I grew up in rural Georgia, where the woods were my playground and the outdoors felt like home. I skipped my senior year of high school, tore through Georgia Tech in three years, and graduated straight into a jobs recession. The only companies recruiting math majors were New York insurance firms looking for actuaries.

Manhattan and I were never meant to be.

So I headed to Florida instead, living out of a tent with a car, a canoe, and more optimism than cash or good sense.  When gas money ran out, I stuck out my thumb, picked up odd jobs, and learned quickly that life gets interesting when you don’t have a backup plan.

Eventually, Georgia pulled me home. I found work in a cotton mill, proudly answering to the titles of Slubber and Hopper. Then it was back to Florida as a motel night auditor, the kind of job that teaches you a lot about people at 3 a.m.

Landing a position as an air traffic controller felt like I’d finally found steady ground—until the 1981 strike, when President Reagan fired the lot of us. Overnight, I was back to night auditing, chimney sweeping, and selling B‑grade insurance policies door‑to‑door.

Then Southern Bell took pity on a stubborn math major and hired me as a computer programmer in their midtown Atlanta headquarters. One day I was in jeans and soot; the next I was in three‑piece suits, feeding punch cards into machines that kept track of America’s phone calls. It was my first real look at the corporate world, where precision mattered, and one misplaced card could bring everything to a halt.

In time, I followed in my father’s footsteps and built a long career in telecommunications.

All those twists—tent living, hitchhiking, cotton mills, control centers, corporate hallways—gave me a deep appreciation for the stories people carry. Today, I draw on that patchwork of experiences to write fiction and poetry rooted in emotional truth, everyday grit, and just enough Southern mischief to keep things interesting.