A Nude Photo

03Jan11

"I said GOOD DAY, Sir!"

Okay, so I was four. But I was nude.

Over the years the experiences I’ve had have coated me with a kind of candy coating, colourful and hard but with a soft gooey heart.

I am many things, but a writer is a big part of who I am. I published my first “book” at age 6. My dad would make me little books of stapled paper and I’d draw stories in them and then had the cheekiness to go door-to-door in our neighborhood selling them. I had come from a long line of writers including Tennessee Williams (Streetcar Named Desire) and Louisa May Alcott (Little Women). Compared to Tennessee Williams, nothing I did was considered odd. Compared to Louisa, I was a fruitbat.

I worked at just about everything at one time or another. It was the experience of being a such and such that appealed to me, not the work itself. Jobs would come and go, but throughout my life, I’ve written. I’ve had short stories published, have won international writing contests, have had two non-fiction books published. I live my life in black and white and writing brings the colour.

When not writing I took other jobs. Here is an abbreviated list of them.

Author, famous on all of Hunter Drive (age 6)
Selling home-made “loop” pot holders door-to-door (age 9)
Winemaker in a home wine-making shop
Retail Window Decorator
Waitress in a 5 & 10 cent store’s coffee shop (weggies, frilly apron, hair net. Telling people to “Eat my grits!” Yeah, glamour!)
Assistant in a PR firm
Stamping printing on lids of frozen ravioli dinners
Rod “Man” on a surveying crew
Assembling dinosaur bones in a laboratory
Telemarketer (Sorry about that.)
Clerk in a funeral home
Mapping strata inside of a coal mine
Exploration Technologist for an oil company working in geophysics
Using space imagery to map the terrain deep inside African jungles (I once mapped a landform that turned out to be a herd of elephants)
Iceberg tracker
Mapping fault lines in desert regions to find underground water
Performer in an Old West Gunfight Troupe in the Rockies
Vote counter at the Democratic National Convention
Newspaper Reporter
Drama critic for a newspaper
Newsroom Assistant for an NBC TV station (photo below)
Talent Scout at the Renaissance Faire
UFO watcher for a university study
Parachute club photographer (lasted one terrifying hour)
Interior Decorator
Hazardous Materials Surface Water Sampling Tech in a nuclear weapons facility
Worked at a Natural Gas Refinery
Extra in movies and television
Drill rig geologist for a coal mine in Wyoming (photo below)
Art school model (photo below)
Researcher for a television show pilot
Managed e-mail marketing campaigns
Award-winning short-story writer
Celebrity wrangler for a TV Entertainment Reporter
Hot-air balloon ground crew

How many people do you know who have resumes with chapters? I’ve always preferred an adventure to a career and I’m not a bit sorry about it. Anyone can have a career. I had a lifetime’s worth of adventures!

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