All pics Steven Drescher
Dress, by Daftbird Wild Lily Boutique MM 82 Oceanside Islamorada
I’m not going to get into the details of the face wrinkles I accumulated in my 20s after being handed over a newsroom devoid of a night side reporter, photographer, co-anchor and/or a producer.
I believed, at the time, the bromidic work involved was sui generis to the broadcasting industry. I did not have, or have had any intent to work that hard. Ever. In my life. I thought other “labor” was appropriately appropriate for attorneys, and the blue collar sector that includes: welders, plumbers, pipe fitters and construction workers.
I moved to an island in 2009 because I was ready to cash in on my fairy tale existence.
On the island (of Key West) I had the vision I would sit in an office as mellow as a champagne sunset sail around the island, fly under the radar, cobble together a loose column on occasion (when I felt like doing so) and that clients, readers and customers would show up voluntarily with their ideas sketched out on what they wanted for marketing and promoting their own business.
I was wrong. In wrong town. On the other side of the planet. There were more tears melded into that entrepreneurial venture that sweat generated from the tropical heat. An aunt supplied me with a card last month which brought laughter and a stream of tears to my eyes:
A Birthday Fairy Tale
Once upon a time, there was a princess who was like a size four or something. She could eat and drink whatever she wanted and always stayed really skinny and had flat, firm abs even though she never went to the gym. Every time she tried on jeans, the very first pair fit perfectly and made her butt look amazing. She lived in a great, big, beautiful castle with her handsome, multimillionaire husband, who was busy all the time buying her giant diamonds, taking her to Hawaii, giving her foot massages, and telling her how beautiful she was.
My three occasions of early retirement have shown me the Fairy Tale isn’t as fun as connecting the business dots. For summer 2016 I wanted to develop and build business relationships on the Lake Erie Islands. The ferry launch is thirty minutes from one of my hometowns and a childhood home. Business on the beach in my backyard it was and will be for 2017.
I took off approximately two days in August, one in July and a couple here and there in June. When I am the voice of reason, on an island with more bottles of rum than a life jackets there is going to be a haul to write about.
Short of the story is — I worked (some) sixteen and seventeen hour days that dragged on to weeks on end. I had one goal — to develop business relationships with the island business owners. Quitting, calling in, missing the ferry, forgetting to show up and playing hooky across the lake at Put-in-Bay wasn’t an option.
America belongs to the worker, to the visionaries, to the business men and women who don’t take less than one-hundred and ten percent from anyone they interface with. The country is built on sweat. Not the day dreamer or the employee doing as little as possible. Fairy Tales don’t exist, and if they do…as outlined above the ending leaves little legacy.
One day, she was eaten by a dragon, and no one cared.
To take on Key West of the North, South Bass Island, for late night Labor Day dinner, dress was festive and a garment covered in ripe bananas proclaimed to the world, “I’m off today.”
Celebrate and keep chasing, or living the dream.
“…and I’ll say the drink has some horseradish but I’m not saying anything else,” manager Marissa Petroff plays up the mystery.
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