What I'm doing Now

Updated 2/22/24

(I got this idea from Derek Sivers, who, with Gregory Brown, started The /now page movement. See nownownow.com.)

Right now, most of my income comes from real estate sales and rentals Plum Blossom Music, a service I started that provides music for events.

My first career was as a software engineer, but I come from a musical family and my first love was music. So, when I got the chance, I figured out how to make my living as a musician.

During the pandemic, I started thinking about how I was getting older and didn't really have the nest egg that I thought I should at my age, and I felt like my music career had pretty much run its course. I realized that my ability to make a living as a musician probably had less to do with my musical skills than my people skills. I had always been intrigued by real estate, so I though I would give it a go, and so far I feel like I made the right decision. My clients seem happy and the other folks at my real estate brokerage, Montague, Miller and Co., based here in Charlottesville, Virginia, seem to think I show great promise. Right now my income is about half weddings and half real estate.

My reputation in the wedding world has mostly been built on the Plum Blossom String Quartet, which is really just any number of fine musicians that I manage to recruit to form string quartets, trios, duos, and also to play solo, performing mostly classical music and arrangements of pop songs for specific events, mostly wedding ceremonies and cocktail hours. I usually perform on cello with these groups, although if the client wants a soloist I sometimes play solo violin.

I also have Classical Hillbillies, which typically starts out as a strings group very similar to the Plum Blossom String Quartet (or trio or duo) for ceremonies but switches instruments for cocktail hours and plays bluegrass and old-time (and jazz and pop). I usually play cello or viola for the ceremonies and guitar or upright bass for cocktail hours.

And then there's the Early Grove String Band, which is my old-time and bluegrass band. I typically play fiddle, guitar and/or upright bass in this group.

None of these groups have a set membership. I'm fortunate enough to have a large pool of very talented musicians from which to draw. Typically I do most of the client relations, coordination with musicians, selection of repertoire, maintenance of sheet music, web site -- pretty much all of the behind-the-scenes administrative work.

As long as there was demand for my work, I was raising my prices on a regular basis and started getting fewer gigs per year but because my prices were higher, my income didn't really decline. This gave me more time for other pursuits.

In the past several of years, I've become obsessed with craft chocolate. I've discoverd that there is a whole class of fine chocolate that is a level above most of the "good" chocolate that's available at, say, my local Whole Foods. It costs quite a bit more but the taste is amazing and, unlike the biggest chocolate companies, craft chocolate companies make sure that the growers of the cacao that they use are treated fairly. I have a daily ritual where I sit outside watching the birds and let one piece from each of three plain dark chocolate bars melt in my mouth while I take notes on the taste of each one. The Slow Melt podcast really helped me get my start.

I have an alter ego, Mark Rock, and he has a rock band (The Mark Rock Band), and we're working on a rock opera about craft chocolate

I say an affirmation and meditate and exercise and journal and read every day. I've worked part time for barter and/or money at Universal Electronic Repairs since 2006. I get together with a couple of guys once a week to talk about our careers and our lives. Many of my meals consist of spinach salad with chicken or fish and raw garlic. My sweetie and I eloped in December of 2017. Most Sundays I play bass guitar at Mt. Zion First African Baptist Church. They tend to focus on gratitude, which I find very uplifting.