A brief introduction

[starlite58]

“Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it. Once we truly know that life is difficult - once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.” From “The Road Less Traveled” by M. Scott Peck
“Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I was born in 1955 in Newark, New Jersey, the son of a first generation, Irish tool and die maker. Part of the “white flight” from the city in the early sixties, my family moved to the suburbs of central New Jersey, ten miles west of New York City where I attended 8 years of Catholic grammar school and commuted 4 years to a private, all-boys Catholic high school in northern New Jersey. I started my first job at the age of nine working Saturdays and summers at my father’s machine shop. During the later part of high school and throughout my first two years at Fairleigh Dickensen University (FDU); I worked at my grandfather’s smelting refinery loading trucks, driving a forklift, separating metal and cleaning US steel furnaces. FDU offered me the opportunity to study the literary arts and a role as a feature writer for the student newspaper “The Spectator”. During this time I had a brief stint as a news stringer for the “The Newark Star-Ledger” where I collected information for news reporters and learned how little they earned for their efforts. 
Anxious to make a living and awestruck with the excitement of Wall Street; I left school and went to work for EF Hutton in 1975 as a clerk for their commodity trading division. After a year, I applied to Boston University, obtained a part-time job as a messenger for the Boston Stock Exchange and continued my studies until I returned to Wall Street, became licensed as a stockbroker and shortly thereafter entered the regulatory arena in the world of high finance for the American and New York Stock Exchanges where I was trained by the Securities and Exchange Commission as an Examiner conducting audits, money laundering investigations and compliance reviews of broker-dealers and investment companies throughout the United States. 
I remained in the field for over 30 years enduring long, monotonous travel, a divorce, a nervous breakdown, both WTC bombings, indignations and endless insights into human nature in conflict with morality and greed. Despite the darker side of my experiences, I excelled in the industry to become a leader in the world of Investment Compliance where I served as Chief Compliance Officer for a number of major investment firms, was an active member of the National Society of Compliance Professionals and am currently listed with the National Association of Securities Dealers Regional Arbitration Board.
I retired from the industry in 2005, have traveled all over the United States, lived in Boston, Barcelona Spain, New York, Delaware, Honolulu, Los Angeles and now in the Boise Mounyainswhere my wife and I are raising an 12 year old boy and where I can settle down and enjoy the things in life that truly matter: family, academic challenge and compassion. I am a loyal follower of Sam Keen and his work, read most of Joseph Campbell's work and am anxious to learn more about Stefan's Philosophical principals.  Thank you.