Blog Archives - Alt.Narrative

The wealth gap starts here

When I look back at how I grew up, when I grew up and how I witnessed the form that personal finance took in my life and the lives of my parents and other family members, it is crystal clear to me where we have a cultural problem that starts at a young age. Speaking…

Social media is a pandemic

Struggling to find work brought a new level of depression and isolation to the game for me. In previous posts here I’ve acknowledged that I have lots to work on with regards to detaching my self-worth from being employed and not having much money. However, the pandemic converted what was once just a platform for…

The gestation of a mid-life crisis

Call it a crisis. Call it indecision. Call it what you want. This pandemic certainly reinforced and inflamed the career holding pattern I was in during 2020. The depression I was feeling from it all came from an old childhood place, a place where all the demons hang out and cavort with each other until…

The great hiring deep freeze…

I’ve been fairly stable over the last 25 years on tech….a couple hard years and layoffs here and there but it hasn’t felt tumultuous by any means. It was typically much more feast than famine in terms of opportunities, companies hiring, etc. However, by the time June and July of 2020 rolled around it was…

The early stages of isolation

Here it is, May 1, 2020, shelter-in-place had been ordered. I had just left an extremely toxic work environment with no job lined up. I was plenty stressed as I had never quit a job intentionally without having something else ready to dive into. No one knew what to expect in this new pandemic climate…

The start of descent

In January of 2020, I had started a new job at a FinTech startup in Silicon Valley. FINALLY, after over 20 years in tech marketing, my first Director of Marketing role. I was, at the time, under the illusion that I’d be able to take all my years of experience and trial and error and…

The valley of old houses

I had a dream last night that felt metaphorically like it was tied to the healing process I’m experiencing since I started this blog. It felt so vivid and powerful to me and as usual a melody fell out of the sky and into my head (of course at 5AM or so). I ended up…

The hidden cost of pride

They say that stubborn pride is the longest distance between two people. In the case of my childhood, my father and finance, pride hijacked all three. My grandfather was so damn stubborn. As his grandchild I never saw that side. All his grandchildren ever saw was his goofy sense of humor, hugs, playing marbles and…

The poor kid in the rich neighborhood

I was born in Fountain Valley, CA on December 4, 1974. My parents divorced when I was around 9 years old. We were living in a typical condominium complex. Definitely not upscale but not really in the poorer neighborhoods either. We never really had a lot of money while my parents were together but both…

Everything has a beginning…

My father was a US Marine from 1967 to 1970. He had an insanely stressful job, close to death every day, saw his friends blown up, etc….so tons of PTSD. Before that though he was a creative child in a household where unless you did sports or were an accountant you were perceived as an…

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