A bit of a long and winding road

Your Daily Dose of Sunshine - Today’s Inspiration

• What Poets Want

• What I didn’t know about the Finance World

• Legalese and Jargon

What Poets Want

I think I straddle the line wanting a bit of both. Sometimes I’m blown away by the enormity and sometimes the breathless whisper of beauty wanting us to notice.

It was my honor to host the Rogue Poetry Slam last Sunday. All week I’ve been thinking about the variety of poets who bring their craft to our stage. The high drama, big voices, sometimes humorous poets who leave us rolling, and the soft-spoken, shy, knees trembling types with their hearts on their sleeves. Both kinds and everything in between impress the daylights out of me.

Before I was the Slam Master, I used to compete. I was shaking hands and knocking knees and barely able to speak at times, and still won. Once I tied for first place and had to go into a run-off round and used a poem where I belted out the line from a Christmas hymn: “Fall on your knees, oh, hear the angel voices!” And I sang it bold, with all my heart, and won.

Poetry Slams are delicious events full of passion and vulnerability, strength, hope, love, and so much cheering and stomping, and carrying on. And prize money for the top four poets.

What I didn’t know about the Finance World

Since I’m soon to be self-employed, I no longer care about trying to appear younger than I am for a job search or like my jobs have been strategically ordered and chronologically pleasing. I’ve been working for decades. My first paying job was when I was thirteen years old. And I’ve had some very interesting jobs along the way. They don’t make for the neatest resume either. There were gaps where I was raising kids and took smaller, seasonal jobs so I could be home with the kids during the summer.

At one point when I was really young, I was recruited by a fellow commuter on the ferry from San Francisco to Marin County to work at a company that sold commodities futures but I had to take the Series 7 first. I passed but felt like I’d had to turn my brain inside out and upside down to do it. I didn’t end up liking the company and never worked in the field. That left a bad taste in my mouth about the finance world.

There was a long period in San Francisco before I was married when I was in the Staffing Industry. I got recruited out of Temporary Staffing to work at a firm in the East Bay that recruited CFO’s and Controllers out of Fortune 500 companies into startup and emerging growth companies. I told them I didn’t know anything about finance, and they said they didn’t care - they liked my recruiting record and could train me on the rest.

What I learned blew my mind. I had always thought people who got degrees in Accounting were pencil pushers or boring. I didn’t realize that that could be the fast track to incredible jobs wheeling and dealing as industry leaders if a person started at one of the big accounting firms. I saw resumes that gave me goosebumps, that read like high drama novels. There was one gentleman who was the youngest American ever to be the CFO of a Japanese company. There were people who talked about taking a company public, and the dog and pony show. These were all new terms to me. They were exciting people who were the visionaries behind massive growth for world renowned companies - and I was talking to them because they wanted a piece of the startup world.

This was before the startup world of today and the last year of everyone laying off huge chunks of their workers. It was kind of the beginning. (Yes, today I was remembering that my partying years were before cell phones or social media were invented. Thank heavens.)

Legalese and Jargon

So, once again, I’m studying for a state licensing exam in the finance world for a straight commission job (scary/exciting), and learning new legalese and jargon. Oh, I forgot, one of my seasonal jobs was working as a Tax Preparer and that required a state license as well. The poet in me found so many stories and fascinating little things in the tax code.

My eyes watered reading tax law. I am the nerdiest poet numbers weirdo I know!

I found something poetic and lovely in the midst of my studies - having to do with determining residency and a person's place of domicile.

"Domicile is a tax-law concept. It is the place you consider your home and where you plan to return to after an absence. Domicile is not the same as home, abode, or residence. Intent is the deciding factor when you determine your domicile."

It goes on to give some pointers for helping you decide - say, if you have two homes, which one is your domicile. It is basically (but not specifically) asking you to check your heart and get in touch with your feelings about a place.

That was forever ago. My new venture is in Life Insurance. Again - something I once thought was boring, but essential. And I thought Wealth Managers were people who dealt only with millionaires. I am learning so many amazing nuances around how to protect wealth, protect families in the case of a premature death of a loved one, and how to not outlive one’s income. How to plan and build and make wise moves with money. And yes, everyone could use a wealth manager. Not everyone has the time to read through all these pages and understand the various options available to them. They need someone to come alongside and learn about their needs, what they are wanting to protect, and how best to do that.

And some of the more juicy, fun things I’m learning will require me to have a Life Insurance License AND a Series 6 or 7. So I get to do that again. Those are the products that sing to me.

Some of my friends are shocked. I’m a bit shocked. Life Insurance? Really? But as I said before when I was doing taxes…

As a poet, and lover of mysteries, puzzles and finding beauty in the complex or ridiculous - this is when I get to pull out all the stops and revel in each customer before me and the story beneath their paperwork, the human drama unfolding before me and what help I can offer.

That’s the big reveal. I’m going into Life Insurance. My exam is this Friday, so I’m taking the rest of the week off from writing. I know, whatever will you do?

Again, I value you and the time you spend reading through my little excursions. Have a Blessed Week!