It was San Francisco November 1984. Sometimes glorious weather. Other times cold air blowing through my skeleton structure. Days watching the sun break through fog at Ocean Beach.

I was 35 years old and wondering what my career path would be. I had worked for several nonprofit agencies and found them to have chaotic organizational structures that promoted people through its ranks if they were unproductive and noncreative. My bosses rewarded those without any imagination, but a willingness to play the bureaucratic game no matter If clients needs were met or not.

I didn’t do well with any of my supervisors. I have always had difficulty with authority and didn’t take well to directives that seemed indifferent or harmful to the clients we were serving. I felt that the combination of micro-managing and lack of knowledge about my position as a social worker caused me extreme angst.

I was sick of this paradigm and was longing for a new life around a career change.

My wife Gail, who had recently opened an Afro-Centric Elementary school and I were making enough money to get by, but not enough to save a dime.

I had taken the exam to become a California licensed social worker/psychotherapist. There was a written and oral exam. I passed the written one and was waiting for the results of the oral.

I was more anxious than usual. Obtaining my license would mean that I could open my own private practice and receive payments from insurance companies.

I wouldn’t have to work under anyone’s thumb, and I had the possibility of earning more money than ever before.

Everyday I checked the mail (not email, the mail that falls on the floor in our apartment) to see if my license arrived. I knew that if a letter came from the state in a regular envelope, I had failed the oral exam and would have to retake it.

If it came in a business brown envelope, it contained my license and I had passed.

The ramifications if I didn’t get my license were stark. I did not want to continue floundering in the non-profit world. I know I really wanted to help people help themselves and envisioned being a therapist in private practice as a means for making this dream come true.

I drove home from my job at The San Francisco Head Start Program where we were fighting for workers rights and trying to unionize.

I opened the apartment door and saw a large brown envelope on the floor from The California Board of Behavioral Sciences. I noticed my hands were shaking when I picked up the envelope.

I swiftly tore it open and noticed a license to practice psychotherapy with Robert Livingstone typed across the middle.

I decided to begin the celebration by myself. I got in the car and threw my own ticker tape parade while listening to Prince’s When Doves Cry, Tina Turner’s What’s Love got to do with it and Billy Ocean’s Caribbean Queen.

I rolled up to Gail’s school honking the horn like a deranged race car driver. Some of the younger children were outside cursing looking for my reaction. I had none. I walked up to my wife and showed her my new lease on life and she smiled brightly, and the sun seemed to shine for days on end.

Thirty Years later I have a thriving practice in San Francisco and San Mateo. I work with children, teens and adults from all walks of life. I usually have no openings in my schedule. I feel I have made a difference in the world and have many more opportunities to do so. I am truly a lucky man.