About

In years past, I was a retail store salesperson, advertising copywriter, and store manager. I eventually opened my own retail business with my best friend as partner until he decided to don a black hat and left leaving the business undercapitalized just before an economic downturn. Next, I became a health and life insurance agent just prior to New York State changing the health insurance laws, which cost the company I worked for its competitive advantage.

I reluctantly returned to photographic equipment retail sales. Under the tutelage of an old friend who worked there I became the key employee. I served as store manager, responsible for both used and new equipment purchasing. My other contributions utilized my skills in technical writing, marketing, and business negotiations. I trained and shepherded the copywriting and photography for the business’s initial foray onto eBay.

When it was clear to me (and unfortunately no one else) that the company’s over dependence on eBay as its sole online sales presence was foolish and dangerous, I persuaded the owner to seek other online sales markets, including revamping the company’s archaic website. He said that I would be his Internet Czar.

I established the business as an Amazon Third-Party Featured Merchant and shepherded its growth into a multi-million dollar account. Subsequently, I helped design the company’s website, product categorization taxonomy, and sales interface software. In addition to being the senior copywriter, I also contributed my self-taught expertise in website UX (user experience) design, and SEO (search engine optimization).

My last resume, which I composed when I was forced to search for work the year when I was turning 59 years old, states: “As a Content Strategy Manager and Marketing Specialist, I frequently answered the call to slay a dragon or pull a rabbit out of a hat – i.e., to deal successfully with a seemingly impossible business challenge by utilizing an analytical yet imaginative approach. I often served as the company’s main idea-generator and problem-solver to help grow and improve the business.”

As Walter Brennan used to say on his TV show, The Guns of Will Sonnet (1967-1969), “No brag, just fact.”

The unfortunate cause of the necessity for that resume was that I was unceremoniously laid off (after 20 years of truly impressive contributions to a business that was run as quirkily from the top down as the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party), as part of a downsizing layoff on the very day I returned to work after my stepmother’s funeral.

When I reminded the bean-counter exec, assigned to do the dirty work, how instrumental I had been to the multi-million dollar success of the company, he said, “Yes. That’s what you were paid for.” He smiled as he proceeded to tell me what they were giving me for a severance package. I wasn’t smiling.

I didn’t respond to his flippant remark because when you look into the soulless, heartless eyes of a shark, why hope to have a human conversation? An appeal to conscience or to do the right thing only has a chance with someone who is bound by conscience.

I could have responded, “Yes, I was paid thousands in wages but I was the key to helping to grow and evolve the business as only I could with vision, intelligence, creativity, talent, and diligence. I built the stepping stones that elevated the company’s position at crucial points throughout my tenure and enabled it to earn millions of dollars. And that is why I was — on more than one occasion — given the word of the owner that I would always have a place here.”

But when a man’s word — that of the owner — turns out to be of no value and he is too unmanly to be present and look someone as important as I had been to his business and personal success in the eye and swing the ax himself, honor and virtue have left or never existed in that dark corner of the world.

Before leaving the office on that fateful day, I made many reasonable counter-offers such as part-time employment and working as an outside consultant without benefits. While those offers were rejected out of hand, I was told that when the economy turned around, I would be called back. And as he escorted me out, he said, “Remember we’re a family here.”

Like George R. R. Martin wrote in A Dance with Dragons, “Words are wind… trust in deeds.” As I drove away, I wondered why he felt the need to double down on bullshitting me. Maybe he was afraid I would treat them as they treated me and feared a reckoning.

Because of all I had done over the years for the owner, who is a multi-millionaire today in large part because of my contributions to his business over 20 years, I trusted that at the very least, I would have a job at his company until I reached retirement age. 

The only excuse I can offer to explain my being blindsided is that back in the years when we worked side by side in a crappy back office, we both really respected each other’s business abilities and while we may not have been bosom buddies, we were certainly more than just work associates. 

Back then, he truly appreciated having an employee like me. And when he forgot one time, when an unimportant but troublesome employee was badmouthing me, I told him, “There’s thousands of people that could ‘sort of’ do my job. But none like me. There is only one Lou Balbi.”

