Mid-October 2018.

I was working in corporate America. In L.A. , or Orange county, for you purists.I was 58 years old. I had no idea that a global pandemic was right around the corner. I loved what I did, I loved the people I worked with, and I figured I would ride that particular horse til it dropped, do a little theater on the side, travel to far corners of the globe and run races, glide into a comfortable retirement and spend way too much money at the best little wine bar on the planet.

That was my plan.

Isn’t there a cliche about God looking at our well thought out plans and laughing?

Yeah, that.

Cue the pandemic, very substantive changes to my work vibe, both pandemic and non-pandemic related, and choices I made based on those changes.

Career….bye!

L.A………see ya!

Wine bar….dammit!

6 years later I’m back in Cincinnati, which is where I was raised. Work is performing arts. Wine happens much less often, because I’ve discovered it was never really about the wine anyway. Though you have ruined me for crappy wine, Twisted People… Every time I see a bottle of Jam Jar, I cringe…

…but I digress…

I think that on the whole I am happier, because I am doing what I love to do, and being pushed to do it as well as I can. Do I miss L.A.? At times, yes. Do I miss my friends? Absolutely. But that’s what airplanes and Delta points are for. What has been a constant through all of this?

Practically Well.

It started as an artistic outlet. A forum where I could express myself freely, without being edited and second guessed by bright young corporate types and repressed older corporate types. I wasn’t doing a lot of acting, so writing became a way of scratching that itch. And writing about health & wellness trends and fads, both real and spurious, makes me happy as well. When it comes to becoming healthier, managing weight, hair loss, “men’s health” and a score of other subjects, there are people who only need half a reason to throw stupid amounts of money at a dream, whether or not they can afford it. And shysters more than happy to collect that money under dubious pretenses. I can’t stop that, but I can certainly call it out if I think it’s bull.

That’s where it started. In the last 6 years, it’s retained some of that, but also grown. It also branches into personal stories. Things that bug me, things that amuse me, things that make me happy. And now I’m throwing in a review and ranking of all 27 James Bond films. Cause I felt like it.

Shoot me.

It’s helped me grow as a writer. That is culminating in something but we’re not going to talk about that until it’s a thing. If that’s confusing, don’t worry, it’s both not important and will be easily explained in the next couple of weeks.

So this blog is just a Thank You. Do any and all who take the time to read and listen. In the 6 years of Practically Well I have amassed a whopping 42 followers.

I don’t care. It’s not about that. It’s not about money. Because people have asked me how much I make from this.

Ha.

I plan on continuing this little weekly shout from my own personal mountaintop. Where it will go from here? Who knows. But I think it does me good. And I hope it informs and amuses.

All 42 of you.

Cheers,

Bob