About Me

I suppose I should tell you a bit about myself, but I should warn you, usually I accidentally give my whole life story within the first five minutes of meeting someone. Lucky for you, I actually share this in a later chapter, so I’ll spare you – for now.

Let me give you the rundown, though:

I was born and raised in Minnesota, studied nutrition and dietetics at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, moved to Greensboro, Alabama (aka, the middle of nowhere) to work on a farm, and now reside in Georgia.

I initially moved to Georgia to attend the University of Georgia in Athens to work on my Master’s in Agricultural and Environmental Education. But along the way, I switched gears a bit and found myself on the Ph.D. track! I love farming, cooking, nutrition, eating, and, well, food, so usually you can find me indulging in just about any of those activities.

For those of you also in school, or working, or anything else really, I’m sure you can relate to the busyness of everyday life. When I lived in Greensboro, I actually had a moderate amount of free time to write. In fact, I kept a 100-some page journal of all that happened during the course of my time there. I missed this writing time when I entered graduate school, especially when I started formulating my initial idea for On Happiness. But my biggest question became, “When in the world would I even find time to even write this thing?”

Well. I actually wrote this …book?… during one of the last courses of my master’s program. It was a course in creativity, actually, and while I was intrigued by the content, I mainly chose it because there was a “personal creativity exploration” assignment. So really, I signed up on a whim and hoped my professor would be fine with the premise of my idea.

Initially, I wasn’t sure where my writing would culminate. I actually pitched it as a type of “autoethnographic” style of writing where I explored my own “Theory of Everything,” but on, well, you guessed it, on happiness. I suppose, in a way, I really set about to explore my own happiness. If you happened to catch site of the shortest “About Me” I’ve ever written or said at the bottom of the homepage, you may have seen that I am usually dubbed the “biggest ray of sunshine.”

But what happens when I – when you – hit a rough patch? When you know that “this too shall pass,” but it just doesn’t feel like it? When you are usually the sun, but for whatever reason, you just can’t find the sun? When you just need a sign, or a reminder, that everything will be okay?

Believe me, this happens to me, and I need to hear this — all. the. time.

So I wrote On Happiness.

I should also say, “write and publish a book” is on my bucket list, so this seemed to be as good a premise as any to write.

But I’ll be honest, I don’t really know how to publish a book. Actually, I don’t even really know how to publish a blog. (Clearly, hopefully, I’ve managed to do something right!) But I am excited to try, and stumble, and click on the same button 23 times before finally realizing it’s the wrong one.

I’m excited to share. About me. About things I’ve learned. About things I think.

And I’m excited to learn – from you, from others, from me.

But most of all, I’m hopeful to bring you a little drop of happiness, a smile, and reason to keep going – each day – especially when you need it most.