Eclectic is my middle name. No, not really but it sums up my life or lives. Looking back, I realize I’ve been a master of reinvention. I’ve enjoyed a rich tapestry of careers, all of which have contributed to my latest and last reinvention: writer. It’s my roundabout way of coming full circle.

At age seven, I cobbled together my first book, an illustrated autobiography. It was seven pages long; one page per year which seemed reasonable at the time. It never occurred to me that writing could be a real career choice. Writers, in my mind were were lumped together with starving artists, and I liked food too much to want to starve.

In my final year of high school, my parents (at their wits end) over my poor grades, sent me to a psychologist for testing. It turned out the reason for my less than stellar results was boredom, that in fact, I had a genius level I.Q. If they tested me today, they might diagnose me with ADD and  perhaps an alphabet soup of other letters.

After graduating high school in Montreal, I refused for years to go to college, or as we called it in Canada, university. Itching to be a free spirit, I traveled, racked up adventures and odd jobs. Soon a pattern emerged. I would go back to school, get another piece of paper, master new skills, work successfully in a new field and then go back to school for something new.

While that pattern ebbed and flowed, a parallel spiritual journey unfolded. My spiritual awakening took root early thanks to mystical experiences and study from age eleven onward. While I hated math and science, I devoured everything I could learn about para-psychology, astrology, tarot, Eastern religions, paganism, mysticism and yoga. My search for the right career was ultimately the search for self-knowledge. And that was how I came to have such diverse careers as interior designer, artist, esthetician, psychotherapist, aromatherapist, teacher, wellness and intuitive consultant/life coach.

Some careers overlapped but my longest sustained passion was for aromatherapy. As a pioneer in the field in Canada, I enjoyed twenty years experience as an aromatherapist and teacher at my own aromatherapy school in Toronto. I blazed new ground as president and one of the founding directors of The Canadian Federation of Aromatherapists.

Several psychics predicted writing in my future. Back in the '90s, one psychic saw me writing a stack of books, with a caveat about a delay before publishing (I'd say, I'm about due). For seven years in the '90s, I wrote a column about skincare and aromatherapy for a regional magazine, as well as articles and course material on aromatherapy. Then came 911, which coincided with a move from Canada to New York, my wedding and subsequent deep interior seismic shifts. 

With my old life dead, it was time to re-invent myself again. Photography became a new passion and acts as a muse for my creative process, but especially my writing. With years of spiritual work and study under my belt, my intuitive life coach clients call me a self-help guru. I call myself a work-in-progress. I could easily morph into a "crazy cat lady", but instead, put my energies into practical uses like founding the Annex Cat Rescue in Toronto, Canada, fostering cats and writing my self-help/memoir titled: Confessions of a Self-Help Junkie: One Baby Boomers Guide to Wisdom from A to Z.

I began my daily blog: The Boomer Muse in August 2008. It forces me to create something new every day while sharing my insights and photography. On Saturdays, the blog turns into Cat Saturday and is the inspiration behind Kitty Wisdom 101 a proposed photography and aphorisms book.

I write the way I live my life: without brakes on, with curiosity, breaking rules with passion and intuition. I call it life as a MFA program. After a lifetime of career leapfrog, it feels like coming home.

Home is an antique farmhouse with overgrown gardens in Westchester County N.Y. that I share with my husband, a few ghosts, a variety of wild and domestic animals, including Merlin, a cantankerous old man disguised as a Siamese, Gris Gris, a one-toothed old Russian Blue, Odin a one-eyed foster kitten and a blue-eyed outdoor feral cat named Domino. Maybe I am a crazy cat lady after all.