It’s funny how when stuff like this would happen to a younger me, there was this immediate feeling of failure or, more often and far more disturbing, a feeling that I’d never started anything that possibly be impacted by a change in temperatures let alone another wholesale move. But here we are.
I’ve been out of my bread job since January. I split on a decent paying, solid gig that I’d held for 13 years and some change. It was a marketing job which, as the company was not exactly a large corporation, was palatable for those years. In the end however, I couldn’t justify the gains from the lack of creation, and I knew that had always been where I wanted to be.
Leaving that job came with risks, a number of which I fell upon since doing so: the lack of potential business in the area, financial chaos globally, and last but not least and certainly the most freaky was the closing of the school at which my wife was a professor.
Being the awesome human and professional that she is, it was a remarkably short period of time until she had interviews scheduled, and another short period until she found a position at a place that she was really stoked on. Not 2 weeks later, she had that job and we had the prospect of moving to Biddeford, Maine.
I learned about Biddeford in the late 2010’s when my sister and Brother in law had moved up there from Texas to open a wine bar. I helped build the Bar Back and secondary bar/storage cubbies for it. It seemed a decent town, if not struggling to recover from the consequences industrial/corporate abandon. I guess the jury is still out on the future of that.
What I’ve found more recently seems to be a pretty supportive community both in my neighborhood and at Custom Job’s new shop location:
It’s about 960 sq. ft. A little over half of it will be the wood shop, the other half my detail/electronics shop, my studio, and kind of a showroom for finished projects.
It’s well beyond my means at this point but I socked a lot away in my retirement which, let’s face it, won’t really ever happen. Still, I’ll be picking up side work with other construction, cabinetry, carpentry companies in the area to help cushion the blow.
So, expect an update to the site real soon as I redirect my energies to setting all this up. I’m stoked to finally live in Maine after a lifetime of visiting… can’t wait to see what kind of weird stuff is going on!
Custom Job 