Electrical engineering was my original career choice, but after a few months of classes I was feeling confined and restless. I walked out of class one day and just started hitchhiking west. I landed in LA a couple of weeks later. That was the start of several years drifting around the country. I worked many different jobs (it would be a long list) but after a few years I returned to the DC area to stay.
In the early 70’s I started working for a custom home builder and discovered that I was good at it. After a few years, I started my own business building big houses for people with excess money. It paid well.
In 1996, I agreed to raise money ( and to be the primary investor) in a start-up company that would contract with the various northern Virginia counties and cities to provide therapy and specially trained foster parents for (very) troubled teenagers. It was the idea of, and would be managed by, a former partner who had lived with me for 10 years. She was well qualified as a therapist, but unfortunately, not as a manager. I reluctantly became the business manager and found that I could not be both a full time builder and a social service agency manager. So managing that company for 20 years became my third career. I merged the company with one doing similar work and retired in 2016.