Well I think so, anyway. I never do much of an intro on a forum, but I'll try.
I'm an old fart, fifty one, and I'm on the spectrum somewhere, but undiagnosed professionally. I'm a late bloomer type, married with two young kids, five and seven, both diagnosed with PDD. Last week my seven year old son was further evaluated and they added ADD and Asperger's Syndrome to his piles of crap to wade through.
I'm mostly retired, not working right now. I started my work career in music, playing guitar, but as everyone else improved I reached a certain point and never got any better. I did my first paid gig at fifteen on bass in a country band. I became more interested in the sound gear and ended up turning into the sound tech guy, working the PA system for hire.
By the time I was twenty three, I had acquired a semi-truck full of PA gear and worked Rock, Pop, Metal, and Folk shows of the late seventies and through the eighties. I was pretty damn good (obsessive) at my chosen profession and I loved it. I did that for eighteen years, but in my mid thirties, I had begun to make good money with my camera, which was my main hobby, growing up. That is, when I wasn't playing guitar or gardening, which is also a lifelong interest. As I became more successful taking pics of the rockers I had been doing sound for the previous years, I gave up the sound reinforcement business. It's much less gear to carry around when you take pictures for a living.
I don't really play guitar anymore, except to amuse myself. I'm still bad ass at getting the awesome rock/metal sounds out of any gear I touch. I'm also into collecting music, I have an enormous CD collection by most standards, along with a serious interest in vinyl and associated analog gear. I never turn off my music.
When I got out of the music business, I went to work at a big company taking portraits of families. The music related location shoots were much more fun, but the families paid the bills really well and I am addicted to eating well. Last year, my position was "taken apart", sort of, and given to three part timers and the old Hoss who made too much money and had a decent benefits package was ousted. Actually they were quite loyal to me, after all I had given them almost fourteen years, and they offered me one of the part time positions, but I could not swallow that pill and 'retired'.
Enough of this crap!
Here I am.
