To say my life has been varied would be an understatement of enormous proportions!
My youth was spent performing in theater and choirs and at 26 years of age, I went into the US Air Force, where I became a Russian linguist. I completed my Bachelor of Arts degree in English while serving my country AND continuing to perform on stage, in musical, comedy, and dramatic lead roles, all the while juggling a social life.

I became an Air Force officer (working in Military Intelligence -- no jokes please) and met my future husband aboard a missile tracking ship sailing up and down Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula coastline. I got out of the Air Force after 10 years of service at 36 years of age, married Thor (yep, that's his name -- born in Norway bur raised from 5 months of age in Florida) and at 39, we had our daughter Tyra.

Two years later, I finished my second Bachelors degree, this time in technical theater. A year later, I was teaching drama and English in a Florida public high school. I directed 17 one-act and 2 three-act plays a year, designed all the costumes, props, lighting, and sets, taught the kids how to act, build what we needed, and sponsored the after school program and the teams that went to competition around the state, while running endless fund raisers to pay for the program (it cost about $10,000 a year to do all this and my school supplied budget for the year was never over $100 (the last year I taught, my budget was $32.40 -- not even enough to pay for the paper to give the kids their tests for the year).

But even though it was exhausting, I loved the work and the kids but I loved every minute of it -- always designing and creating. And then the school started cutting back on electives and I was teaching fewer and fewer classes. It got to the point where I was spending more of my salary to put the plays. After 7 years, I had to get a job that would help put food on our table and ensure our daughter could go to college.

So I became a technical writer, writing documents for the Space program and the military. No creativity, and no drama because there were always long hours when work had to get done to meet a deadline and I couldn't work it in and still have time left over my family. So my creative time was limited to helping with set for the occasional play my daughter was in, and watching her creativity blossom -- she's now a degreed graphic artist, specializing in fantasy art, sculpture, and writing her own graphic novels. I was creative, but she has more creativity in her little finger than I have in my whole body!

Then, two months ago, I found polymer clay. Suddenly, I've found that spark again and, more importantly, found a polymer clay group to learn from. I want to do it all -- jewelry, household items, dolls, houses, realistic and fantasy. The nice thing about the clay is it's forgiving (even if it is addictive!) and I've yet to screw something up so badly that it can't be fixed or altered to be something else. I'm regaining my confidence in my own creativity and spending hours trying out new ideas. Hopefully, I'll become brave enough to share them here.