About the Fourth Castle

Or, how overnight successes usually take a really long time

Last updated 2024-11-20

Once upon a time, I was going to be a journalist. I was interested in a lot of different things, so the idea of getting to experience a wide swatch of human existence and then share it with the world through words was extremely appealing. But as with most things, perceptions and reality don’t always align the way we want – the Stephen Glass saga over the summer of 1998 and the rapid move to the digital world highlighted a number of industry shifts that made the stability of those careers shaky at best. So I dabbled in engineering before deciding to train as a teacher (with a few editing and publishing classes thrown in for good measure), realized the politics of K-12 education was a quagmire few people in power actually want to see fixed, and took a degree in mathematics just to force some logic (literally) into my world.

That initial dream never died though: when I finished my undergrad in 2006 and my professor asked me where I saw myself in five years, my answer was “I don’t know what I’ll be doing, but I know I want to be doing it with interesting people and host cocktail parties that become the stuff of legend.” I was told this was not a real job and I should consider carefully what I wanted to do; I opted to move to working in higher ed full time (since I figured after journalism, that path would have the greatest chance of meeting the most interesting people).

When I finished my master’s degree in 2009 and had the same conversation, I said “I’ll probably still be working in higher ed, but I also want to be writing and meeting interesting people so I can start having those cocktail parties” and started flirting with the publishing world again.

In 2013, remembering those dreams, I started a WordPress blog to help connect the different pieces of me, merge some old blogs and projects to one spot, and serve as a writing outlet to turn a dream into an accomplishment.

In 2015, I got involved with an upstart media company, started a weekly podcast (themed as a virtual cocktail party) to make a point, and ran a creative leadership blog to make a bigger point. By the time we wrapped in 2018, I had also published two serial-installment web novels and was working on a third, got approval and ran an internship program for college students looking to work in e-publishing, ran three successful conventions with international attendees, and made enough of a splash doing things a little outside of the box that I made industry acquaintances who remain friends to this day. All while doing a completely different day job.

In 2017, I converted the WordPress blog to a full out website with the intent of bringing all of my projects together under one digital roof, and then immediately stopped writing (or, more appropriately, stopped sharing everything I wrote). Some people buy cars for their midlife crisis, others go off and work on degrees, so I used this time to read a lot and teach kids how to play with LEGOs and figure out what I really wanted to be when I grew up.

In 2022, I finally started my doctoral program and learned that, hot damn, I COULD IN FACT bring all of these disparate pieces together into one cohesive package AND have my cocktail parties, too!

Now, at the end of 2024, I’m cleaning up this archive – opening the hidden posts, organizing the various blogs, figuring out what happened to my missing playlists, updating and moving forward. And if you’re here, chances are good that you’re on this journey too.

Thank you for joining me 🙂