Another meme.

[saxikath]

I shouldn't do this when I still have a bunch of top 5 lists to do, work to do, and a Mystery Hunt to get ready for, but what the heck. Swiped from gnomi.

The problem with LJ: We all think we are so close, but really we know nothing about each other. So I want you to ask me something you think you should know about me. Something that should be obvious, but you have no idea about. Ask away.

Comments

[saphir23.livejournal.com]

How did you come to be where you are and do what you do?

(Not that I don't have any idea, but not enough of one...)

[saxikath]

Huh, that's really a good question. I mean, in some ways, that would require telling my whole life story. :)

But the basic outline would be this:

After college, I went to journalism school, thinking I wanted to be a science writer. I decided pretty quickly that I didn't like reporting, so I left the program after the first year and went back to academic grad school in history of science.

After two years in the Ph.D. program, I was burned out. I was fighting depression, had had several physical illnesses (wrist problems, pneumonia, chicken pox), and didn't really see where I was going to fit in in the academic world. So I took a year off. As it happened, I never went back; got the master's and called it done.

I needed a job for that year off, so I applied for various things. One was an editorial job at Houghton Mifflin. I ended up getting hired for a totally different position there, as an editorial assistant working on elementary social studies textbooks. In short order, they made me an editor, and I stayed there for four and a half years on a series of contract jobs. Then I worked at a dotcom doing online college history books for a year and a half; then I freelanced for a while before getting hired at my previous job, and then moving to my new job.

In the interim, of course, I discovered the NPL and local theater communities (and LARPs; see previous answer!), which shaped the non-work parts of my life.

There was a point -- ten years ago, almost! -- when I almost packed up and moved back to Colorado. After a night out with friends (<lj user=claudia_, do you remember that?), I realized that was going to be a bad idea, and decided not to. I'm glad; I might never have encountered the NPL, among other things, had I done that. That was probably more than you wanted to know. :) Sorry!

[saxikath]

Whoops, I lost the end of that. The rest of the entry was supposed to say:

claudia_, do you remember that?), I realized that my life was really in Boston and that it would be a bad idea to move. Good choice; I might never have found the NPL, among other things, if I had left then.

That's probably more than you wanted to know. :)

[saphir23.livejournal.com]

Thanks, that's a nice synopsis -- about the same level of detail I'd have used if asked that question. I'm assuming the move to Boston coincided with start of college?