Twenty-one years ago, I found myself without a job. It wasn't the first time. Up to then, I suppose, you could call every job temporary.

Constructing, carpeting, circuit board drilling, window washing, music making, cooking, gas pumping, guitar teaching, banking. All temporary, some of them occurring two or three times. You could call them sub-occupations because they occupied my time in the occupation common to men and women these days, living for money-making.

With a wife and two young children, I was relieved when an audiovisual company took me on as a freelancer at ten dollars an hour, with a four hour minimum. Forty dollars a day was better than nothing.

All I knew about audiovisual was what I had learned playing in bands. That was enough for my new employer, even though my skill set amounted to nothing more than plugging in my guitar into an amplifier. It was enough to know about the principle of input and output, in the simplest way.

The first job in audiovisual staging was as a spot light operator. That first day turned out to be 18 hours. Wow! $180.00 in one day. That was almost as much as I made in a week playing on the rock and disco club circuits in the early 1970's.

I soon found myself freelancing one night at a major hotel in downtown Atlanta. When the lead told me to break down a tripod screen, I had to scratch my head and finally ask him how. He was a short, balding on top, scruffy man and he told me, "I don't have time to show you," proceeding to walk past me and do it himself. That man ended up being under my leadership several months later.

I became night manager at that very hotel, because I proved to my employer, through a handful of gigs, that I could show up on time every time. I could be counted on. More than input-output, dependability opened doors into a world that would shut behind me and not let me out.

It was on the job training at its best, watching the experts, learning little by little until I was wearing many different hats, whether simple meeting room audio, projection or basic lighting. This enabled me, in several different hotel properties, to manage the experts, utilizing their talents, coordinating their efforts and accomplishing successful events. It also introduced me to new relationships in the industry, which was fortunate as new corporate management came in, micromanaging and getting in the way.

Before I knew it, dependability wasn't enough. Political correctness was. Out

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