, Ms London.
It's a Realtor", I used to joke in a bittersweet fashion, that the nurses had told my dear late mother after giving birth to me.
I was the oldest male child in a third generation thriving real estate business in the Deep South.
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 New York City and Washington D.
C.
The dog-eat-dog 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'.
I was "put on the sidelines" and forced not to work, and on Social Security.
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".
Though I had worked almost two decades in "the real corporate office", the longer I did so, 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 the almighty dollar, and basically "sell my soul" in the process.
I grew tired of even the highest paying jobs rather rapidly; some of them others would have (I wish I were joking here) literally killed for to get.
I remember one day sitting down with a piece of paper and writing out what "an ideal life would be" for me.
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 made sense to me with at least some semblance of happiness.
The change was not a "neon light-Eureka! 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.
Together we run an online firm.
I founded what later became Google's top-ranked offbeat cartoon and has remained so since 2005.
I have built numerous E-stores full of 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 design licensed gifts for actress/author Mariel Hemingway.
Through Twitter, my fiance' 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.
Most importantly, also on Twitter, I met the love of my life.
I met her and had had waited 54 years to meet.
I had had several opportunities for marriage, and both did not pan out, I am sure now for "a reason".
If either of them had, I would never have met "Miss Right" , and nothing and nobody in the world means more to me than she does and my love relationship with her.
We work together.
We love our work and we work hard at it.
We wear many hats.