New writing career as the Pittsburgh Elder Care Examiner

I have been discovering a new found love of writing since beginning my blog, Baby Boomer Davy’s Locker nearly over a year ago. I had worked for a major corporation for over 21 years in the Information Technology field and my job was eliminated on May 5, 2008. I actually welcomed this as a blessing in my life as I knew that I was doing a job that was not giving me fulfillment on any level for many years. I was satisfied that I had a good job with a good company, a salary that provided for my family for many years and great benefits. I had been thinking for the past few years of starting some type of small business and looked into a few franchises, of which I discovered so many of them asking for start up fees on the scale of well known brand companies, but didn’t carry the weight of a well known brand name. With all of this in the back of my mind, when I knew that my job would be eliminated, I decided that this was a life event message telling me, this was my time.

During the last year or so, as I continued to develop and learn about blogging and how to improve my writing skills, I found that I loved creative and journalistic writing. I began to write as a guest blogger for a few other blogs and eventually discovered Examiner.com. Examiner.com is not the on-line version of The Examiner print newspaper of San Francisco, but is owned by the same parent company, AEG (link following). Examiner.com is a news site based in Denver, Colorado that allows local citizen journalists to share their city-based knowledge on a blog-like platform, in over 60 cities in the United States. The site owned by Clarity Media Group, with the primary investor being billionaire Philip Anschutz, owner of the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), Regal Cinemas, and other media and entertainment companies.

Although Examiner.com is not solely based on articles written by professional journalists, there are many well known journalists writing for it. To keep it’s more professional style, Examiners need to follow more strict guidelines than they would on their own personal blogs. This has given me some great experience in furthering my writing skills as well as visibility as I gain readers, not only in Pittsburgh, but in other cites as well.

I use Twitter to gain readers and let my followers know when I’ve posted new articles as well as Facebook to ask my friends to become readers.



You can follow my articles on Examiner.com by clicking on the Examiner icon on this site or go to my Pittsburgh Elder Care Examiner homepage.

You can also become a writer for Examiner.com by going to their application page and search for open positions. If you do so, please mention that I told you about applying. If you are passionate about a subject in Pittsburgh or another city on Examiner.com and love writing, give applying a try. They request that Examiners post at least two articles per week but obviously, as you get paid per viewers and reader clicks, you will want to post much more than that if you want to earn income. To me, this is a learning and building job. I am learning more and more about writing, as well as my subject in Pittsburgh Elder Care and I am building visibility as a writer and gaining readers, which can only help me in whatever writing jobs I have in the future. I hope to continue to build readership and some additional income by doing something I love and in the process, provide some helpful information to others going through caring for their elderly parents and grandparents. I had to do a lot of research to find resources when my mother started showing symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease. I hope to make it easier for others only starting out with issues of elder care by supplying links to many resources on my homepage.

Baby Boomers - How to stay focused when changing careers!

(Image from Bigwebapps.com)

With this being a unprecedented time in our country, since the Great Depression, coping with these times can cause stress and most likely, related health issues of which the extent is yet to be fully realized. Many who are unemployed are dealing with searching for jobs in times when nearly all companies are continuing to announce layoffs. This is indeed affecting all age groups, although, as the largest sector of the population belongs to the Baby Boomer generation, it is occurring when Boomers are nearing retirement years. This is causing many Boomers to face the fact that when companies begin to hire, will they want to hire a Boomer who is not far from retirement?

These factors are making Baby Boomers wonder if they should make a career change or only seek any type of job for a few years until retirement.

This all can be overwhelming when you think of all the aspects at once! As I personally struggle with the balance of trying to pursue and succeed at a new career as a self employed song writer/musician OR just finding a job with the experience I have from my previous job, for me, it is a goal of mine to stay focused on how I felt during my corporate job years and my constant feeling of regret for not using my God given talents. In my past, I have ALWAYS thought of the whole picture of not only my feelings, but everyone in my life who is also affected by my actions. This, along with my lack of courage or fear of risk, has always led me to just earn an income, to bring home a check. This path always led to feeling out of place in my job, regretful for not challenging how much I could accomplish by pursuing my dreams and not being fully successful at that chosen profession. I always had the knowledge inside me that others seem to be better than I at this work, while I have within me capabilities that others dream of! It constantly churned within me, making for many many unhappy years. I would survive these years by focusing my happiness on many things that my income did provide, but these things did not make me happy at work, where we spend so much of our lives!

Staying focused on how I felt all of those years keeps me on track for my current endeavor! Even as my success is not apparent on a daily basis right now, I AM indeed happier in what I do for hours each day! This happiness, I feel with all of my being, will lead to success, IF I have the courage to stay the course and not give in to my fears of failure!

