My life story.

Age 5: Discovered that being the weird farm girl had its advantages when my kindergarten classmates discovered my pony and bestowed a rare 10 minutes of popularity on me...right before Butterscotch lifted his majestic tail and emptied his bowels onto my boots. Spent the next 10 years recovering.

Age 7: My first short story—an emotional tale of loss and self-discovery in which a character not-so-loosely based on myself deals with the death of her mother. I would go on to kill off at least one of my parents in every subsequent piece until reaching puberty, when I promptly began killing myself off instead.

Age 12 : Said goodbye to my journalist mother as she shipped off to Kosovo, Albania, Afghanistan and Iraq to cover various conflicts. Learned to cook.

Age 19: Interned on the John Edwards presidential campaign where I discovered the adrenaline rush of doing something that really MATTERS. Right before I discovered the crushing dejection and existential questioning that comes from discovering that my beloved candidate was not only a political failure, but also a very bad man.

Age 20: Lived in Paris. Spent seven magical months in the city of lights reading Hemingway and studying Art History in some of the world’s finest museums. Also ate pastries on the daily, spent an exorbitant amount of time getting lost/being generally confused and learned absolutely no French whatsoever.

Age 21: Got my first taste of advertising when my job on a US Senate campaign was to cast, PA, location scout, wrangle the candidate and be accountable for whatever went wrong on the shoot. Discovered my passion (for advertising, not politics) and the indisputable value of "fake it till you make it."

Age 23: My first real ad-world job. Cried my first day when, upon entering my hours, I realized that my days of ivory tower academics, freewheeling intellectual self-discovery and sleeping till 2pm were officially over.

Age 26: Picked up and moved. Came to the big apple with just a suitcase (an entire U-Haul) and a dream (Sex and the City meets Mad Men). Immediately realized that I was absolutely nothing like either Carrie Bradshaw or Peggy Olsen; eventually realized that that was probably a good thing.