How I went from penniless with no marketable skills to a wonderful new career at age 46
by Phyllis Moore
In 1986, I found myself back in Houston, Texas, after a 3-year stay in El Paso, where I had moved to start an antique consignment business. Little did I know how much of my personal resources would be required to begin this endeavor when I sold everything I owned, including my home, and moved 1000 miles away from my family and support system. The devaluation of the peso in 1986 and the effect of this event on the economy of El Paso, left me with nothing.
I returned to Houston penniless and homeless. It was my good fortune to have a couple of friends from my past who took pity on me and provided me with a place to stay (my realtor friend, who had sold my home for me before I left), and food to eat (from a friend with whom I had been in the restaurant business for a brief time).
Reading the newspaper became a daily exercise, to look at classified ads for employment. However, at 46, and with no real marketable skills, I was at a loss. I sold advertising for a tabloid newspaper for a while, and did some odd jobs for the auction company that had enticed me to El Paso originally, but it wasn't a living.
One day an advertisement in the paper caught my eye. It was a course in Instructional Design and BioMedical Communications at a local School for Allied Health Sciences. I had actually done Instructional Design work shortly after I completed my Bachelor's Degree (some 20 years before), but I had never had any formal training. After a brief investigation, I decided to sign up for the course.
This course was my introduction to computers, and I immediately fell in love. Every spare minute I had from classes, I spent in the computer lab. A whole new world of technology had opened up for me, and I simply couldn't understand those students who resisted the computer classes. I completed the course with a straight-A average, and, for the first time in a long academic career, was placed on the Dean's list.
In 1986, at the end of the 12-month course, I purchased my first computer from one of my professors and began work with my internship site, the developing Challenger Centers. The centers were founded by the wives of the astronauts who were killed in the Challenger disaster. I consulted with these brave women and support people from NASA to assist with the design of the science curriculum the Centers would offer school children.
I began doing consulting work immediately after completing my course work, when I got my first client from a low cost "Work Wanted" ad in the local newspaper offering my services. My first client was an individual working on a business plan in Quality Assurance who needed, not only assistance with the design of his business plan, but also with the word processing and graphic development to support it. My second client also resulted from the $2 ad - a software developer who needed help with the design of his software product. Today, one of my "offerings" is a short course in - using computers for the computer-challenged generation!
Now I "live" on the Internet - using it for research for technical papers, transmitting files between my home office and clients in New York, Chicago, and Montreal. My clients are generally based in the medical profession - doctors who need help with the design and development of instructional materials, professional papers for conferences, slide development, instructional video scripting, and preparation of textbooks for publication.
I also work as a technical writer and editor for a major publishing house, also in the medical field. The work with the doctors resulted from another inexpensive "Work Wanted" classified ad in a local news and entertainment tabloid; the editing work resulted from networking with an old acquaintance who works for the publisher.
Another very important way I use the Internet is staying in touch with my adult offspring - who have computers in Portland, Oregon and Orlando, Florida with e-mail addresses I use frequently, as well as old friend from my university days, who have spread all over the country, and who, fortunately, have also had the foresight to learn to use these valuable tools.
My next challenge is to get my 87-year-old father on-line. Wish me luck!
