My name is Jared. I’ve lived an exciting life. I started out a wild boy in the high desert of the Rocky Mountains, untamed and barefoot. Though I grew up in Idaho, I only worked potato farms for a brief period. In truth, My dad is a financial specialist and my mom a school teacher… but it is easier to just let people assume that they’re farmers. I’ve farmed, as has my dad, so, what’s the harm?
I started my adult life volunteering as a missionary in Detroit, MI. I did that for two years before moving home to Idaho. I shortly married my high-school sweetheart, Julie. We both went to college in Idaho, she for Music Education focusing in voice (she’s totally talented and hot! I’m so lucky!) – I floundered around before graduating with a technical certificate in law enforcement.
I’ve worked in a dozen or more fields. I started working summers with the Boy Scouts of America in 2000 and did that on and off (more on than off) until 2013. It gave me the opportunity to continue being wild and running around the wilderness AND being paid for it (albeit not very much). I worked for the Federal Bureau of Investigation; I even had a Top Secret Security clearance, though I can’t tell you what I did for them, because it’s classified. I’ve worked construction and retail. After I graduated college, I worked in a call center until I got hired on as a police officer – my ‘dream job.’
Truthfully, that didn’t last long. There is a reason that law enforcement has the highest divorce rate (followed closely by doctors, strangely) and the second highest suicide rate (following only doctors, if I understand it correctly). I quickly realized that I had to choose: my career or my family. I chose my family, and left my ‘dream job’ just 3 weeks after we closed on our house.
I started a new career field, working as a General Manager in restaurant, working for Panda Express. I was on the fast track for senior management when my boss retired. His replacement didn’t like people with my skin color, and made it pretty clear I couldn’t move up. I did my best to work with the company to ensure that laws and policy were followed, but they deliberately (up to destroying or “losing” records) made sure that my boss was protected in his illegal behavior. That eventually ended with me being shown the door. Overall, not a good experience.
About a year before that ended, I fell off of a ladder, I got hurt, but I’m only now discovering how badly. I’ve worked in some new fields because of that fall: leaving restaurant (which I truly loved) and working in call centers again, so I don’t have to be on my feet. I was the Director of Customer Service at a multi-national marketing company, though recently the pain levels got to be so bad that I couldn’t do it anymore. Julie is working to support the family now, and I’m learning to be a stay-at-home dad for our two sons (and our dog). I feel broken and incomplete. I cannot do the things I once could. No wild-boy anymore. I’d settle for “not-so-useless-boy” or something like that.
I guess that’s where the name for my website comes from: I’m the Broken Dad. Now I’ll write about it.