I’m unemployed for the first time in 12 years.

My group, the Microsoft studio responsible for Flight Simulator, Train Simulator, and ESP, was closed in January. My severance package included 60 days’ paid leave with recruiting support to find a position elsewhere in Microsoft. I looked at a number of job descriptions, most of which started with a question, something like "Are you passionate about integrating SQL server with dynamic .PHP calls and cross-referenced bubble-sorted data groups with an eye for increasing performance as much as 4%?" At this point, my answer to that is a respectfully sighed "…no, I’m just not." (But ask me again when the money runs out.)

Yesterday was day 60, and I turned in my cardkey, my parking passes, and my belov’d corporate American Express Card, sauntering off into uncertainty with a distinct lack of fanfare.

My last break was a mere 18 hours (I had to formally quit one job before the next company could make me an offer without violating a non-compete agreement) back in the summer of ’97. If you don’t count that, then my run was even longer – about 21 years.

If you include part-time work, then my history goes further still: I got my first job when I was 14, which was 26 years ago.

Instead of working in a field and "picking berries and building character," my dad’s suggestion, I was a professional musician, believe it or don’t. I was a drummer, accompanying my friend Tom Gire, a piano playing prodigy who remains the best keyboardist I’ve ever heard. We worked the restaurant circuit, entertaining diners eating Sunday brunch at Andy’s Auburn Station and dinner at Jabingo’s, playing for tips, and, in the case of Jabingo’s, barbecued pork sandwiches.

Tom and I threw ourselves into the rock star lifestyle with rebellious teenage abandon. After our moms dropped us off, we’d jam sedately through a set list that included Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie, and, when we thought we could get away with it, Bobby Hebb. And the groupies … I can still feel that tingle at the base of my neck that I’d get whenever some babe would catch my eye, and, with a wink and a smile, send her great-grandson up to the piano to drop a quarter in the jar.

Since then, I’ve held the following positions (many of which have overlapped):

• Actor
• Security Guard
• Day Care Worker
• Radio Voice Talent
• Mailman
• Emergency Medical Technician
• First Aid / CPR Instructor
• Police Officer
• Emergency Communications Specialist
• Database Developer
• IT Consultant
• Senior Technical Support Engineer
• Toy Store Proprietor
• Technical Support Instructor
• Sr. IT Technician
• Software Test Engineer
• Beta Coordinator
• Notary Public
• Software Test Lead
• Subject Matter Expert
• Software Design Engineer in Test
• Community Evangelist
• Business Development Manager

The last two blend together a bit and describe my final two and a half years at Microsoft, and, in combination, encompassed a lot of different roles: writer, editor, web publisher, public speaker, media spokesman, networker, researcher, amateur marketeer, etc.

Clearly, I don’t know how to do just one thing.

I’m utterly baffled by what my friend Jim calls the "40 years and a gold watch" crowd. Barbara Sher’s books call me a "scanner", Ned Hallowell’s books tell me I have Attention Deficit Disorder*, conventional wisdom tells me that I just lack discipline and my friend Glenn simply calls us "Swans." My personal favorite came from my friend and "other mother" Donna who has no idea the gift she gave me when she called me a "Renaissance Man."

The tagline on my résumé closes with "…I’m looking for a new place to hang at least some of my many hats." And therein lies the challenge, and the promise.

While I am seriously considering a couple of "real jobs", the kind where I’d be employed by somebody and paid by them to go to where they are and do the things they tell me to for eightish hours a day, those are the exception – not many places are actively advertising for world-class-hyphenates.

In the meantime, then, I’m trying an experiment: As of today, I am now officially a full-time part-timer, a freelance thinker working from a home for which I hope to continue to be able to keep paying.

I’m consulting (in some cases as a volunteer at this point) for groups like the Museum of Flight, the National Aviation Hall of Fame, the BRAVO 369 Flight Foundation and Topgun Simulations, as well as a couple of other ventures (including one that I’m starting with two close friends) that aren’t quite ready to be discussed. And, above all, I’m finally, and I hope fully, committed to writing, something that the universe has been patiently screaming at me to do more of for years.

Yesterday, I came up with a daily schedule for my new job, one that specifically delineates periods of writing, as well as email, mucking about on Facebook, and semi-aimlessly surfing the web. I wasn’t sure if it would work, but, as I write this, I’m actually 19 minutes ahead of schedule.

Not bad for my first day.

*-For the record, it’s not that I have a deficit of attention, it’s that I have a surplus of tangents.