After a life of seeking self-improvement, I finally gave up and moved to Alaska, where I now reside at the 'end of the road' with my husband and partner and our dog, Clyde, a rescue identified as a newfoundland-retriever mix.

We moved here a year ago. I am fifty-one and I consider that significant to my current state of mind and being.

I love philosophy, art, literature, and reading. I write and paint. I hope to participate more actively in the outdoors hiking, kayaking, and camping in Alaska in the next year. I had just begun semi-serious mountaineering (climbed Snowmass in Colorado, a fourteener) and rock-climbing when I was injured snow skiing in 1998. I have not yet resumed those activities at any meaningful way. It is good for me to be in nature and physical exertion as I live so much in my head.

I became a mother at age seventeen and raised two daughters who are now thirty-one and thirty-three. I have six grandchildren - five boys, ages 16, 14, 10, 9, 4 and one grand-daughter, age 2. They live in Colorado, New Hampshire, and Georgia.

I spent much of my life in survival mode. I am now beyond survival mode but the primitive brain doesn't think so.

I dropped out of high school. I got a GED, then a one-year certificate in broadcasting in my twenties. In my thirties I completed a BA degree in English. In my forties I completed and MSW. Since I got a graduate degree, I wish I would have gone for an MFA instead of an MSW.

I was a rock and roll radio announcer and music director in my first life. Since then, I have taught high-school English, coached Speech Forensics, and worked as a social worker in child protective services.

I am currently semi-retired, substitute teach all grade levels about one day a week and hope to structure my life such that I can become a productive writer and painter. I would like to teach one college course, but it's not easy to get university level teaching jobs even on a contract basis.

I am trying to make the adjustment, both to making a major move to Alaska from California (having lived the majority of my life in Colorad) and to mid-life.