What's My Story?

I could write my first article about tips and tricks that I have learned on internet marketing.  Or, I could mix things up just a little and tell you about me instead.  After all this is "social" networking, right?  So, let's be social!

I remember when I was a kid, growing up in Decatur, Georgia, we had to write our own autobiographies.  There wasn't much to tell at the young age of maybe 8 or 9.  But I was still able to fill up a page with my life's story. 

Well, I won't bore you with 44 1/2 years of my hardly dull life but I will sum up "me" in a few paragraphs and I hope my readers enjoy knowing just a little bit more than what programs I am marketing on the internet.

I was born in Napa, CA.  I didn't really know that Napa was a glamorous place to be from until my early 20's when I started to work first in a photo lab and then in the hotel business.  To me, in my early memories, it was just where Gramma and Grampa Martini lived.  Who knew that people traveled from all over the globe to visit the Napa Valley to taste wines, tour wineries and photograph vineyards. 

We lived in Michigan and then Georgia and finally in late high school we moved back to Napa.  

Always a very social person, I retained friendships in the Southeast from my childhood and high school years.  In my early twenties I moved to Atlanta, GA to share an apartment with my best friend while she attended Georgia Tech.  I had been working in a hotel in the Napa Valley so my natural career choice was in the hotel business.  I soon landed a position as front desk clerk at the Omni Hotel in downtown Atlanta.  

I worked in the hotel business for about 6 years, moving back to Napa and then Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1990.  In 1993 I went into banking and worked in that business for 13 years.  

I lived in Marin County, Napa, and then the East Bay in California.  Again, always social and committed to my friendships, I continued to keep a connection with the Southeast and visited Georgia often between 1990 and 2008.  In 2008 I spent more time in the Southeast than I did in California because I had left banking and was doing business with one of my best friends in Atlanta as well as in Tennessee.

At the same time as I was building my career and friendships, I was struggling through several rocky romantic relationships.  My friends became my second family and there are a few who know me about as good as I know myself.  I traveled with these friends in our "single 30's" - to Hawaii, Mexico and the Bahamas.  To Italy, Spain, France and Germany. We visited Disneyland and Las Vegas often and I continued my yearly or every two year trip to Georgia to visit friends there. 

In January 2009 I moved to Florida on a bit of a whim.  I needed a break.  Badly.  I had just decided to sever a business partnership and I cut off all income in doing so.  I came to Florida because I had an investment condo here.  I thought I'd stay in it for two months, maybe three.  I ended up staying in it for nearly four months, then moving to an apartment for the summer while renting it out, and moving back again in August of last year.  I no longer have the condo and I no longer struggle with rocky romantic relationships since i met and later moved in with Matt, my soul mate!

Sometimes the best things happen after some of the toughest times.  We have to go through these hard experiences to get to the good stuff!  I have said often lately that I would not change a thing and I have no regrets.  Any slight change in my past might affect my present and I am very happy in my present life!  

I hope my new IMfp friends enjoy reading a little about me and will share something about them with me.