Let's see.... the short answer is I am a full time stock trader / investor (mostly short to mid-term swing trades with some longer term fundamental / speculative investments mixed in - and no, I don't give stock recommendations).
Long answer is it's been a winding journey to get where I am currently.
Grew up on a small cattle farm in rural northeastern Arkansas, went to college on a combined baseball & academic scholarship, blew said scholarship by a combination of a career ending injury (rotator cuff) and too much partying, and after dropping out and getting married eventually returned to school and worked my way through college by working for the maintenance department of my chosen school (Ouachita Baptist University).
From college, went into full-time church ministry and concurrently earned my MA in counseling from seminary.
Served as a full-time Pastor off and on for a total of approximately ten years cumulatively (over an approximately 13 year span of time), but no longer do that (for various reasons), although I am fairly involved at the current time in our local congregation (teaching class, etc).
In between churches and after I left vocational ministry, I have worked as an Environmental / Quality Control Manager and an Operations Manager in wood pellet plants in Mississippi, worked as a processing / plant design and startup consultant in the wood pellet industry, owned and later sold a residential remodeling contracting company in Missouri, and along the line completed about half of a Doctoral degree from Seminary (still not sure why I decided to pursue that).
It's been an interesting life and I've left out a lot of little in-between things, but I'm FINALLY - after a long and winding journey - doing exactly what I always truly wanted to do for a living. I only wish I had done it twenty years ago.
Side note - it's been interesting reading through this thread and seeing what everyone does / has done, and even seeing it change over time for a few people who have checked back in across the 11 years this thread has been running.
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