“What? My name is… Who? My name is…”
(If you instinctively sang these Eminem lyrics after reading the title, you’re my kind of people.)
About Me
I’m a PNW native living in a little tourist town on the Olympic Peninsula. I have a degree in English Literature with a Minor in Business. I keep trying to slow down, but it turns out I don’t actually want to do less. I just want to do less of the stuff I don’t want to do (said every person in the history of man- or woman- kind).
What I do enjoy, is exploring the world, both near and far, with my wicked-smart husband, two cute (and sassy) kids, and our goofy Labradoodle. My family is my life. But, after many years of feeling incomplete inside of myself, I have found that reading, acquiring information, and having a creative outlet is what feeds my soul. So, it is for me that I read and I write. I draw and I paint. I create something from nothing. Or I create something tangible from only words or pieces of information.
My world is sustained by organized chaos. I have schedules and task lists…and I also lose my phone 800 times a day and regularly forget why I walked into a room.
It works for me.
I need enough flexibility to feel that my life is not a repetitive assembly line, but enough structure to stay motivated and productive.
To be successful in this relentless enterprise, I rely on a few essentials: coffee, sarcasm, dark, dry-wit humor, and cuss words. Honestly, I am yet to discover a more comprehensive and effective sentence enhancer within the English language than the f*bomb itself.
Background
I used to be on the promotion fast-track in Human Resources and Marketing Management working 60+ hours per week. I took a hiatus from work after our son was born. During that time, we lived in Japan, where I had the opportunity to teach English and fall completely in love with Japanese food, culture, gardens, and architecture.
When we got back to the states, I continued with my myriad of projects and hobbies and went back to work in marketing. Oh, and we had a second kid. NBD.
The Covid Wrench
Things were going pretty well. We were in a good rhythm with the kids in school and a flexible work schedule for me.
Enter: Covid.
I kid you not, on Friday the 13th, 2020, I was at the hospital with my then-6-year-old son who was having severe respiratory problems (not Covid, but still terrifying) while also wrangling my then-2-year-old daughter when three things happened simultaneously:
- I watched on the hospital TV as our governor announced that Washington State was being shut down
- My phone began buzzing wildly with notifications of school closures
- I received a call that I was being laid off due to said shut down…effective immediately.
I don’t recall if there was a full moon that night, but I wouldn’t put it past the world. It all seemed a bit coincidental.
Chaos Coordinator
My husband works with the military, so he is undeniably “essential”; but the kids and I went into lockdown, and I became one of the many unplanned homeschooling moms. I did all the things, turning my unused formal dining room into a Pinterest-worthy classroom. Arguably over the top if you were to ask my husband…or my friends…or my mom.
The ubiquity of conflict was overwhelming. In our little bubble, my formerly united kids went from allies to enemies in a matter of days. The daily clashes with my once school-loving first grader about Zoom calls blurred into one endless battle (as I’m writing this, he is telling me: “I HATE ZOOM!”).
Panicked neighbors fought in stores over toilet paper. Fear-ridden and isolated strangers maliciously argued on social media about contentious social and political issues.
Being as I am NOT a person that remains sane while being isolated in my house all day, every day – I, of course, handled the abrupt cancellation of all our schedules with calm and rational ease.
No. Nope. I definitely did not.
I drug my kids out of the house to get my vital-for-basic-human-functioning cold brew. Every. Single. Morning. Seriously, thank God for drive-up coffee during a pandemic. We may have been late to some of those dreaded Zoom classes, but I had coffee, and we had left the house so everyone would survive another day. We bought a trampoline and told the kids to go outside…in the rain. Hey, it’s Washington, it rains, we power through.
Now what?
I spent an excessive amount of time considering what I WANTED to do when the world started turning again. I started reading…a LOT. I read about history and politics. I enthusiastically revisited dozens of Classics by brilliant authors that, when they were in my required curriculum, went mostly unappreciated.
What I realized is that reading makes me a higher functioning and overall less stressed human. Hmm..what if I started writing again too?
My writing has been published many times, but more often than not, it was for an employer, and there was not a byline.
Still, I’ve written and edited:
- Articles for magazines, newsletters, and journals
- Speeches and press releases
- Marketing and advertising content
- Policies and procedure manuals
- Proposals and reports
I enjoyed most of those projects (well, maybe not the procedure manuals) but kept thinking, “What if I started writing about topics that I genuinely find interesting…?”
What if…?
For many years, I showed up to do a job that paid the bills. But my heart wasn’t in it. I wanted to do more, learn more, and I wanted to write. When my house is quiet (and I’m suddenly wide awake), my mind races with ideas, stories, topics, and thoughts that I want to get out.
So, instead of going back to a job nestled safely in my comfort zone, I am formally entering the writing world. Older than basically ALL of the new writers coming out of college – with their perfect skin and restful sleep patterns – but probably quite a bit wiser too.
Follow the process on this blog, or check out my website!
