Welcome to a brief history of my life.


Where I’ve Worked:

My earliest job was also the only job that I ever got fired from. I was a nine-year-old paper boy, delivering the Bargain Bag – basically a mess of ads that was delivered to everyone who didn’t subscribe to the newspaper. As I would walk my route, too small and too over-loaded to ride my bike, people would yell at me for leaving unwanted trash on their lawns, and a really pretty girl once made fun of the green gloves I was wearing – actually she made fun of the way I was wearing them: they were those thin, stretchy gloves, and I used to cram two of my fingers into the glove fingers (so, for example, my index and middle fingers would be stuffed into the index finger of the green glove). Why? The reason should be obvious – with only two fat fingers and a thumb, all of which were green, I would look like one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (Come on... I was nine.)

Anyway, this really pretty girl on Blaine Avenue made fun of me for the way I wore my gloves. I was thereafter determined to never walk by her house again. But if I didn’t walk by her house, how could I deliver the papers to that section of the block? The answer: throw those undelivered papers in the garbage can. I was fired.

I had a paper route again later – a real route this time, delivering real papers. But I was a couple years older, and had a bike, and didn’t throw the papers in the trash.

Later, I had a part time job at a neighbor’s business, addressing packages. It was tedious and my hands always felt dirty, but it paid five dollars an hour, and that was a dream come true to a preteen.

When I was in high school, my family started getting involved at the Grand Theatre. My brother and dad were in a show, and then I got roped into being an extra in The King and I. But acting was never really my strong suit. As my family got more and more involved, I eventually began working with the artistic director. I’d been oil painting since I was in the fifth grade, and started working on set construction and painting. I designed a couple of sets for them, despite the fact that I was still in high school, and really loved it.

During my senior year of high school, my buddy and I got jobs at Schmidt’s Pastry Cottage. It was the best job an eighteen-year-old could ask for: very little work, hanging out with a friend, and eating all the donuts we wanted. Since we’d give donuts to our friends as well, the bakery very often became an after-school hangout. It was really a great job.

I answered phones for a year before my mission, fielding complaints from Marriott hotel guests and issuing them awards for frequent stays. The job was rotten, but I had a lot of fun.

After my mission, I determined that the only way to go to school and still go on dates was to work a graveyard shift. (I’m sure there were other deciding factors in there, but I don’t remember what they were.) I started working dispatch at a local hospital, and had a grand old time trying to stay awake. I met some great people there, and we caused all kinds of trouble. Since it was the middle of the night, and we always knew where security was, another girl, Jennifer, and I would occasionally roam the hospital and make chalk outlines of ourselves in stairwells or bathrooms. I also worked with a woman named Lynn who would rub mayonnaise onto the potted plants. When she didn’t have mayo, she’d use ranch dressing.

Meanwhile, I was also working for the University of Utah’s liberal propaganda machine, otherwise known as the Daily Utah Chronicle. I was their theater critic for about a year, writing specifically for the weekly art mag RED. Despite the fact that I got good seats to lots of shows, which significantly helped my dating life, I quit out of frustration. The paper was so bent on pushing their counter-culture ideals, that I couldn’t write about anything remotely popular. If there ever was a question between seeing something mainstream (like a Broadway musical, or Shakespeare, or whatever) and something experimental and artsy, I had to go with the latter. I really didn’t like it, and I quit.

When I got married, I switched to the day shift at the hospital, and had to change jobs in the communications department. I moved to the Physician’s Answering Service, where I stayed for many moons, and eventually became a supervisor and ruled with an iron fist. Generally, I spent most of my supervisory time fielding phone calls from upset patients who wanted emergency refills of their Lortab (or Percoset, or Oxycontin, or whatever).

After college I got hired with Weyerhaeuser as an Area Control Specialist, which was not nearly as cool as it sounds. If life was a comic book, and there was a group a people called Area Controllers, they’d probably be evil masterminds of some kind, controlling the area with either mind powers or ninjas, one of the two. But in real, non-comic life, we just filled out a lot of forms, and filed things, and make sure people pay their bills.

I transferred within Weyerhaeuser, and found a job I really loved--I was a Structural Designer, drawing houses and designing floor systems. Basically, builders brought us their floorplans, and we figured out the cheapest way to build what they want to build, and making sure the ceilings don't collapse.

In the spring of 2007, I came up with the idea for the Whitney Awards, awards for novels by LDS authors. It's a non-profit, but work nonetheless. I'm the president of that organization.

Finally, deciding that money was for chumps, I rejected work in favor of academics. BYU's MBA program has a requirement that you can't work at all for the first year. So, no job for me.

Oh yeah: and I also write books, and I occasionally get paychecks from my publisher. Overall, I could do with more of these, so see what you can do about it.



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