When people ask me what I do for a living, I often stop cold for a moment with a blank look like a deer caught in headlights. It's not that I do something embarrassing or something that I don't want to talk about. Quite the opposite. Everyone who knows me knows that I love to talk about the work that I do. The problem is that I don't know which of my "professions" to declare.

For a while I settled on telling people, "By day a computer programmer, by night a figure skating coach." It sounds kinda like I'm a super hero. Problem is, not only am I not a super hero, I also rarely write code in the day time. I nearly always seem to work on software when I get home from the ice rink, when my youngest son is in bed and the house is quiet. But more than that, it leaves out all the other stuff I do like teaching, massage, herbal medicine and cosmetics, poetry, short fiction, homeschooling, blogging... You get the picture.

Over the last few years I have been struggling to find a way to express all the different parts of me in one coherent whole. The way that our society functions today, people like to keep all these different areas separate, but to me all of my interests and skills are a specially woven tapestry that can bring unique insight and expertise into any situation.

So here I am, gathering up the bits and presenting them to you in a single spot.