Edmonton Journal photo of Thomas Trofimuk celebrating his $200,000 windfall.

In mid-2005, moments after my friend Harvey mentioned how long he had worked for the government, I realized that in October of that year it would be twenty-five years since I was fired from my engineering job at a public utility for taking two months of unapproved vacation. Better still, I realized that it would be twenty-five years since I had a real job. (This led to my writing the book Real Success Without a Real Job: The Career Book for People Too Smart to Work in Corporations).

Talk about real success — to me anyway! That called for a grand celebration with my paying the entire bill for a dinner at one of my favorite restaurants. I decided the purpose of the event was bigger than me; it was to reward all the individuals who had helped and supported me over the years. Virtually everything worked out when I had the celebration in October 2005.

Indeed, because of synchronistic events, some things worked out much better than I expected. Instead of a small TV set to show tapes of my appearances on national television, my friend Randy Edwards arranged to have his friend Robert come in and set up a DVD imager and a big screen. Twice as many people showed up as I had estimated. Much to my pleasant surprise, three of my friends flew in from Toronto, 3,500 miles from my hometown.

At the celebration, I tried to show a video that Randy Edwards had made of Thomas Trofimuk struggling with his writing of a novel or poetry at the Bistro Praha, one of my favorite restaurants. Nobody seemed to be interested in Thomas Trofimuk's struggles, however, perhaps because everyone was having a great time.

Last Thursday (May 1, 2008) I met my friend Robert Hoyles from Toronto at the Bistro Praha, the restaurant where the DVD of Thomas Trofimuk's writing struggles were made. Head waiter Milan told me that Thomas Trofimuk had been in just before to celebrate at the Bistro Braha. "What about," I asked. Milan had indicated that Thomas had just sold a novel for an advance for something like $100,000.

I thought, "This is so cool! The guy who no one at my celebration over two years ago wanted to watch struggling with his writing now gets an advance of $100,000. What was even funkier was reading an artilce in the Edmonton Journal and finding out that the advance was actually $200,000 for a novel that Thomas spent 15 years writing.

See the story at this link: City Writer Hits Jackpot with Third Novel.

I see Thomas Trofimuk's success as poetic justice. It shows what 15 years of hard labor (and the love of writing) can do for you!

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