PAUL EMUS, a retired Army journalist, English teacher, and County clerk, is “having too much fun.” With freedom afforded by good health, three small pensions, TRICARE, social security, and mortgages paid off, he works the odd freelance job. “I enjoy technical hardware and software to create artistic endeavors,” Paul comments. A perpetual student, Paul recently completed a 36-week, 25 hours per week, Continuing Education certificate program on Adobe Creative Cloud software. “I follow the weather with my radio-collared fur buddies in my self-contained Roadtrek RV — enjoying satellite radio, good books and magazines — from San Diego to the desert, mountains, and sea,” Paul says.
“I swim laps, and hit the trails with my dog and fat-tire electric bike. I eat superfoods, take supplements, and plan to live to 120 by avoiding sugar and processed foods — and certainly not smoking or drinking.” Paul socializes with the photo club, politics, and friends and family. “My cousin says I won’t get Alzheimer’s because of my good hand-eye coordination for flying a drone.” At a charity auction, the mayor bid $100 on his drone photo!
County of San Diego retirement cast away the cubicle after 15 years. At Property Tax Services, he supported rolls of a million bills, plus did accounts payable, labor corrections, and administrative duties. For ten years Paul kept busy as a substitute teacher for a dozen school districts, practicing lessons, multi-media presentations, assertive discipline, and classroom management. Meanwhile Paul worked nights as a security officer, and was an adjunct Professor/Instructor.
A master’s in Communications included writing a 200-page thesis and seminars on research, publications law, ethics, investigative reporting, and radio-TV newswriting. Paul’s first B.A. was in Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego, Berkeley, and Riverside. Professional organizations included Tostmasters speaking.
Army National Guard Journalist duty encompassed magazine editing, film processing, speech writing, surveys, Audio/Visual, press conferences, media escort during emergencies, and overseas deployments. Previously he served in Reserve public affairs, psychological operations, and armor radar, with a Secret Clearance. Paul was Journalist Honor Graduate from the Defense Information School.
Aerospace proved lucrative but unstable for a previous life that produced reports for contract courseware. At Rohr, Paul documented aircraft engineering, after working Boeing parts catalogs for several years. As technical writer, Paul revised Navy aircraft schematics, maintenance procedures, troubleshooting tables, and structural breakdowns.
As editor in Silicon Valley, proposals for radar countermeasures required managing schedules, illustrators, “red-team” reviews, visual aids, photography, biographies, style formats and classified documents. He created newsletters and contributed to trade and local press. Paul worked as electronics technician after active duty repairing radar in the Army at Korea and Texas, and 40 weeks full-time electronics school.
Professional journalism previous lives included dailies, where Paul got a first-place award and made extensive front-page coverage of agriculture, business, weather, and public utility. Over 1,000 published articles are from being reporter, editor, columnist, correspondent and photographer for metro, student, and military newspapers and magazines. Managing editor activity included “scooping” police beat, city council, in-depth interviews, hard-hitting election coverage, accurate overnight deadlines, colorful features, business and political columns. Design and layout paste-up production were in the days of “hard copy.”
A native Californian, Paul became Eagle Scout; lived in Europe and Asia; and traveled in over 25 countries, gaining conversational ability in German, Spanish and French.
