About Me — Kelley Mussler
How’s my connection?
The most nerve-wracking part of any interview is when the guy across the table leans back and says, “So tell me about yourself…”
Will I say the right words? What do they WANT me to say? Will I seem like a weirdo?
I don’t like talking about myself. I especially don’t like it when I’m talking to someone I don’t know.
I can have a hard time connecting to people sometimes. I have to push myself to make small talk with the neighbours or have lunch with my co-workers. I worry that if I don’t do these social-norm things they would think I dislike them.
But I don’t dislike other people, I just take a while to warm up to someone new. When I do come out of my shell, I am often the “funny one” or the token oddball of the group. Just strange enough to be interesting, not weird enough to be offensive. I always have one hand on my internal intensity control.
My inner voice says, “Nice, normal people like these won’t like you at full volume.” It speaks from experience.
So when someone says “Tell me about yourself.” I don’t know what to say. I wonder what they REALLY want to hear.
Even typing this up, I am nervous. I hope I find the right words to say even if I probably won’t ever meet you face to face (Hello, there! I hope you are well!). The wide gulf of the internet shields us from each other, and yet for a moment, we can connect!
As a species, we have been using art and written language to connect over time and distance for thousands of years. Now we can do it almost instantly without even being in the same timezone!
Isn’t that idea fascinating?
Sorry, I digress. You were reading this to learn about me, I guess.
Well, I love learning and talking to people with deep knowledge and cool hobbies. I love weirdos, artists, experts, and dreamers. When I find someone I can talk to without worrying about my intensity levels, we have interesting and energetic conversations. We can talk about the planets, or mythology, or our kids, or bitcoin, or books, or almost anything at all!
I have an awesome, geeky husband and two amazing girls. I have an artistic, goofy, eight-year-old who loves to draw and asks me questions like “why is the sky blue and the grass green if the sun is yellow?”
We talk about how light refracts while we walk to school and sometimes we do science experiments on the weekend. She is designing her Halloween costume already and asked her dad to help her make LED glasses so she can have green, glowing eyes.
She can also be stubborn, a trait she shares with both myself and my husband. She is the extrovert of the family and would love to tell you ALL about herself. But she’s not writing this, so I guess we have to get back to me.
I also have a baby! She was born in October of last year and is nearly 4 months old. Her hobbies include impersonating a pterodactyl when she is hungry and chewing on her hands when she isn’t. She likes to laugh at her sister and her dad. She isn’t really into my type of humour yet, so I only get smiles. Tough crowd.
I like maple syrup in my hot morning coffee and I like to drink water that’s ice cold. All my favourite foods are the kinds that make one fat, but I also love learning about nutrition and cooking healthy food. I love quiet mornings in the spring and summer when the sun is just rising and I (hopefully) have a moment of peace before the kids are up.
My husband and I are both from the state of Colorado in the U.S. but we have lived in Europe since 2016. We sold most of our stuff, uprooted our three-year-old and moved to Ireland.
“Why Ireland?” you might ask. It was chance, really. My husband was contacted about a position in the west of Ireland and we thought it sounded like an adventure. We both love history and travelling to places with neat history, and we wanted to share those things with our children.
Even though I desperately miss the mountains and being this far from our family can be a drag, we love it here. Ireland is an amazing country with tons of stories and we’re still exploring its wonders. We haven’t gotten to travel as much as we would like, especially now with COVID restricting us to a 5-kilometre bubble. However, we have plenty of markers on the map for the future.
I am generally silly and fun-loving. I do pretty random things because I love to make myself and others laugh. I walked around work once balancing a Tentacle Kitty on my head. (this is not a sponsored link, I just really love Tentacle Kitty.) It brought smiles to a lot of faces. I made the barista at the coffee shop downstairs laugh out loud. It was a good day.
Just before my smaller daughter was born, I left my job as a Quality Engineer at an orthopaedics manufacturer. I do not have an Engineering degree and I was hired for my first Engineering role because of my writing ability!
I am a big nerd and I love technical writing, so my main task at that first role was regulatory and technical paperwork. I am very proud of the custom instruction manuals that I wrote while working there. I got to learn how our software worked and write documentation that made the bosses and clients happy.
My last role was working on a team bringing in new regulations. The paperwork was not nearly as fun, but the people were pretty awesome.
Now I am at home with my two girls. Online school sucks noodles, but I am glad I don’t have to juggle a job while we try to tackle it. Being at home takes the pressure off for me. Running a household is a full-time job and I always felt stressed by the daily tasks waiting for me at home AFTER my workday.
Other than writing, I enjoy painting and sculpting with polymer clay. I can easily get lost in a creative task for hours and if I have to go somewhere I have to set an alarm.
These creative things were always fine for a hobby. From an early age, I always felt like I was expected to do something more practical for a “real job”. I did the real job for a while now, and I always felt worn down on particularly practical days. Now I want to make time for more creativity in my life.
I hope that by joining medium and dedicating more time to writing I’ll get to create and improve my writing skills. The amazing thing is that I can not only create and improve but also share my work. Maybe it will be good to come out of my shell a little bit and connect to other creative people.
Anyway, I will take this moment to say goodbye for now. Maybe we will read each other’s work in the future. Maybe you’ll give me advice and I’ll make you smile. Maybe this is the last time we’ll connect. Even if that’s the case, we have connected. Here on the magical interwebs, in this. exact. moment. Isn’t that fantastic?
