“About” meaning “approximately”, here’s the story.
I’ve been married since 2006, and my wife & I have owned/been owned by a succession of greyhounds, currently Bendico.
In 2012, I began making The Virtual Memories Show, a podcast featuring conversations with creative people. I committed to a weekly schedule in 2014. Through the podcast, I have met some of my literary & artistic heroes, discovered work I never would have come across, made friends with guests and listeners, and learned how to truly listen. It can be a tremendous amount of work, but making The Virtual Memories Show has been the most fulfilling endeavor of my life. I gush on about it in the 500th episode, which aired in August 2022.
Twenty-fourteen is the same year I quit my job as a business-to-business magazine editor and launched the Pharma & Biopharma Outsourcing Association (PBOA), a trade association for the industry I’d been writing about: bio/pharmaceutical contract manufacturing and other services. I had to register as a lobbyist as part of my job, which means I may be the only graduate in the 50+-year history of Hampshire College’s who can say, “I’m a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry.” Some of the companies I represent have had significant roles in helping the world make it through the pandemic, and it’s been my honor to play even a small part of that.
I took up running at 47, and discovered that I like it a lot. Too much, if you go by the various injuries I’ve incurred each year, which led me to shift over to weights & yoga. I ran with a group most of the time. The mainstays are 20 years older than me, run 30-35 miles a week, and are generally injury-free. My orthopedist refuses to believe this. I haven’t raced since September 2019, when I ran a 5K at 22:23 (7:13/mi) and a half-marathon at 1:49:50 (8:23/mi) a few days apart. I had planned to run a marathon in 2020, but the pandemic & the various injuries derailed that idea. But “maybe next year . . .”
At 50, I took up drawing, then painting. I had no background or aptitude for that, but through steady-yet-untutored practice I learned how to see and got better at translating that into lines & color on paper.
Also at 50, I was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). It was The Best Bad News, hasn’t impaired my day-to-day life, and hasn’t progressed to the point of requiring treatment. It may be many years before that happens; I have to go in for bloodwork every 6 months to find out.
In 2020, I produced Haiku for Business Travelers, a ‘zine collecting poems, essays, photography, fiction, and an excerpt of one of my podcast conversations. I meant to produce a new issue semiannually, but it took me 3 years to make a second one. If you’d like either of them — they’re free! — drop me a line.
That said, I make a weekly e-mail, ostensibly to hype the latest episode of the podcast, but also to share my thoughts & art, and interesting things I’ve read.
I would tell you what my favorite books, comics, etc. are, but that’s a moving target. I have kept a list of every book (non-comics) that I’ve finished since 1989, when I started college. Look on my list, ye sluggos, and despair. Or laugh.
My various links are over here.
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