I like Medium for the same reasons. The first thing I look for each time I open Medium are the responses.
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From 1972 to 2006 I owned my on business. I ended with two retail beauty supply stores when I sold them in 2006.
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The pursuit of profit selling through marketing vanity got old pretty fast. I followed my dad into the beauty supply business for lack of anything better to do. It was hard to identify with the crap we sold, when all I used was a bar of soap and a stick of deodorant. I liked the business side alright, but the sales side consisted of helping customers make the agonizing decision of what shampoo and conditioner to buy. Maybe if I sold sporting goods I could have stuck with it.
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After 10 years, when my dad retired and I had full rein, I computerized (for lack of a better term) everything about the business, turned the day to day management of the stores over to my sister and went back to school. With a solid computer system, I could pay bills and manage the overall operation without being onsite
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My inspiration for change came from my forced participation in my young son's preschool program at our local university. Much to my surprise, I discovered I enjoyed working with kid's. I also experienced the satisfaction of the intrinsic rewards that came with it and decided to become an elementary school teacher.
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That second stint in school and my first ten years of teaching at a low income school populated by very needy kids changed me. I began to understand the need for social safety nets. I saw first hand the importance of free school lunch. Our school population was so impoverished that our school qualified for funds to serve free breakfast and lunch. Our staff frequently lamented the fact that we had to send our kids back home at the end of the day and wished we had dormitories and free dinner too.
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The bottom line is that I experienced the need for a government that served all it's citizens, not just the wealthy. I resented the fact that conservatives were always clamoring for tax cuts while trying to dismantle every program that served the average citizen. Trump and his MAGA bullshit turned me form a liberal into a flaming libtard. Our government's lame response to slaughter of 1,375 school children over the past twenty years fanned the flames. Our pathetic leaders lame thoughts and prayers anger me every time another innocent child is gunned down in the supposed safety of his school.