If you find yourself in a situation that seems similar in any way to mine, when you doubt your course, remember these 4 points:

(1) Remember the exact reason WHY you are making the conscious decision to change your career!

(2) Keep evaluating your economic situation to stay ahead of major hurdles and possible financial woes. Seek out fiancial help ahead of time!

(3) Be frugal in your spending choices and yet be willing to spend on your new career when you feel confident of the benefits.

(4) REMEMBER that inner happiness WILL bring success eventually!

In the meantime, don’t lose or waste a day worrying only to find it gone. When I worked my 40 hour a week corporate job, much of the time I wished to be somewhere else, doing exactly what I am doing now!

Please feel free to email me if you have questions or wish to further discuss anything dealing with this issue. Subscribe to my blog as well.

The Effects of Outsourcing Technical Jobs.

I worked in the Information Technology area for over 20 years and we have been warning of the implications of outsourcing these jobs for a while now.

Outsourcing IT jobs has been occurring over recent years primarily as cost cutting initiatives became the primary directive of corporations in their increasing movement to please stock holders. The bottom line figures in the market have moved to the top of the list of management mindset and thus all other business methods are influenced from there.

My fellow workers in the technical field have long been aware of the dangers and impact that moving these types of jobs from employees of the company to the less expensive outsource company. Workers who do not belong to a company will not have the same passion to support the business and the factor of distance, not having technical resources on hand at the local business, only makes for communication errors and delays in help.

One important area where issues are already showing up is in security. This Associated Press article shows how Verizon Communications shows how security leaks of credit information are occurring due to outsourcing companies not being as rigid on security.

Outsourcing aids many data thefts, Verizon say

Oct 1, 2008 11:55 PM EST
NEW YORK - The reliance of restaurant chains and retail stores on outside companies to handle credit-card processing and other information-technology functions is partly to blame for a rash of consumer data breaches over the last few years, according to data sleuths at Verizon Communications Inc.

Even a chain with thousands of restaurants might have only 100 employees in information technology, so it uses outside vendors for many IT functions, said Bryan Sartin, director of the investigative response team at Verizon Business.

"What happens is there's a lack of accountability on the third party," Sartin said.

Verizon's unit investigates a quarter to a third of the big, publicly announced data breaches that occur each year, and hundreds of smaller cases.

In recent years, restaurant and retail businesses have accounted for more than half of Verizon's 230 to 250 cases per year, according to a report Verizon was set to issue Thursday. It often finds that insiders at service vendors are part of the heists.

Organized data-stealing gangs "go to the call centers, the Web development companies, the content development companies, the business partners, the people who pick up the backup tapes," Sartin said. "They say ... if you hate your boss and you're in financial straits, we're your solution. Give us access to your customers. Better yet, give us your data."

In a typical case Sartin was involved in, the team was approached by a large oil company in Canada, with thousands of gas stations. Customers were finding spurious charges on their credit cards after using them at the stations.

The team soon figured out that someone at a technology vendor was responsible, but couldn't pin it down. So the investigators set a trap in the system, to see who accessed customer data.

"The trap went off on Saturday morning," Sartin said. "Hackers always think nobody's looking on Saturday mornings."

A police car headed to the vendor's office, and the culprit turned out to be a 21-year-old who supported the software that operated the gas pumps. He had sold lists of customer data to organized crime.

Many breaches don't happen through outsourcing. In one of the largest cases in recent years, the gang that stole 41 million credit and debit card numbers from chains including TJX Cos. obtained access through unsecured wireless networks, not through subcontractors' systems.

Still, Verizon's report advises companies to keep a tighter rein on contractors, including by limiting partners' access to only the data they need.



By PETER SVENSSON AP Technology Writer
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Boomers are Reinventing Themselves

As many of us are now approaching the times of our lives when we are seriously thinking of the future and looking to better our health and well being, we are realizing that part of this betterment is thinking about what we are doing for our careers and lives. We begin to wonder what will we be doing that will leave a mark or legacy of why were here. Even on a small scale of our own families, we wonder if we are leaving our children or families better off for their future. Coupled with the growing awareness that along with this increased movement toward longer and productive lives and the mere fact that we may need to continue to work and earn income past what was typical retirement years to previous generations, leaves us with looking to changing careers or finding new efforts that not only earn income but feed our inner needs to enjoy what we do for a living!

Here is one article that points out how women are finding ways to do just this:

"Writing in the Middle Years, for Fun and Profit" - a teleseminar "two-part series begins July 8 and will offer boomer women insider secrets and keys to writing your book, branding yourself as an author and expert, the different publishing options available in today’s markets, and strategies for attracting publicity for your book." The teleseminar is presented by the National Association of Baby Boomer Women(NABBW), the only association devoted to addressing issues concerning the 38-million strong Boomer women demographic.

