I do wish, when I was younger, that I knew that I was gay. It would have made things a lot clearer for me. Really. Looking back on it, it was so obvious, but it never really dawned on me. Socially, I felt like I didn't know how to be and who to be. If I had known back then, it would have given me more self-confidence.

Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.

I studied journalism at The University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill. I did my graduate work at Emerson in Boston, and I was actually a reporter for a year in New York and New Jersey. It dawned on me that I wasn't cut out for that line of work. I mean... there's a certain thing that really good reports have that I just didn't.

I grew up around food and in a restaurant, so it never dawned on me that this was a thing to do; it just was. Then I found it as a profession in my mid-twenties after years of bad decisions and depression. The first step was going to the bookstore and learning about this craft. Then applying in kitchens and just getting to work.

Preemption is not about the Essure women - it affects all consumers. If someone had a medical device installed, there's no recourse for victims, and the company is protected. If there's a problem, the company gets a pass because they have preemption. It dawned on me the consumer didn't know. The women didn't know that this existed.

Just having that time alone, away from the team, just going through the progression of being healthy again with the brain work that I was doing in the hospital and building that company, all I could do is think and it just dawned on me that, hey, it's time for the next chapter of my life. I need to walk away and try something else.

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