It is difficult to pin down what I am doing, as I seem to have irons in several fires. Even in the band, where I sing and switch between several instruments, I joke that I'm the kid who still hasn't decided what he wants to do when he grows up. I write books and design games, but I still compose songs and teach an online class.
From middle school, my aspiration was to be a famous rock musician, or a famous Christian rock musician, or something of that sort. By the time I was in college, I had outlined a future in which I became famous and reasonably well-to-do in the Christian music field, and then shifted from touring and recording myself to producing other musicians.
That didn't happen for a lot of reasons, but it was the impetus for getting two undergraduate degrees in Biblical Studies. I almost shifted to a music major, which probably would have put me in a position of teaching music in a public school somewhere.
My first job was driving deliveries for a pharmacy. That gave me money to spend on musical equipment, and probably would not have taken me anywhere anyway.
During one of my summers, I worked as a security guard at Fairly Ridiculous--er, Farleigh Dickenson University. I continued this through part of my second year of college, again for spending money for musical stuff and personal things. I returned to security after graduating from Gordon College, and might have advanced to some supervisory position there, but probably was limited in what I would have been able to do. Anyway, being a security guard was not really a job--it was a paycheck for sitting and reading.
Between my two undergraduate schools, I worked for Western Union Data Services as an inventory control clerk in the warehouse. My supervisor was very impressed and said he would be a reference for me whenever I needed a job, and I seriously considered moving back into the area (it was where my father worked) upon graduation. However, my wife was seriously worried about her parents and remaining grandparents, so we moved to her neck of the woods, too far for north Jersey to be a good place to work. I job hunted and worked security, and wondered what would have happened had I done the other.
While working security, I got connections with the personnel department of Certainteed Corporation, a construction materials firm, and thought I was going to get a job there; but that did not materialize. I did get a letter of commendation for stopping an employee from stealing an automotive battery, but I didn't feel like I was going anywhere.
The job I eventually landed was not good pay, but it was connected to my dream of being in the Christian music field: I became an announcer/DJ/technician at contemporary Christian radio station WNNN-FM. It was already riding on its reputation, as new owners were pressing it away from the contemporary/rock format that had given it a national reputation, toward what they viewed as "religious broadcasting", but it connected me to a lot of the important people in the Christian music and recording industry. I was supposed to send demos to a couple of people during that time, but every time I tried to record I was plagued with equipment failures. I rose to be program director, and probably could have pursued a career in broadcasting, but by then we had settled into our own house and there were no other Christian stations, and indeed few radio stations at all, near enough to commute.
While I was at the radio station, I also took a part-time evening gig as a teacher in an undergraduate course at an unaccredited school just founded. I taught one term, and was about to begin the second when the financing was pulled from under the school and they cut their small faculty in half.
After the radio station, I got a job doing microfilm with a major construction company--Bechtel, which doesn't build anything smaller than a skyscraper and is known to build things like suspension bridges and airports. I was working on a nuclear generating station, and got to know quite a bit about them from the inside. I thought possibly I would continue with this company, but in a crazy budget cut "on paper", the site manager shut down the microfilm department, made the client film any documents they needed for their own use, and shipped everything across the country to be warehoused by the parent company. I tried to transfer to another department, but there was a hiring freeze and everyone was cost-conscious.
I went through a stint working with a one-man drywall and painting operation, but couldn't stand being in a house with no working plumbing at five in the morning. I have never been a morning person, and joke that I was born at nine in the morning and have not willingly been up that early since. Then I took a position with a temp agency, which landed me in Blue Cross Blue Shield of Delaware, who hired me as a claims processor based on scores on intelligence tests and then fired me because I wasn't fast enough and ducked out of paying unemployment by claiming I had too many absences (I had been out one day) and tardinesses (the clocks in the building were all set to different times).
It was after that that I went to law school, seeking a graduate degree so people would take me seriously.
I actually did not set out looking to go to law school. I wanted a graduate degree that would get me back into teaching Bible in an undergraduate setting, but being committed to our home address at the time I had to limit my options to what would work for a daily commute. I looked at every graduate program within commuting distance, and eliminated them one by one until I was down to law and education. I sent applications and took tests so as not to be excluded from anything. Then the director of the education program talked me out of it--the program was designed for people who were teaching at publicly-run community colleges, not for people who wanted to teach theology. The law school sent me a letter of acceptance, and I went.
While in law school I worked as a student assistant for a highly intelligent professor, proofreading his papers for publication. I also earned honors. What I did not do was pull myself out of the financial hole that had been getting deeper over the years, and so as I graduated I was on the edge of losing the house--and then the New Jersey State Bar Association refused to admit someone in financial difficulties. (In fairness to them, it is not permitted for members of the New Jersey State Bar Association to file for bankruptcy, and it did not appear that I was going to avoid that--although I never did file, although I lost the house and am still not out of debt.) Thus I never got to be a lawyer, because of money.
Instead, I connected with a guy who had a truly brilliant idea for a role playing game. I had already designed three unpublished board games, and was an active role playing gamer and referee in an admittedly limited number of games. I started working with him, finished Multiverser in about five years, and published it. I started writing articles for web sites, starting with this one. Then I started writing the novels. Then I was inspired to write What Does God Expect?, and subsequently to publish it, the first of several Christian books.
Those are most of the twists and turns in my life, the might-have-beens.
--M. J. Young
