If I had to pick three “most important” traits that shape who I am, those would be voracious reader, prolific writer, and chef. In fact, put them both together and you get a pretty clear roadmap of my career.
When I was just a kid, I developed an interest in reading–alot. I’ve read classics, pop fiction, science fiction, Ayn Rand, religious works, and tons of non-fiction. Reading promiscuously is a trait inherited from my grandmother, who might just as soon be seen carrying Plato as she was Phillipa Gregory. This practice helped build my belief in a big wide world full of possibility and wonder. Add to it a bent for both writing and performance — novels and theatre — and the “me” of me begins to make at least some sense.
I describe myself as a professional dilettante, having had four careers (all overlapping) over thirty-five years, with a couple dozen side hustles scattered into the mix. I worked in technology, in the media as a journalist, as a marketing consultant (and later full-time content marketer). Along the way, I picked up gigs as a restaurant manager, a chef, the development director of a community theatre, and found the time to publish four novels and raise three kids. I also earned a BA in English and an MFA in creative writing.
I always knew from a young age I wanted to write. It surprised no one (other than me) when I became a journalist and started cranking out news stories. Very few were surprised when I punched out four novels back-to-back. Between those two activities, I learned what I call my “superpowers” (sometimes) and (more frequently) my “magic tricks.” As a novelist, you’re holding an entire world and all its moving parts in your head. You begin to figure out how this change impacts that other, seemingly irrelevant thing over there. As a journalist, you’re trained to walk into any room ignorant of a subject, ask the “right” questions (they teach you those, too), and walk out at least informed enough to write about it to your audience.
So where does cooking come in? Somehow along the way of pursuing a marketing career, I stumbled into operations. It turns out the skills necessary to run a kitchen aren’t that much different than those to run a team of content marketers or a team of programmers and engineers. You look at the ingredients you have, find out what you need, and start putting them all together.
These days, I help lead a team of executives who seek out novel opportunities and help bring them to market or to grow them much faster than might otherwise be possible. We are all professional dilettantes in our own right, with interests in communications, energy, sustainability, and technology.
Oh…and I’m still writing, though mostly today it’s business briefs and comments on student papers. I teach at a university. I mean, I am a Criminally Evil Ogre. Something’s gotta feed my soul.