The Jim Baumer Experience began as a personal and professional workspace. I launched the site as a platform to share and write about ideas and theories I was working on and had been piloting for more than a decade. This was back in 2012. I also wanted to create my own WordPress website.

My fascination with reinvention got me started blogging and exploring the topic back in 2002. I’ve stayed at it all this time.

From 2006 through 2012 when newly-elected governor, Paul LePage, de-funded the state’s workforce system, I was passionately engaged in a variety of initiatives across the state of Maine: workforce development, employment of people with disabilities, and aging in place. My success in building effective partnerships was recognized by organizations like CEI and others.

I decided I wanted to write. While sitting in a cubicle at a large disability insurer in Portland, I took Stephen King at his word, and began working on my craft. A year later I published an essay in the old Casco Bay Weekly. It was 2003 and I was on my way as a writer.

Fifteen years later, I’m a freelance writer, author, independent publisher, and book coach/consultant, helping others get their books to market. I have helped others achieve publishing success just like I have.

While I’ve demonstrated that I have the ability to move projects towards success working as a consultant and project coordinator on smaller, nonprofit projects, I’m no longer focusing on that area of my skill set, at least in the way I have in the past.

Life can be capricious. I lost my only son in 2017. Losing an adult child is devastating. Sudden, unexpected deaths like his shift the entire foundation of a father’s (and a mother’s) life. Nothing is as it was. Even the ordinary becomes strange and unfamiliar.

One never recovers from something like this. However, as they say, “life goes on,” even if that life is framed by grief and mourning. We’ve launched a nonprofit in Mark’s memory, in an effort to further causes he was passionate about, like protecting Earth.

Update:

In August of 2018, deeply depressed and spiraling due to grief, I decided I’d had enough. For some odd reason, I walked into my back office, saw my guitar case housing my Yamaha acoustic filmed with dust, and pulled the guitar I’d had for 25 years (and rarely ever played anymore) out of the case. I tuned it, and began working through a few songs I still knew how to play. I felt better.

That afternoon began a journey I’ve been on now coming up on three years.

This summer I’m out playing live gigs. I have an ambitious schedule and I’m enjoying and savoring every moment. I’d love to have you come out to one of my shows.

Flying my flannel and playing my guitar.