Burger King hired me before the ink was dry on my working papers. You’d be amazed at how many people go through the drive-thru naked. Would you like fries with that? That eye-opening experience launched a lifetime of workplace writing inspiration.

At 17, I learned a new SAT word – nepotism. My father helped me land a clerical position in the Pathology department of the local hospital where he worked in administration. One task involved filing morgue photos of the deceased, some quite disturbing. One, I can’t unsee. Mind you, I couldn’t get into R-rated movies at that age. But somehow, I love hospitals.

During college, a friend hooked me up with a job at Uno’s. The cook’s crack habit led to unusual items ending up in the pizza. Customers faced a bigger issue with my waitressing skills. My best customer service: quitting.

While checking IDs at a Philadelphia nightclub, management recognized untapped potential and promoted me to “shooter girl.” I wore a black bodysuit, accessorized with a bandolier of shot glasses and a holster on each hip. One held a bottle of 7UP, and the other, if memory serves, a bottle of gin. Giddy up! I’d bounce the shot glass, my palm covering the top, on the back of the bent-over patron until it fizzed and they downed it with unquestioned trust in my hand hygiene. A homeless man camped out in my apartment foyer and, not approving of my hours, issued safety warnings.

Senior year, angels smiled upon me. A chic businesswoman hired me as a receptionist for her swanky salon, where receiving beauty treatments, free of charge, was a job requirement. Along with a fat paycheck, a weekly bonus came in the form of an undercover FBI investigation and fascinating clientele. I earned a minor in the study of the human condition. I’ll tell you the tales over a fizzy 7UP and gin.

Soon after graduation, my Temple News articles helped me land a job as entertainment and features editor at The Catholic Standard and Times, the official newspaper of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Interviewing writer and director M. Night Shyamalan inspired me to explore other forms of writing after six years in journalism.

A large pharmaceutical company offered me a lucrative communications manager position that promised regular travel to London and more than double my journalism salary. In a defining moment, I turned down the opportunity. My only regret: missing subsidized trips across the pond. 

While I freelanced for The Philadelphia Inquirer, consumer magazines such as Glamour, and marketing agencies, my husband and I started our family. When our youngest turned three, I searched for a side hustle where slippers weren’t acceptable footwear.

QVC, a home shopping network, held an open call for cotton experts with TV experience. I Googled cotton, auditioned against hundreds, and landed the gig selling bed linens and home decor. It would be years before a manager asked where I’d gone to textile school. For over a decade, I presented home products live and unscripted, while mining mental gold in a green room filled with entrepreneurs, celebrities, and inventors.

Getting glammed up by QVC’s hair and makeup team reminded me of my lucrative salon job and made me think that building a salon and spa from the ground up would be fun. I learned my skill set lies in the creative side of founding and marketing, not in managing staff, which sent me straight to the seventh circle of hell. Despite a gift for endurance, I sold it in under a year, recognizing the difference between giving up and setting myself free. They say not to throw good money after bad. The same goes for time.

Along the way, all of this became material, and I began crafting screenplays and personal essays, and later fiction and nonfiction.

When the clergy child sex abuse scandal exploded in Philadelphia in 2011, our daughter and son were in Catholic school. The Archdiocesan cover-up endangering children spanned generations from well before my own to my children’s. Furious and betrayed by those I’d worked with, I founded the blog “Catholics4Change.” My on-air skills came in handy when local and national TV and radio shows invited me to offer commentary. Along with co-publisher Kathy Kane, the blog and Facebook group continue to provide parents, survivors of clergy sex abuse, and community members with news and a platform to voice their thoughts.

College tours with my daughter sparked a desire to fulfill my “Dead Poets Society” teaching fantasy. Temple University hired me as an adjunct instructor in the Department of Communications. I made my favorite college memories while teaching.

Not wanting to wait until retirement to enjoy warm weather and beaches, my husband and I moved our home base from the Philadelphia suburbs to Charleston, SC.

Life continues to hand-deliver content, the muse gifts me with creative inspiration, and I fight the good fight, battling what Steven Pressfield aptly calls “the resistance.” Tama and Bowie, our tuxedo and tabby rescue cats, seemingly work for the resistance as they try to sit on my keyboard as I revise my debut speculative fiction novel.

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