Welcome to A Blessed Life in America!

Hi, my name's Rod and I love writing, especially memoir. Are you writing or have you written your memoir? If so I'd love to hear from you. I also love America. I'm biased of course, having been born here, but we all love our own country, right? And even though I'm a naturalized U.S. citizen (but who cares as long as your a citizen somewhere), I consider myself a citizen of the world as well. Do you? We can debate the relative benefits of citizenship and countries in future blogs. Let's just say, I'm extremely blessed and always have been. Every one deserves world citizenship and a happy, safe and wealthy life.

I am a technical writer by profession, boring procurement stuff like Requests for Proposals, i.e. bid documents, that were sent to potential bidders who sent back their sometimes low ball, sometimes just right, and sometimes outrageous bids, then I helped evaluate and award them. Among a lot of other dull procurement duties were buying hardware and software, services, and energy. But I loved it all, especially the writing part, and now with free blogs, I can write what I want, again publicly. Only this time its whatever I want to write, and not what the State of New Jersey needs or wants. I did their procurement and contracting writing stuff for over thirty years, and, like I said, I loved it. The best part of that of course was that I had a good paying job for thirty years plus.

Now I'm happily retired, not young but still young enough, and my mental faculties are all there, just slowing gradually. I'm accompanied by my wife of over 40 years, my beloved redhead Janet, who retired in 2011 after teaching elementary school for twenty-five years. She is still just as energetic as the day we had our hippie wedding outside, and is a fount of enthusiasm, creativity and information. I say all this because I wasn't ready to retire in 2008 when the State offered its buy-out package. But it was so good, I couldn't pass it up, and reluctantly left after an eight month extension. And because of the poor economy, my slot didn't open up to a younger worker, or any slots for that matter. Still haven't (2012). That's sad because the State of New Jersey, like all states, needs all the help it can get.
I won't bore you with life details here; at 62 my autobiography is now over 400 pages, and needs to be cut drastically -- so I'm working on that.

So I'm hoping to be open and just share - thoughts, opinions, emotions and personal insights, and would love to hear yours. You might also try my other blog Good Ideas for NJ, also on Blogger. That's a little more established than this new one.

Oh, and did I mention I have a blessed life? I'm thankful for that and I would have to admit that I could die any day, and be joyful about it -- but that's a new post.