UTTERCLARITY

When I was in high school trying to figure out what to do with my life, my father advised, "think about what you love doing and find a way to make money doing it." I thought this was odd advice coming from an accountant. How could anyone love math?!... What I loved was writing and telling stories. Corralling ideas and images, and capturing them with words carefully arranged into tidy little sentences was my favorite pastime. I loved creating stories so much that in third grade I was caught in a fantastic lie, crafting an exciting tale of being bitten by a snake when I lived in Alabama. Having just moved to New Jersey from the deep South this was exactly the kind of fictional currency I needed to trade in to win new friends in this foreign land... By high school I had figured out how to channel my skills into more productive endeavors. My high school didn't have a newspaper, but I became a regular contributor to the literary magazine and secured myself a spot on the yearbook staff. I..