Meme: When Did You Know?
Jim Van Pelt asks the following questions:
So, the game is "When did you know?"When did you know what you wanted to do with your life?
When did you know you were in love with your significant other?
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
When did you know?
When did you know what you wanted to do with your life?
I don't remember when I decided that I wanted to be a biologist. Everyone who I grew up around says that I was pretty much born knowing that I wanted to be a scientist. I wasn't like other kids who changed what he wanted to be from day to day. The type of science changed here and there, maybe, between paleontologist, archaeologist, and biology, but mostly, I stuck to biology. My mother tells stories about me as a toddler stalking animals and watching them very closely. Nature is the closest thing to a religion I have, I guess.
I went to college and got my degree in biology and then I didn't want to be a scientist anymore, for a very simple reason. I had gotten married, and looking at my student loan paperwork, it was clear that I could work as a biologist, and pay either my rent or my student loans--not both. I had a new responsibility.
At that point, I had been doing web design for a while, with the goal of eventually designing computer games, but somehow, it never occurred to me that I would have to give up being a biologist, and the company I had founded with some other students failed anyway, due to being in Iowa where there was little demand, and due to me not working hard enough as well. If I could go back and do things over again, I would do them differently in regards to TUG Internet. So I fell into computer work more as a back-up plan than anything else.
Photography came out of nowhere, but my dad was a photographer, so I blame him. And I wrote my first short story in 3rd grade, so I have always wanted to be a writer. When choosing which college to go to, I picked Grinnell specifically because of one professor, David Campbell. He was a writer and a world-traveling scientist, exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I figured I could learn from him how to do both things just like him. I did a lot of travel and very little writing in college, and while I am not a scientist now, I am still a writer thanks to him.
I enjoy being a graphic designer, and it's more profitable than anything else I know how to do, so I keep doing it to pay the bills, and then in my spare time, I commune with nature, I take photographs, I write... I do the things that feed my metaphorical soul. I'm pretty happy here now. I feel like I have a good balance at the moment.
When did you know you were in love with your significant other?
I don't believe in the stereotypical love at first sight. That said, I fell in love with her when she passed me on the sidewalk at Grinnell her freshman year. From there, it was just a matter of finding out who she was, asking her out, and eventually marrying her. It was the most certain I had ever been about a girl, and it turned out and is turning out better than I ever imagined.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Oddly enough, about the same time I discovered science fiction. I dabbled a little bit in grade school, and then I wrote a "serious" short story in 7th grade. This got me into a writer's program in the Lawrence school system that resulted in me and thirty other students being told to give up writing by James Gunn. It was some of the best advice I ever received. I pretty much gave up on writing until I graduated from college not because of what Gunn said but because I didn't have anything to say and I was too busy with school anyway.
I took up writing again because my first job out of college was so boring, I had to do something to fill the time, and I remembered how much I loved it, and so I got "serious" with some advice from Connie Willis. I joined a workshop and here I am, 4 years later with some sales and the start of what I hope will be a career.
When did you know?
Sometimes I don't think I know anything. But I have some ideas.