After 30 years in the Telecom industry, I decided to try teaching as a second career. For two years I was a substitute teacher in the North Plainfield, NJ, School District. That was enough to convince me to try something else. I learned about an opening to sell mortgages at HomeBanc, LLC. I quickly moved from that company to Countrywide Financial Corporation, but the 2007/8 financial crisis made the company close several offices, one of them mine. (It was eventually sold to Bank of America.) At this point, I decided to try a couple of other jobs so I became a pyrotechnician working for Fireworks by Grucci of Long Island, NY. I also became a CPR instructor working for Newark Beth Israel Medical Center. As a pyrotechnician, I had a couple of shows in Las Vegas and one in Bedminster, NJ, but after the financial crisis, there weren't very many jobs for the new kid on the block. It seems many companies decided it might be best to hold onto their money rather than seeing it go up in pretty displays. So I became a bookkeeper at a small school on Staten Island, NY, while simultaneously working the 2010 census and teaching CPR. I often said I know what job I'm going to based on the briefcase I have in my hand. What I do now is teach CPR and First Aid at the Hunterdon Medical Center in Flemington, NJ, and, during tax season, volunteer my time working with the United Way of Hunterdon County as part of an IRS program called Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) to complete the income tax returns for their clients.