I feel like my “career” has followed a meandering path.

First of all, I took a long time to complete an Arts degree, majoring in History and minoring in (drum roll, please) Ukrainian Folklore! After a couple false starts in the Science & Nursing departments, I took a year to contemplate the error of my choices and worked, at one point, three different jobs that schooled me in a different way: at an ice cream store, at an automotive accessories store and at a bank. The place that was the most lucrative, not surprisingly, was the bank, so I stayed there part-time and went back to school part-time, completing the afore-mentioned degree in a mere 7 years (!) Before I was done, I married my sweetheart, Rick, and filled out my graduation robes, 6 months pregnant. I had switched to another job, working reception and processing medical claims at a downtown Edmonton company. But none of these jobs, other than the people that I met and served, really made my heart sing. And what was I going to do with a History degree?

It baffles me that I didn’t study literature or writing – a testament to not really knowing myself in those first few years out of high school and into young adulthood, marriage and motherhood. But with the birth of my first son and his two brothers soon after, I recovered a latent love of children’s literature that ignited a passion for adult fiction and non-fiction alike. As I researched subjects and books for teaching my boys at home (I homeschooled them all from kindergarten through grade 12), I discovered classic and contemporary books that I never knew existed, even though I had read voraciously as a child. I felt like I had to make up for lost time. Reading has been my most deliberate companion these many years and I am much better for it.

For me, the natural progression was to begin to spin words of my own. The eighties and nineties spawned many subscription newsletters B. I. (Before Internet) and I tried my hand, first writing free ones for my church and homeschool group, then trying my own subscription-based one. It didn’t take and I didn’t take to marketing, a crucial ingredient to success. But the practice gave me the courage to approach my local newspaper and I parlayed my style into a weekly column that I called “Home Front”, connoting both images of the serenity of home and the upheaval of war, which life with three little boys volleyed between. I managed to sell my articles to a few other local and national publications but the chase was exhausting with new demands of purchasing a business with my entrepreneur husband and continuing to homeschool full time.

But the short, and sometimes humorous, essay style that I wrote in kept bubbling up to the surface. Naturally, I should have started blogging a long time ago. But there is a season to everything and until now, the season for writing has not been too pressing, except for my journals, my scrapbooks, my grocery lists and emails.

So here we go in September of 2019 – writing in earnest for the public eye. I’ve built up a repertoire of knowledge that I can only find out by sharing it if anyone else is interested in the same.

The things I love are: books and reading, of course; organizing my stationery supplies; playing Jack Box games with my kids and their friends; gluing things down and scribbling in my art journal; hiking in the park behind my house; Peanuts (especially Linus and Snoopy but not Lucy); and pizza (and well, melted cheese in general). And ice cream. All that free ice cream way back when never dulled my hankering for a good scoop in a bowl (no cones, please). Oh and Rick, without whom, all of this would be meaningless.