A Beautiful Marriage
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Why isn't this on The Adventures of Jason & Linda? Surely 3 weeks and 2 days before our wedding day, a post by this title could only be about that, right? Nope. It's not.
If you've been a long time reader, you know all about my pen. My famous Mont Blanc Meisterstuck pen that was given to me by a former employer in 1999 for my first day of work at the New York Stock Exchange. You read a story about how I lost my pen, and another about how I found my pen. The importance placed on the object is its relation to a life once lived. I talked about I carried it all over Manhattan in suits and then all over the globe in camouflage. It was the only thing that linked me to my old life that I left behind. It mattered to me and I transitioned back to civilian life.
I moved home from the military life in 2013 and started JayVig Media in earnest and I ran the company for two straight years as my sole source of income. I signed every important document with that pen. It had made the transition to yet another part of my life.
10 days ago I started another adventure. I shut down the transactional and consultative side of JayVig Media, LLC and went back to work for a visual marketing company called Olapic, as their Client Support Manager. They tapped me to build a technical support team to include technical documentation, solutions workflows and training development.
And even though, I've held several jobs since the day I was handed my pen; for the first time in over 13 years, I get on the train, commute into Manhattan, and sit in an office with a career. The Air Force was temporary by design. JayVig Media was an entrepreneurial endeavor. I haven't had a team of people in tech, in Manhattan, since my corporate days. Truthfully, I hadn't even thought of it like that. Linda did.
The other night she came home and reiterated how proud of me she was for working hard, sticking it out, making the hard choice to close my company, and achieve this position with Olapic. She thought I should have something to commemorate it. I already had my pen, my symbol, my ticket of admission into a new adventure. In a bag was a box. In the box was this...
If you've been a long time reader, you know all about my pen. My famous Mont Blanc Meisterstuck pen that was given to me by a former employer in 1999 for my first day of work at the New York Stock Exchange. You read a story about how I lost my pen, and another about how I found my pen. The importance placed on the object is its relation to a life once lived. I talked about I carried it all over Manhattan in suits and then all over the globe in camouflage. It was the only thing that linked me to my old life that I left behind. It mattered to me and I transitioned back to civilian life.
I moved home from the military life in 2013 and started JayVig Media in earnest and I ran the company for two straight years as my sole source of income. I signed every important document with that pen. It had made the transition to yet another part of my life.
10 days ago I started another adventure. I shut down the transactional and consultative side of JayVig Media, LLC and went back to work for a visual marketing company called Olapic, as their Client Support Manager. They tapped me to build a technical support team to include technical documentation, solutions workflows and training development.
And even though, I've held several jobs since the day I was handed my pen; for the first time in over 13 years, I get on the train, commute into Manhattan, and sit in an office with a career. The Air Force was temporary by design. JayVig Media was an entrepreneurial endeavor. I haven't had a team of people in tech, in Manhattan, since my corporate days. Truthfully, I hadn't even thought of it like that. Linda did.
The other night she came home and reiterated how proud of me she was for working hard, sticking it out, making the hard choice to close my company, and achieve this position with Olapic. She thought I should have something to commemorate it. I already had my pen, my symbol, my ticket of admission into a new adventure. In a bag was a box. In the box was this...
A leather Mont Blanc business card holder (hence the picture of the business cards above). And so, into my pocket goes my pen and this beautiful leather bifold, each bearing the 6 point star with rounded edges, representing the snow covered cap of Mont Blanc from above.
Together, they travel to and from the bedrock island of Manhattan, among the skyscrapers. An old life and a new life together, married. The poignancy that they came together right before I marry Linda and that one was given to me by her is not lost on me either. If there was any doubt that going to work for Olapic was the right choice, that it was full circle, that it was my skyscraper built on the bedrock of my NYSE days; it is gone.
I am sure this is far from my last adventure, but this is one of those that will really count. I didn't just move back to New Jersey or the northeast, but it took 794 day for me to really be home.