The Evolution of Mo

Born in 1961 and raised in a religious, socially "conservative" environment, I have changed a lot. I lived in a small Missouri town with less that 4,000 people. For reasons too complex to list here, I joined the Navy at 17 years old. One positive outcome was that the experiences broadened my horizons. I came to learn things about myself, other people and the world which may not have been discovered if I had remained in the isolated environment of childhood.

I am now a socially progressive, secular, environmentally aware person. I once somewhat jokingly said that my 3 favorite words are "I do not know". The point was that I believe that intellectual honesty is important. A philosopher once said “The beginning of wisdom is the statement 'I do not know'". I think that has merit. Too much misinformation exists and too much harm has been done because people are too sure of their correctness.

That being said, acknowledging what I don't know is simply a starting point. I have found that learning new things and developing new skill sets have been important and also entertaining. As imperfect as I have been regarding personal expansion, I have done OK.

Work

In the work area, my initial post-Navy civilian job was actually still for the Navy. Part of my duties during my 4 year enlistment was as an emergency firefighter. I used that qualification in my next job as a federal firefighter at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard. They were refurbishing the USS New Jersey battleship and needed additional personnel to be on the ship for fast response if fires or injuries occurred. That ended after a year or so when the ship was turned over to active duty personnel. I then worked as a medical attendant at a retirement home for a few months. But my timing was bad because the company restructured, which resulted in staff layoffs. After traving the western states for a couple of years, I settled in Santa Barbara. I got into freelance home maintenance work. My clients were mostly elderly people who needed assistance with maintaining their properties. I decided to leave that work after taxation and licensing laws made freelance home maintenance more complicated than I wanted. I worked at Sears Automotive for 8 years. I started as a work dispatcher and was promoted to a Service Advisor and eventually to sales. I left when the company's troubles impacted employees' incomes to too big a degree.

Some of the things which I liked about working in the automotive repair business were figuring out what was needed and deciding on the appropriate components for those needs. I wanted something similar for my next job. I found that in document production. It may sound dissimilar but there are often several components which need to be organized. My work in document production started as a project manager. I switched to a digital specialist position when the company's management politics got too chaotic. That lasted for 2 years. I left the first company months before it was basically forced to sell itself to another company. I don't know the details but the last few months were quite chaotic for employees. I stayed in the print industry.

My next position was as a print layout designer. Since I dabbled in web design on the side, the company asked if I could assist with some changes on the website. The initial stuff was rather basic. But they liked what I did and began assigning more web responsibilites to me. I gradually became the primary local web designer. I say primary because it was a subsidiary of a much larger company, which will become relevant later. The initial work was mostly maintenance of existing websites. That eventually led to complete redesigns of some. I was eventually asked to do stuff which I did not know how to do but knew that they could be done. The company allowed me to figure out how to accomplish what was wanted. That led to increasingly complex tesks which I managed to handle. It was eventually realized that there was a large enough demand for my web work to split off the print design and hand that to someone else. Starting as a print designer in 2002, web design was added in 2005. I was involved with web work full time as of 2008.

I want to clarify that I am not a coder. There is a form of design / development which doesn't require heavy coding. I started doing web design with Dreamweaver. It's a WYSIWYG program with the option to edit the code as needed. I added additional tools as the requiests moved further into web applications. A primary tool which I used for several applications was ASPRunner. It is also a WYSIWYG program with code editing options but specifically for web applications. Although not a coder, I eventually caught the attention of corporate upper management.

The main company desided to roll all the subsidiaries into one entity. That included updates to the corporate website to incorporate customer and production elements. I was brought onboard because I managed several websites for one of the subsidiaries. Corporate development did the primary design first via Drupal and eventually Wordpress. I handled the creation and management of all location pages and some of the other customer facing tools. Over time, I also became a backup developer for corporate web applications. I continued to use ASPRunner for those until Corporate incorporated Smartsheet and Digital Storefront (DSF) into the mix. That led to transitioning my custom applications to a format which other web administrations could more readily manage. My title for most of the web period was Online Program Administrator.

COVID-19 caused a lot of difficulties in document businesses. That resulted in my layoff in the middle of 2020. But the company brought me back in September as a freelance web administrator. That was put on hold in February 2021 due to continued financial factors in the company. As of this writing in late February 2021, I am seeking new employment.

2 Wheels

Although I had a few cars over time, much of my transportation has been 2 wheeled vehicles. I've had a mix of motorbikes and bicycles. The motorbikes have been automatics, mostly maxiscooters (250cc and up). I currently have 2 bicycles, being a Trek Roscoe 8 MTB and a Bacchetta Giro recumbent. Although I may add a maxiscooter back into the mix, my desire is to continue to ride bicycles as long as I can. I like the exercise, adventurous feel and environmental aspects of cycling. I am thinking about adding an electric motor to one of the bikes.

Physicalism

Atheist and secularist fit my perspectives regarding religion but doesn't fully represent my views. As with most philosophical terms, physicalist has a range of definitions. I like it because it better represents my view that there is only physical existence.

Sexual Orientation

My sexual orientation was one of those things on which religion had a negative impact. In addition to the condemnation of sex before marriage, same-sex attraction was feared and hated by most people where I grew up. Some people even believed that gays should be killed. The Navy had both positive and negative effects. On one side, my buried attraction to guys resurfaced during the Navy period. But the military at that time was severely anti-gay. Even a hint that someone might be a homosexual could have sparked inquiries. Someone who was found to be gay but with no evidence of homosexual activities was commonly given a general discharge. But people who were found out to have engaged in homesexual activities even if only outside the military were sometimes given dishonorable discharges. Then came the fear of AIDS. All this made my relationships chaotic. Even some of my relationships with women were affected if I admitted to having attractions to both sexes. ultimately, I have had close relationships with both men and women, usually at different times. I consider myself to be pansexual. By the way, this has not impacted monogamy. For me, being attected to multiple sexes is like when someone is attracted to multiple body types. We still maintain exclusivity in relationships unless the relationship supports something else.

Political

I am a social progressive with environmental awareness. I see much of modern politics to be more progressive / regressive rather than left / right. Humans have come a long way but still have a lot of things to get better.