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The Les Gapay Story 5 Years Later

I first heard about Les from career coach Cathy Goodwin’s excellent Mid-Life Career Strategy blog.

He was a former Wall Street Journal reporter who ended up living out of his truck from June 2002. The story made the USA Today newspaper in Sept 2003 and I strongly encourage you to read it – How A Regular Guy Gets Homeless -as I believe it contains 5 key survival lessons for what many mid-life ‘white collar’ folks may experience over the next 5 years:

  • Lesson 1: True change comes from within.
  • Lesson 2: Friends and family may surprise you (good and less so.)
  • Lesson 3: Get in touch with the natural world.
  • Lesson 4: Irregular work may become the norm.
  • Lesson 5: Watch what you eat.

Cathy’s post picked up on the changing workplace practices in the US employment market – especially the increasing number of freelancers and part-timers. With President Obama’s recent job stimulus package (as I understand it) just getting into the public domain, I wonder how many other ‘Les Gapay’ stories we will read about in the coming years.

And the real Mr. Gapay?

A quick google found this story as of Jan 2009 – A life comes out of storage. (Oct 2011: Broken link) At least he now has a small apartment to call home at the age of 65 – and he can clearly still write.

Something inside me’s left wondering if his ‘wilderness’ years during the boom time economy now deflating has the makings of a great tale about what really matters when you’re getting old and the chips are down.

- Mark McClure

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This was written by Mark McClure. Posted on Tuesday, February 17, 2009, at 10:36 am. Filed under Career Change, Goals, Life. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Both comments and trackbacks are currently closed.