All The Different Me’s: Late 70s Paul

Unsurprisingly, I continued to change after college. I view the three years between graduating and meeting Vicki as a time of maturation, in which I had my corners knocked off and my dreams put through the wringer of reality.

My The Tech friends have literally thrown away my entire wardrobe, so I dressed better, in clothes from Saks and Lord and Taylor. For the first time, I experienced real love. It ended up hurting me. I moved from Boston to San Francisco to Portland to San Francisco. How long ago was it? AP and UPI moved a picture of the front page of the New York Times each night at midnight eastern so editors could see what was important. Ah, for the days when mainstream media was mainstream.

I had four jobs in four cities before I found my niche in technical journalism, and made my way through one tumultuous bi-coastal love affair. Since this is not an autobiography, I will spare you the details (which are easily found at www.schindler.org).

What I had learned, by the time I met my future wife Vicki at a World Affairs Council wine tasting, was to listen more than talk, and to be careful to fall in love with the actual woman in front of me, not some idealized notion I had of that woman. That, and “Pay attention. They probably say what they mean and mean what they say.” These lessons have helped me through 42 years of marriage.

Clearly the lessons I learned made me a nicer person to be with. I was less egocentric and more interested in others. And little did I know that the 80s would give me a chance few people get: to live out my childhood dreams, briefly.