My Former b5media Bio

I updated my bio over on the b5media bloggers page. This is the one I had up before. It is really more of a blog entry than a bio so, now it is.

Hi, my name is Sheila Livingston. Welcome to my blogging bio. I started blogging in June 2006, which makes me a bit of a newbie, but I actually got my start a decade earlier at KPMG (one of the evil Big Four public accounting firms). As a shiny new tax specialist in the Silicon Valley office, I was told the new guy (that would be me) was required to take on the duties of weekly happy hour coordinator. I should have known by the gleeful expression on Former Happy Hour Coordinator Guy’s face that it was a setup, but I was all agog with the excitement of a new job. (Tip: During your first week of employment, never agree to take on any duties not specifically included in your official job description.) So every Thursday I sent an email to my happy hour distribution list with the week’s destination along with an anecdote to keep myself from getting bored. And every Friday I received email complaints about my choices. A sampling of what I learned: Whiskey drinkers hate micro-breweries/beer drinkers hated martini bars; Workaholics cannot fathom leaving the office at the freakishly early hour of 5:00 PM, even on a Friday; Every location is either too far from the office or in the wrong direction or makes parking impossible for at least one person in your group. Sheesh. But I stuck with it and soon began to receive emails from people I had never met (and who didn’t work at KPMG) asking to be added to the distribution list. Well, sure! Fresh blood is always a good thing. But I found that while my email list grew, live bodies at happy hour did not. Strange. In the interest of not spamming people every week with an invite to a happy hour they would never attend, I sent a “would you like me to take you off the distribution list?” email. The response was an overwhelming “NO!” People told me they looked forward to the weekly anecdotes and liked knowing others were having fun even if they couldn’t join in personally. What do you call that? Happy hour lurking via email? I realize it wasn’t really blogging, those emails, but it feels like pre-blogging to me: regular two-way communication based on what was going on in the writer’s life and evolving through feedback from the readers. Today I live in Fresno, located in California’s Central San Joaquin Valley. By day, I work as a CPA for a small public accounting firm, where every time I mention that I blog my boss says, “Tell me what a blog is again?” By night, I blog and pretend it’s physical exercise. b5media blog: Medium Dreams Personal blog: GetSheila

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