That ended the immediate problem. He knew he was lucky to have me and my special talents. And I mistakenly believed that he would always be a man of integrity and good to his word.

So, why bring up all of this? To bad mouth them?

No, not at all. I am not bad mouthing anyone for they are nameless.

Names are for people and things that deserve to be remembered. Those without honor, those who do not keep their word, those who do not show the appropriate respect and appreciation due others deserve the void of anonymity.

To blow off steam? 

No. I despise ruminating on bad memories, betrayals, mistreatment, and past hurts. I often would tell my Mom, who tended to dredge up painful memories from her past, that until someone actually invents a working time machine and you are able to go back to your past and change that part of your life, there is nothing you can do about anything that happened years ago except to learn from it, let it go, and move on.

So why even mention these events that are now covered with years of dust?

Well, necessity. I finally am recovered enough to be able to devote myself to fulfilling my author dreams. And these days, authors need a website. And websites need an About Page.

I wrestled with the sort of bio I should write. Brief and superficial or personal. I chose to do both. An abridged version at the top of the page and this more detailed one for those interested in my backstory.

Being in my sixties, I have a lot of history that I could have recounted. I faced the writer’s dilemma: what to include and what to exclude.

What was clear was that I had no choice but to include this relatively recent traumatic event if I intended to write a genuine, personal history. 

While it happened almost a decade ago, its effects lasted long after. 

It broke me.

I would like to think that I have slowly and carefully repaired myself in a way akin to the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery, called “Kintsugi” (Golden Joinery) or “Kintsukuroi” (Golden Repair), where the cracks are not hidden but celebrated — and transformed into a work of art — by using a lacquer infused with powdered gold, silver, or platinum to glue together the shards. Such works of art are far prettier than I am and better examples of what a masterpiece broken things can become. 

My excuse: I am a work in progress.

Believe me, I would rather not have exhumed these rotten corpses from my past. It exacted a terrible emotional toll. As a writer, I don’t merely remember or observe past events like watching a movie, I relive those moments. I “am” in that time and place. I re-experience the terror, the betrayal, the anger, the trauma. But like that unflattering black-and-white photo of my unkempt face, my intention in my writings is to be authentic. And that requires reliving memories of past events, even painful ones.

This is one of the hazards of being a writer and probably explains why so many of us experience anxiety and depression. The memories of a writer — or any imaginatively gifted person — are dangerous stuff. Powerful and hazardous. Radioactive. The only remedy to their ill effects is to find some escape hatch — preferably one that does not harm your body. 

Too many writers succumb to physically hurting themselves to numb, appease, or distract their psychic anguish. As the years have whirled by, I have found it best to abstain from tempting pleasures that are really poisons. No smoking. No booze. No drugs. No fast food. No pigging out on potato chips and other carbs. No compulsive eating of sugary treats.   

A walk outside works for those with better knees and a less painful back (injured from a fall at work on Valentine’s Day 2001) than I have. As for me, I talk to the cat. I have found most cats to be especially good listeners, if they are in the mood.

One final observation to serve as a warning to others like me.

I think of myself as intelligent, perceptive, and discerning but this was not the first nor last time my trust in someone has been betrayed. What is disconcerting is that I am — or think I am — good at sensing when someone is a liar, untrustworthy, or a bullshitter. And I often am.

Unfortunately, when my heart becomes attached to someone romantically or when I “connect” with a person because of shared interests and similar tastes, or when my honor chooses to be loyal to someone, either as a friend or as a business associate, I apparently become blinded to reality — because I seem to repeatedly get betrayed, cheated, or taken advantage of — and devastatingly hurt.

Fortunately, not every single time. Some loves and some friends have never betrayed me. Thank Providence, otherwise, I fear I would have ended up a hermit or a serial killer long ago.

Ironically, many years before the incidents recounted here, when my son was just a toddler I explained what the word lucky meant. Then I referred to myself as “Lucky Lou.” He considered my words, looked me over appraisingly, then right in the eye, and said with all seriousness, “No, Daddy. You’re not lucky.”

“Yes, I am,” I countered, “I have you.”

He looked me in the face, then shook his head. “No, Daddy. You’re not lucky.”

He hugged me, saying, “Sorry.”

Kids do say the darndest things.