This article was found on NewsReleaseWire.com

Journal of my life changing career event....Part 2

Journal of my life changing career event....Part 2

Well, I guess I'm on my way as I have met my financial advisor and made my initial plans. My purpose is to highlight some decisions that may help others who face similar career changes in their lives.

As half of 2008 is about gone, I only need to worry about the remaining 6 months of this year. I should begin to receive unemployment compensation soon in July.

The most important things I have learned was that I could indeed get unemployment benefits for 26 weeks and that I need to purchase some term life insurance as the only insurance I had before was through the company.

I do not need to decide about my retirement investments for a few months yet, but I am looking to invest in an annuity investment plan through ING. These types of plans can be tricky and you need to really find out about the fine print of fees and penalties for early withdrawals, etc. but if you are careful and check everything out properly through a good financial advisor and lawyer, if need be, they can make some guarantees that protect you against really bad slumps in the stock market, such as has been happening in the early part of 2008. These annuities guarantee that your investment will not drop below a specific percentage, depending on the company.

As I get closer to the actual investment, I will post anything I can to be cautious of, should anyone wish to pursue this for retirement planning.

Journal of my life changing career event - Part 1

As anyone can see from reading archived articles within this blog, I have been going through a life changing event this year (2008) due to my job being eliminated and outsourced. Outsourcing is something that has been occurring withing the IT industry for at least a decade, as large companies look for ways to cut costs. I won't go into the various opinions of mine and others on why this is happening, but rather, post a journal of events I have been going through, for the benefit of other Boomers who will be going through similar experiences as we all are approaching retirement years.

I don't think we will be having the kind of retirement that we all pictured in our minds...the same that our parents experienced after working a lifetime at a company, retiring and being able to enjoy the rest of their lives traveling and being grand parents. I think we all are aware of the many media stories of how the Baby Boomer generation will have to work much longer and into a semi-retirement of having pensions and yet still working.

Since I really looked forward to being able to follow my musical dreams, I was more or less ecstatic that I didn't have to go to work every morning. I did, however, find myself struggling during the first two weeks of many different emotions. I didn't have a problem with staying home, as I love to be home anyway, but I found myself doing many household tasks with no organization. I would feel like I needed to cut the grass, and wash a load of clothes, and clean the house and ..and... and.. oh yeah, spend more time on the things I want to do to earn a living in music... I just was getting overwhelmed with how to handle this freedom of doing whatever I wanted with what I felt I should be doing. I think I finally hit a wall where I realized that I can not do everything and need to be more organized. This is something that I knew I would need to do but it is different when you physically stop doing something that you have done for 23 years! Now at least I am feeling less stressed and am able to concentrate on music composition.

So, now, into my third week, I am feeling more calm and am concentrating on my main goals in music and do small household tasks only as a break from the music, but not allow chores to take time away from my primary goals.

I have also met with my financial advisor and I am beginning to develop my financial plan. My financial advisor is developing various scenarios including beginning pension payouts, unemployment compensation and income tax variables. There are a lot of different decisions to make. The decisions really come down to deciding if you want to begin taking pay outs from pension plans, etc.

I did begin the process of unemployment compensation today. I didn't really know when I should begin this or how long it would take for the process to actually start paying. I completed the form on the PA website, but I had some questions so I called the department and spoke to an agent. My main questions where when should I complete the on line form and how to handle dependent questions.

I was told to apply for benefits as long as I was actually not working. As I am no longer at work, I am able to apply now.

Also, even though my wife works, as I earned more income than her, I can add her as a dependent which will give me a bit more per week.

After I receive some scenarios from my advisor, I will post my next decisions. Hopefully, some of my fellow workers who will also soon be in the same boat that I am will benefit from some of this information.

Boomer Career Changes

I will be entering a new phase in my life as of May 5, 2008 and I am very excited about the possibilities!!! I was notified that my job was officially outsourced as of today and although it is terrible that this kind of thing is happening in our country, for me, it is a welcome kick in the butt to get me moving in a direction that will probably add years to my lifespan, due to the stress release of about 20 years doing a job just to pay the bills.

I know in my heart that I should have really left this job years ago and put my true talents into what I did for a living. My problem has always been a lack of courage to take the risks or just the fear that I would fail. I wanted to stay safe. It was easier to just keep going to work and dealing with everything that frustrated me rather than face the things I might have to do to succeed in other careers, or so I thought! As I think about all the years of not being happy at work, I realize that my fears of changing or leaving were unfounded. It would have been just as hard or most likely, not as hard to face the unknown challenges, because they would be using my natural talents and thus really would have been easier in the long run.

