Archivist note

This one is not really about the music. This one is about me. The real me. I'm still not certain where this belongs, if anywhere. But I will leave it up for now and see what the traffic does. It may be removed or hidden. Its a little more "open" than I'm used to.

AUDIO RECORDING:

Not because I’ve reinvented myself.

Because I keep wandering into worlds I was never supposed to belong to, staying just long enough to learn their language before life carries me somewhere new.

This is the grossly condensed version.

I was born in Tacoma, Washington, where I learned my first lesson from two women everyone else seemed to misunderstand.

One was my great-grandmother. To the outside world she was “Fluffy.” To the grandchildren she was a Norwegian woman with a stare that could stop a freight train and an index finger capable of puncturing a sternum if you got too mouthy. She was also a master seamstress who made my mother’s wedding dress by hand.

The other was my grandmother, an extraordinary quilter and embroiderer. Family lore described her as angry, difficult, vindictive.

I never met that woman.

I met an artist who gave her work away freely.

As an adult, I wonder if the difference wasn’t personality at all. Maybe she was simply overwhelmed in an era before anyone knew what overstimulation looked like.

Those women taught me one of the earliest lessons I still carry:

People are rarely just one person.

At seven we moved to rural Michigan.

We were poor enough that dumpster diving for furniture wasn’t an adventure. It was Tuesday.

I learned resourcefulness there.

I learned how to make something out of almost nothing.

I learned to entertain myself because I spent a lot of time alone.

I became a latchkey kid with a flute.

Looking back, loneliness taught me independence long before confidence did.

At fourteen my parents announced we were moving to Los Angeles.

I’d just finally figured out who I was.

Naturally, life deleted the save file.

My new high school had over 4,000 students. Overnight I went from a tiny Midwestern school to one where I couldn’t even understand half the conversations around me. So I learned enough Spanish to survive… and, perhaps more importantly, enough to know when someone was talking shit.

Los Angeles taught me audacity.

I learned to drive in LA traffic, which should count as military service.

I became an editor for my high school’s entertainment newspaper. Someone handed a teenager a press pass, and I responded with exactly the amount of restraint you’d expect.

None.

Music became another language.

I played flute, piccolo, and oboe.

I became a section leader.

Then, somehow, I became an assistant band director for LAUSD before I was old enough to feel like an adult myself.

It turns out wrangling a drumline is surprisingly good preparation for leading engineers, warehouse employees, and executives.

The uniforms change.

Humans don’t.

College introduced me to artists.

My roommate was an art education major, so every evening became an informal seminar on color theory, composition, ceramics, symbolism, and why artists make the choices they do.

I didn’t earn an art degree.

I inherited a way of seeing.

Summers were spent working for a concrete construction company.

There’s something poetic about spending your days pouring foundations.

Concrete taught me patience.

You can’t rush curing.

Hairline cracks matter.

Everything load-bearing tells the truth eventually.

I still think in construction metaphors more often than I’d like to admit.

Retail taught me service.

Starbucks taught me systems.

Quilting taught me precision.

Apple taught me how complex organizations think.

Leadership taught me that every spreadsheet eventually becomes a conversation with another human.

TCGplayer taught me what happens when smart people are trusted.

Then eBay reminded me that organizations can forget the people who built them.

Every stop added another dialect.

The internet changed my life.

I met lifelong friends through Left 4 Dead.

I met my husband because I confidently misread his gamertag, doubled down when corrected, and somehow that convinced him this was a solid foundation for a relationship.

He married me anyway.

Motherhood rewired everything.

It taught me that love is logistics.

That leadership at home looks suspiciously like leadership at work.

That sometimes the most profound act of care is simply making sure everyone has socks and enough snacks to survive through Thursday.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing these experiences as disconnected careers.

They were apprenticeships.

Each one taught me another way to understand people.

Art taught me to see intention.

Music taught me rhythm.

Journalism taught me to ask better questions.

Construction taught me that every structure reveals its foundation.

Leadership taught me that every system is ultimately made of humans.

Motherhood taught me that love and logistics are often the same skill wearing different clothes.

I don’t have authority over any one field.

I have something stranger.

I’ve spent my life collecting dialects of humanity.

I rarely stayed long enough to become the world’s foremost expert.

I stayed long enough to understand how each world thinks.

That’s what my writing is.

Not expertise.

Translation.

Because after living a thousand little lives, you eventually realize they were all trying to teach you the same language from different directions.