From the jacket cover...

"The story you are about to read is an intensely personal one. It centers on the author, Gerry Paradiso, an educated, hard working person who through a series of life events had to rediscover the purpose of his life as well as his relationship with God.

This story covers the majority of the author’s life and is designed to uplift the reader. Everyone has a bad day, month, year, even longer spans in their lifetimes – but the lessons learned in The Job Factor are that you must never give in or give up. You are not alone - each and every human being on this planet has experienced doubts, despair, hopelessness. These are deep rooted emotions which linger. Joy seems to be fleeting but pain at times seems more intense.

The message here is to not give in to despair or harbor the doubts we all are afflicted with, rather, reach out beyond yourself and find God who always was and always will be there for each of us."

Chapter 2: Enter the Whiners

          I saw unlimited horizons and no valleys stretched out in front of me. Man was I successful! Look at what I had accomplished.  I had stock in my dot.com that was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, or so I was told it would be very soon.  The economy was growing and my personal economy, the only one any of us really care about, was booming!

            Then my dot.com went dot.dead and I was dot.broke. Where those few hundred thousand dollars went is anybody’s guess, but they sure weren’t where I had left them. Oh, don’t get me wrong, I looked for them alright, but alas, they had vanished much like the last slice of pizza at a Super Bowl party.

             So I did what any red-blooded, motivated, highly educated American would do. I drained the equity out of my house to support my lifestyle believing my own press clippings that anyone with a brain would hire me for high dollars at any moment. I am still waiting for that call.

             My first mistake was to think I had all the answers. Hell, I didn’t even know the questions, let alone know the answers. I was putting my faith in the world as I understood it – Go to school, get yourself educated, work hard, reap big rewards and remember – you did it all yourself. You are a self made man! The truest essence of a can do American!  

           So, what happened next?  Did my plan for recovery work as smoothly as I had envisioned? Well, first off, I nearly lost our home twice -maybe more times, I stopped counting as I didn’t want to get too depressed. I worked many jobs where my dignity was at times, trampled. I was told I was too old, too experienced, too rigid, not professional enough, needed to lose weight, too professional, afraid I would leave as soon as the economy picked up or, a favorite of mine, “We’re going in different direction.”

          What does that mean anyhow? Are you saying I am directionless or am I pointing in the wrong direction? It is not fun to be put down and not treated well. I was at one point a somebody, or so I thought, and suddenly, to be treated as a less than nobody was humbling and since I am bearing my soul here, it was rather irksome as well. You learn to take many things that you normally would not accept in order to provide, as best you can, for your family.

Chapter 3: Hush Little Baby Don't Say a Word

“That silence you hear is me ignoring you.”

            That remarkably funny quote comes from my father-in-law. His name was Eugene “John” Duffy and he passed away back in 1992.  Duff, as he was affectionately called, suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, but as you may sense from the quote above, he was a man who had a keen sense of humor

My wife and I were not yet married at the time, and were on our way to a friend’s wedding when we got a call that he had been in an auto accident. So off we rushed to the hospital. When we arrived we found him lying immobilized in a head restraint and on a board. This is, we were told, a normal precaution if there is a thought there could be a neck or spinal injury. Blessedly there was none to him and no injuries to anyone else.

           As he lay there my wife bent over him and whispered something to comfort to him. She smiled and nodded. He was, she told me later, counting on his fingers in silence, praying his Rosary.

In his silence he kept his vigil and his faith.

In his silence he turned to his God and was not abandoned