If You Weren't What You Are, What Would You Be?

by Robin Allen



I've had lots of jobs over my several years of life.



When I was 15, I got my first job in an upscale toy store, answering phone call after phone call about the availability of Madame Alexander dolls and taking payments for games, plush toys, and other items on lay-a-way.



After high school, I started waiting tables in restaurants and did that all through college. Once, in the mid-80s, I was a cocktail waitress and then a bartender in one of the hottest nightclubs in the city, all dry ice and neon and Rock Me Amadeus.



After I graduated with a BA degree in English, I got a job doing sales support for a computer software company, working my way up to marketing and publicity, then eventually sales, which I was terrible at because "no" means no in my book.



I eventually struck out on my own as a technical writer, developing online Help and user guides for software applications, and doing QA work.



And then I wrote a book, got an agent, got a publisher, and became an Author.



I like working on things that have an answer that needs to be found, a problem that needs to be solved. I like working with my hands. I like creating something that hasn't existed before. And if I wasn't an author, I would be an architect, a crime analyst, or a knitwear designer.



What about you? If you weren't doing what you're doing, what would you do?



Robin Allen

Author of the Poppy Markham: Culinary Cop Mystery Series

If You Can't Stand the Heat

Now available on Kindle, Nook, and eBook

See my poem "A Friday Afternoon" in the 2012 Texas Poetry Calendar