Oh well... that's water under the bridge now. Now is the time to use my God given talents, along with my maturity, which gives me the wisdom and confidence to face whatever comes along. I now know that I will succeed in whatever I try, because I will make it happen, with a true passion and drive to not only earn an income, but to wake up everyday and WANT to work!

This is a challenge that so many Boomers are facing today as our economy is staggering and we are dealing with how to pursue our dreams in a global economy that must deal with that much more competition. We are not just the United States of America, dealing with our own struggles, but we are all people of the world and all dealing with the pursuit of happiness along with every other human on the planet.

Here is a link to a good site called Mature Resources - Your Connection to Positive Aging.

I will continue to add posts of my efforts to start my new career opportunities.

Check back for more info.........

Oh them cha cha cha changes!

I will find out tomorrow morning (Feb. 19, 2008) if I am one of the IT persons who are being laid off or not. It has been since about November of 2007 since we heard that some sections of our IT organization will be outsourced and I am in one of those affected groups.

I have to say that the company and the management has been quite fair about how they have handled this. This has happened before a couple of years ago and those people where more or less told the day they found out, to leave. That kind of a surprise is hard to take! At least this time, we have all been prepared and given time to think about how to handle this. I have worked here for about 22 years now. Although I wouldn't have minded this lasting for a few more years until I could start collecting retirement, if I had to. This is just meant to be.

As I said in my earlier post.... everything happens for a reason. I have wanted to do something for my career for a few years now and have researched franchises and other ventures. I do have some creative ideas to work on and if I am let go, I will then have the chance to work on developing them. My wife and I are ready to deal with this and I absolutely feel that this will work out for the best!!!

Everything happens for a reason!

As I talked about in an earlier post, everything happens for a reason... the problem is that you may not know the reason for quite a long time!
I have always found that everything that has ever happened, whether it seemed good or bad at the time, ended up ultimately revealing why it happened and it WAS for a good reason.
About 18 years ago, I was offered to relocate my job from my home town, Pittsburgh, PA. to Philadelphia, PA for more money and probably better career choices for the future. I eventually decided to stay where I was and not move, primarily due to remaining near my family because of my children. Although those following years resulted in an eventual divorce that occurred because my marriage was not really a good one, I ended up meeting and marrying the best person and friend I have ever known! I would have never met my current her and had the wonderful life I have, if I had moved all those years ago! So it took a long time, but I finally saw the reason why I didn't move.
I have had many of those types of occurrences in my life and am going through what will probably be the next BIG change in my life. The company where I have worked for 22 years is outsourcing the area of IT (Information Technology) that I work in and I may be permanently laid off in the next few months.
They gave us the opportunity to bid for some new job roles but only about 6 jobs will be available for 12 people. I have made it through a couple of these times before but I may not make it this time.
I am looking at this as an opportunity. I may get the job that I placed a bid for and that will be a new opportunity. I may get the company package, which at my age of 56, is a nice package that will give me some time to do something as my career that I am passionate about. Either way, this will work out. I have every faith that I will be happier and more successful in this next phase of my life!

01/22/2008 - No news is good news..

I am still finding myself sort of drifting around so many directions to take in my life for the future. As I am waiting to find out if I am going to be one of the people kept in our latest company reorganization or not, I keep thinking of the fact that for many recent years, I have wanted to do something that was more fulfilling and rewarding to me to earn a living. As I just turned 56 on Jan. 10th, I am obviously not too far from retirement but far enough, and by retirement, I mean being able to retire from my job that I have been doing for 22 yeas now with the same company. I do not want to retire from working... I just want to earn enough money to keep our lifestyle about where it is, which is middle, middle income, but be doing something that will satisfy my creative self.

I have been a musician most of my life and there is absolutely no doubt that I should have made that my strongest effort to be my job. I know I had the talent to do it... it is what I was meant to do, but my lack of courage in my younger years made me always try to stay in that "9 to 5" type of job that would be more dependable for my family. Now, I am not using the fact that I had a family as an excuse. I fully accept that only I made the choices, but just that the family did make me think I should not go the risky path of trying to earn a living as a musician. Be that as it may, what happened is what happened... not bad choices, just should have been better ones. There is nothing better than finding something you love or that you are best at and then finding a way to make money doing it. It is the best way to live a lifetime.

So, right now, I may be soon faced with having to make some hard decisions, especially if I do lose my current job. That is one of the things that has led me to exploring the blogging world as I have found that many earn a living from doing it. Is it something meant for me? That remains to be seen, but never the less, it is still worth exploring and learning. That is just one of the things I am checking out right now. Others, obviously will involve music, which I will elaborate more on later.