LonelyStreets.com
Who is Paul?
Paul Robare is a guy with a checkered past. Well, not so much really, but it sounds cool, huh?
I grew up in Chicago (city proper, no suburbs here), where I endured 8 years of public schooling before transferring off to the Chicago Academy for the Arts, where I studied Visual Art (primarily sculpture and drawing).
In 1997 I trekked off to Iowa where I spent 4 years as a liberal arts student majoring in Economics in BFE - Grinnell College to be exact. I also gave up visual art and found a deep love of music while establishing a silly self-identity I would later discard: my nickname was Hippie Paul for 3 years due to my long hair and ridiculous wardrobe (which was entirely tie-dyed). Then one day I wised up, and realized I’d be more successful with the ladies if I chopped the hair and started wearing tight black clothes - which is exactly what I did. As a result I met the woman I would eventually marry - the beautiful and intelligent Emily Elizabeth Mize (these days you can tack Robare onto the end of that too!).
After college I ran back to Chicago where I spent several years in a variety of office jobs before picking up and moving to Hamamatsu, Japan, where I taught English with the AEON corporation of Japan for 18 months. While there I met many wonderful people who I still think about almost every day.
I then somehow ended up back in Iowa (despite my subconscious denial - a cognitive state which persisted the length of my stay), where I spent two years doing all sorts of things for a small non-profit called ISED Ventures (formerly the Institute for Social and Economic Development) and got married. At this point I discovered the glory of Design - and more specifically interaction design (though I’m not sure, personally, that differentiating the two is meaningful).
I was then admitted to Carnegie Mellon University’s Masters of Interaction Design program, and moved to Pittsburgh (Shadyside to be more specific). I spent two years as a student at that program and had an absolutely awesome time learning to be a kick-ass interaction designer (which is how this blog came to be all about design).
In May 2009 I finished grad school and accepted a job as a Senior Interaction Designer with Motorola Mobile Device’s Companion Products team. I am still with Motorola today and absolutely love my job (but am not allowed to talk about anything I work on, which hasn’t boded well for the blog).
5 Responses
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May 4th, 2007
Posted by Paul in Uncategorized |
May 25th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Hey, beautiful! Sounds like things are going well, so congratulations!
June 12th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
hi paul. just letting you know i started brousing your site. i liked your comments about em. i was actually wondering if she would pop up in your life story. she did in the right place with a nice tone. i’m listening to country western music while doing this so i will skip your music for now to avoid a brain spasm. best carl
November 7th, 2008 at 1:23 am
Hi Paul,
Long time no see (17 years!). Great to hear that in the end everything turned out allright for you!
Still a Greatful Dead fan, or you lost interest the moment you lost your long hair?
Love your site.
Dutch greetings from Peter, Diana, Melvin, Chloë, Colin and Isis.
November 26th, 2008 at 10:42 pm
My boyfriend, brothers-in-law and homeboys want to sue your ass for taking a picture of them and posting it on the internet without their concent.
November 29th, 2008 at 10:26 pm
Well, since you don’t say what photo it is your friends find offensive, it’s pretty difficult for me to remedy the situation, don’t you think? Taking a wild guess, I imagine you’re referring to one of the photos I took of the people loitering outside my old building in Des Moines, in which case they have no right to an expectation of privacy, and so have no grounds to sue.