• about me •

I discovered computers and their possibilities as a learning tool in college in the mid-1980s, and created my own independent major (Applications of Computers in Teaching/Learning Foreign Languages) in order to pursue that interest without sacrificing my lifelong desire to learn Italian and travel to Italy. At the same time, I also discovered an interest in the field of law.

After college, I reached a fork in the road: one path led straight down a broad avenue to law school while the other meandered along an ill-defined, barely evident, winding track to destinations that didn't quite meet up with my computing interests. Needless to say, I chose to walk down the more direct and well-defined road and in the fall of 1991, I joined the ranks of the New York Bar.

In the summer of 1999, having switched coasts to San Francisco some five years previously, I left my legal career. I had decided to go back to that fork in the road and take the path I had passed by ten years ago, a path which had been magically transformed and reshaped by the internet into a amazing highway that headed directly toward my interest in using computers as an educational and informational tool.

I went back to school full-time for almost a year, and obtained a certificate in Internet Design and Technology from San Francisco State University's Multimedia Studies Program, one of the best internet/technology programs in the country. I put the skills and knowledge that I had acquired at the school immediately into practice at a company called DigitalThink, which produces e-learning solutions, that is, completely internet-based courses.

Two years later, having survived several downsizings at DigitalThink, the dot com bust finally caught up with me, and I was laid off. During the course of months of frustrating job searches that followed, I began to plan the first step in fulfilling another long-cherished dream, that of living and working in Italy.

I put the plan into action earlier this year, beginning with a weekend travel-writing workshop to expand my skills and give me more opportunities for gainful employment. That was followed by a month-long cross-country drive from San Francisco to New York to get my traveling legs in shape. I arrived in Italy at the end of March, and I will be here until mid-December. To find out more about my travels and progress towards my latest goals, read the journals in the writing section of this site.

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