About Me
Cheese and rice ... what do I write about myself? To counter my natural
tendency to spew out pages of words (not about myself per se, but
anytime I start typing), let’s start
by breaking things down into some manageable groups and ‘laser’ a few
bullet lists:
Personal Traits
- For starters: I’m a 45 year old husband & father.
- I grew up in Central New York (outside Syracuse) - spent about
7 years in Houston, TX - and settled down with my family in Raleigh,
NC - where we have lived for about the past dozen years.
- I have a bachelor’s degree in physics.
- I’ve apparently been a poster perfect ADDer my entire life, but was not professional diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder until about 2 years ago.
Education & Professional Background
- Received a Physics degree at SUNY Geneseo, a small state school outside Rochester
New York.
- Worked for General Electric as a software engineer developing applications
for military surface ship control systems.
- Worked for Anheuser-Busch (and yes, received free beer) as a Systems Analyst
and then an Information Systems Manager of a team of developers and support
technicians.
- Became a minority partner/owner of a software development company – Object
Domain Systems – with an absolutely brilliant childhood friend. He now owns
a company called Bracket 7 that specializes in the custom development
of web applications, Rich Internet Applications (RIA), and mobile iPhone/IPad
applications.
(I threw this plug in here because my closest and lifelong friend – Dan Snider – truly
is incredible at what he does. If you’re interested
 in
that kind of stuff,
check out his company at: bracket7.com).
- Became partner/owner of a home renovation company called Southern Renovation. We basically ‘flipped’ (purchased, renovated, and resold) residential real estate.
- Obtained a real estate license to purchase and sell my own properties
as well as provide traditional services as a real estate agent.
Coaching & ADD Experience
- After a lifetime of some constant combination of ignoring, confronting,
and attempting to cope with some common ADD symptoms, I finally
became exhausted, sought some professional help, and was officially
diagnosed with Adult Attention Deficit Disorder … and some
exciting and drastic changes began.
- The result of this decision sent my life in an entirely new direction.
During therapy, my doctor accomplished two important things: 1)
He provided an accurate diagnosis and, with some typical trial-and-error,
determined an effective combination of medication for me AND 2)
Introduced me to a book titled "You
Mean I'm Not Lazy, Stupid or Crazy?!" Both turned out to
be priceless.
- The medication enabled me to focus much better, which allowed me to more
objectively recognize and address my positive and negative ADD
symptoms.
- The book, on its own merit, gave me an incredibly better understanding
of my life with ADD. Even more importantly, it introduced me to
the authors, Kate Kelly & Peggy Ramundo of The
ADDed Dimension Coaching Group. I was reluctantly considering taking
a course they offered called ADD
in the Spirit. Then, in the middle of their online course description,
I found a bulleted list of attributes describing an effective
ADD coach. For the first time
in my life (and at a perfect time in
my life), I found a list that captured a deeper me that was consistent
with my true heart's desire.
This
description suggested the possiblity that something I could do
was actually the same as what I wanted to do, so (although 2 weeks
late) I signed up for the course.
- With the course and book as the catalyst, my relationship with Kate and
Peggy continues to grow. Peggy became and is still actively my
personal coach ... not an easy tasks, I might add. Together, their
experience and knowledge has been priceless in helping me establish
my own
practice. Honestly, their encouragement and confidence in me is
what convinced me to continue on this path of ADD coaching.
- todo: one last bullet with a link to special mentor page
Family Life
- Well, there's nothing too mysterious here. I grew up in a family as the
second youngest of five children: I have two older sisters, an
older brother, and my kid sister. Some of us fought like cats
and dogs, but to this day (though a bit spread out) we're all
still close friends. My mom and dad had some typical rough times,
but managed to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary about
4 years ago. In their mid-seventies, they're more in love than
ever.
 They are a couple of very special people.
- I'm a husband and father. I have an incredibly successful wife, Julie
and three awesome boys: Josh (a sophomore in college), Matthew
(a high school senior), and Joey (in 8th grade middle school).
- All the boys are athletes. Josh is currently a lacrosse goalie
at Ferrum College in Virginia. Matthew excells at basically anything
that involves running, jumping, and scoring points; but his primary
love is soccer. Joey is a middle school lacrosse player and a
Pop Warner football player.
- I have years of experience coaching youth sports from YMCA basketball,
to inline hockey, to football and lacrosse. I've managed to find
time coaching each of my boys at some point. When not coaching,
both Julie and I remain very involved in their activities.
I have always considered coaching a service to young adults and
hope that my efforts produced some long lasting positive results
beyond the rinks, courts, and fields. I've recently been introduced
to the Positive Coaching Alliance and
strongly agree with its core principles including the goal to
"prepare youth athletes from pre-school through high school for
success in life on and off the playing fields."
Faith & Spirit
 Well, here we are ... from an outline perspective of the website, we're
kind of at the Omega. But the end of the site really holds the
key to its beginning. In an effort to simply express my authentic
self, I tried to let the contents be inspired by faith.
If you've had a chance to wonder the site a bit, you've probably
noticed that I do not exactly have a clear and concise handle
on my faith. Although I often find myself more confused than
confident, I did try to create a picture of my faith with my
writing Journey in Faith in the Random
Thoughts section.
It's important to me to express the source of my inspiration because it
touches the core of my being and is the foundation for my coaching
style. I do believe that I am very objective and analytical. I
am a great problem solver and love working together with other
folks to find solutions to any type of challenge. I am practical
and realistic. I focus on helping clients discover truths within
themselves and set reasonable goals for personal improvement.
Most of this is accomplished by my intellect. Basically, you might
say I'm pretty smart ;-) But all this I consider a gift. It's
God's design and I'm simply trying to recognize and be what
He has created.
All this said, I hope I don't give anyone the idea that I'm some type
of religious nut. I consider myself a very down-to-earth, relatively
typical person, that's struggling along with everyone else
... trying to make sense out of my life and trying to learn to
enjoy the journey.
Honestly, I think I am a pretty smart guy and I'm capable of quite a few
different things. But, it wasn't until I decided to try to surrender
to The Spirit and let my own spirit guide my intellect that I
began to find the path of something I could do converge with the
path of something I truly loved doing. And it's here that I find
myself trying to help others while convincing my wife that I finally
have a real job again ... toReview
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