I guess what you really need to know about me in this section is – why bookbinding? There is a short answer and a long answer to this question. The short answer as I remember from childhood is “because.” This short answer always leads to the entry to the long answer “because why?” And now the long answer.

When I was young we would play the Game of LIFE. It made your possible career paths seem easy. There were a finite and clearly defined number of things I could be when I grew up: doctor, lawyer, teacher, business person, journalist, and physicist. [NOTE: I had no recollection of the physicist option until I recently got the game out and looked.] Of course, in the game everyone wanted to be a doctor or lawyer because they made the most money. In the game there was no consideration for your aptitude for or enjoyment of any given career – it was all about the money. It might have been a game, but sometimes I think the attitudes we learned playing it made a bigger impression than I thought. What I didn’t come away with was any concept of what I actually wanted to be.

One would think that going to a university might help clarify this matter – one would be wrong. Six different majors didn’t clarify anything. I just couldn’t really picture myself being happy working a lifetime in any of the majors I tried. I decided that the problem was that I just need more advanced education; so graduate school it was. I got my BS in Geography, not because it was the best fit for me but because after looking at all the requirements and all of my credits, it was the fastest path to my undergraduate degree. I got a Master of Public Administration because I thought the non-profit world would finally be my home.

Then I spent twenty plus years working at a variety of jobs and being, for the most part, “successful”. I spent a lot of time in Human Resources with most of that in Recruiting. I was a salesman – I sold my company to potential employees as a good place for them to achieve their goals. Sometime in the middle of this, about the time of one of the first technology bubble bursts, I found myself temporarily out of work. Recruiters are superfluous to the down-sizing process.

My brother-in-law had a used bookstore and I would hang out there just to be around the books. You see, a book is one of my most comfortable places. I used to spend all my lunch hours in junior high and high school in the library because books were infinitely more interesting than what was going on outside the library door. I had to restrict my study at university to the areas of government reports and some of the more advanced sciences so that I would not be tempted to stop my homework and find something in the stacks that was more interesting.

One day as I was hanging out, my brother-in-law was complaining about the fact that all the bookbinders were 80-year-old men who were dying. I thought “I can do that”. So my brother-in-law sent me to a couple of his binders in the guise of helping them work on his books. I found that I had an aptitude here – and even better, I found something I really enjoyed doing. I stated taking classes wherever I could find them and best of all I was able to work on the books in the back of the bookstore that had limited value, so I could make mistakes. And I did make mistakes. Funny thing is that you learn far more from fixing mistakes than you do from doing everything perfect but not really understanding why.

I thought I had finally found my calling, but it was a little scary. When you work for yourself there is no stable income flow. You have to find ways to take care of yourself that historically the company you work for does for you. There are no paid vacations, so if you do not work you do not get paid. I admit I succumbed to the fear, and when the need for recruiters increased again and my old employers came calling, I went. First it was only part-time so I could continue my bookbinding. But part-time turned to full-time and full-time turned to a management position at another company, and the hours I could spend on bookbinding turned to zero.

Life should have been great. I had a good job, was out of debt, bought a new car and was selling my company to potential employees for all I was worth. But I was working for a venture capital company with a decidedly short-term view of things. Every decision seemed to be about what the bottom line would look like at the end of that quarter – not even the year. If it made the quarter look better now it didn’t matter what the consequences would be in the next quarter. I was convincing people to come work somewhere that I didn’t believe in and it was damaging my soul. Sounds pretty dramatic, but it felt so very true. So I quit.

The transition to the life I think I should be living has not been without bumps. I built an apartment in my parents’ basement. I have a friend who has been a volunteer EMT in our small town for over twenty years. The ambulance needed more help. I thought that with aging parents more medical knowledge as opposed to less seemed a good idea. I am now an Advanced EMT, I teach CPR and First Aid at the state technical college and I am on the state EMT test team. And once again I found myself spending my time in the safer versus the more rewarding areas.

Since I took up bookbinding about a dozen years ago, I have not stopped taking classes, I have not stopped working on new ideas and techniques, I have not stopped taking in repair and restoration and new leather binding work. And I love it. There were no bookbinders in the Game of LIFE. There are a lot of professions about which a child or even a young adult know nothing of – bookbinding certainly qualifies in this category.

It found me as much as I found it and I do love it and love varied challenges: figuring out the best way to put a book back together while being true to its spirit, putting memories into a more accessible and touchable format, taking cherished books and building for them a new skin if required (new leather binding) or just a new home (conservation box) if that is enough. As I finally make this website go live, I move forward with courage.  OK, who am I trying to fool, the fear is still there.  But this time courage wins.