I have created this site to provide information about me, David Sobotta.
It has many links to articles that are about things that are important
to me.
I retired from real estate at the end of 2011. My time is now devoted to writing and taking pictures. I consider myself an author and technology consultant.
The focus on writing is nothing new. I spent much of my time since 2007 writing, boating, fishing, and taking photographs along the NC Coast.
I am looking forward to spending more time in the technology arena by the end of 2012.
I came to
North Carolina's Crystal Coast after a number of interesting stops.
However, one of the two most important periods of my life was the nearly twenty years that
I worked for Apple Computer.
Apple was my second career which came after several years building a farm in the Canada. Certainly the skills learned at Apple are what
got me on the web and propelled me into writing.
After my career at Apple, it took three years to figure out what I wanted to
do for the rest of my life. Much of the time was devoted to finding
where I could be successful and happy.
That third career turned out to be real estate on the NC coast with lots of
writing, photography, fishing, boating, and beach walking thrown in for good
measure. I have I enjoyed working with
people and helping them.
My first career was an extraordinary time. I spent eleven years of raising purebred cattle. The
hard to describe effort
of running a large farm far from a safety net is a great foundation for
almost any job. Our farm was in Canada north of Fredericton, New
Brunswick on the banks of the Tay River in what some would call wilderness.
Those first 30 years of my professional life on the farm and as a Silicon
Valley computer soldier might seem unusual for someone who studied history
and got his degree from Harvard.
Yet in the years of those two seemingly unrelated careers, at college and
at
McCallie School, the high school I attended, my foundation beliefs were
forged and put to the test.
Those beliefs have served me well all through my life.
Life on the farm taught me that who you are is far more important than
what you do. How much money you make is not the measure in life which
matters. How you treat others is far more important than money
Corporate life reinforced the belief I gained through my education that
standing up for what is right is fundamental to my character.
The coastal marsh pictured above is one of the key links in the chain of
life on our planet. I value it as much as I do many of my core beliefs.
How we treat the marsh is measure of how much we care for future
generations.
I am fortunate to be able to live life among
such extraordinary
natural beauty, and I am happy to have made the decision that how
I treat people is more important to me than how much money I make.
By doing the right thing for the right reasons, enough money to get by
seems to make it to my bank account. I find myself blessed, and I sleep well at night.
This site provides many links to my web world which covers everything
from fishing, restaurants, photography, and cooking to technology.
If you are really interested in
living on the coast, you can browse
an index of articles that I
have written over the years about my life on the coast.
I am also the author of
the Crystal Coast Life Blog which provides additional information
about life on the Carolina coast.
I also have archived web pages that I enjoy at
this site.
In February 2009, I started uploading pictures to Google's Panoramio.
Here are
some pictures of the coastal area placed on a map.
Additional information and pictures of the area can be found at this Crystal Coast site, my Picasa Web Albums site, and my Salt Water on my feet site.
The Crystal Coast
Before we moved to the the area, we enjoyed visiting the Beaufort area, and actually spent a couple of summers of looking for a home there. Since we had no success, we decided to try some other areas.
In 2006 as we gave up on Beaufort, the Cape Carteret to Swansboro area seemed to have a lot of potential. Today that potential has been confirmed. We are seeing new services move into the area. This spring a Lowe's Home Improvement Center was built next to the very successful Lowe's Grocery Store in Cape Carteret. A new Walgreen's Drug Store just opened in Swansboro and construction on another one
is well underway in Cape Carteret.
Swansboro does not have quite as much history as Beaufort, but it is still an old, cute sea coast town, and since it is only 28 miles from Beaufort, we can easily visit Beaufort whenever we want.
This is a web slide show of a recent trip we made to visit the tall ship Royaliste.
It is hard to say which area, Swansboro or Beaufort is nicer. I guess it depends on your view point and what you want in an area.
I find our western end of Carteret County near Swansboro a little more down to earth than Beaufort.
I would give the shops in Beaufort the edge, but I'm not sure my wife would agree. While Swansboro doesn't have the large number of clothing shops, it has plenty of home decor shops to keep the ladies interested and there are more shops close by on Emerald Isle.
Swansboro also has its fair share of excellent restaurants and they are a little more reasonably priced than the ones in Beaufort.
In fact the Cape Carteret, Cedar Point, Emerald Isle, Swansboro area has all the services that one could want in a retirement area, and there is no drawbridge traffic bottle neck like there is in Beaufort.
Wherever you settle on the Crystal Coast, you'll likely be happy. So far we've been very impressed with the people we've worked with here . They're friendly and go out of their way to try to help you meet your goals. Once in a while they do get caught up in "beach time," but that is to be expected.
