After my father, an avid fisherman, saw the movie JAWS, he quit his job, bought a charter boat with a partner, and went to Montauk to fish for Great Whites with the likes of Frank Mundus. As expected, his vacancy and lack of responsibility resulted in his separation and divorce from my mother. This partial coming of age and unconventional childhood trajectory is detailed in objective reflection of these important and pivotal years of my childhood. 

While my father fished offshore for ten to twelve hours a day, I was left to explore and experience all sorts of people going about their daily tasks on the docks of Montauk. These old timers taught me to filet fish, and this skill became a business of charging money to filet fish for the boats coming in daily. 

The resourcefulness of a child with nothing but time and ambition and an unbridled insistence on play led to buying knives, selling fish to the yachts in the Montauk Yacht Club, and learning to cook fish from chefs from all over the world. 

The apex of these moments, at nine years old, was the opportunity to steak a 500-pound mako. The next day, in an anticlimactic twist, my self-confidence was broken, which left me questioning who I was. The primal excitement of getting an opportunity to eventually go shark fishing ends in a lesson of fear and survival. 

These circumstances, funny stories, and life lessons are chronicled in this tale of understanding freedom and the lives we can choose to live. Most notably, that the narrative we choose to repeat, agree with others about, or the definitions of the words we use to define our lives can limit or unshackle our potential. 

My stories and lessons have put me on a path of being an entrepreneur, award-winning artisan, and now a published author. These accomplishments were not void of struggle or hardship and certainly have never been a straight line. Perhaps they can induce you to permit yourself to be a little less comfortable and explore the vastness of the world through the lens of unbiased learning, beyond what we were taught or what was indoctrinated into us as children. Then, we can see all the world has to offer.

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