I grew up on a family farm close to Pleasant Plains, Illinois, a small town in the Midwest. With two older brothers and a sister in college, I pretty much knew I would attend college too. I chose Western IL University, primarily because my boyfriend was attending there. After much soul searching, I decided to major in Sociology my junior year and married my high school sweetheart after we graduated. I was fortunate to have an interesting career, working with Rehabilitation Services as a Program Planner and Disability Adjudicator. Later I worked for the City of Springfield in Fair Housing as a Housing Specialist. I went back to the state on contract as a Project Director with the Department of Children and Family Services overseeing grant implementation of programs for disabled children. I always wanted to start my own business, and began a pet-sitting service called Critter Sitters. I had two other businesses before starting free-lance writing. One was a consulting service called Consulting for Social Service Administrators. The next business was a home and business organizing service called Make a Space.

After 15 years of marriage, I divorced and had a baby, in that order. It was a crisis pregnancy, and my life dramatically changed. My daughter was a blessing from God and I was a single Mom for 13 years before I remarried.

With my life-long dream of writing, I decided to do just that. I’m 66 years old, getting too old to carry on the organizing business and realized writing is something I can do the rest of my life. Being on Social Security and having my husband’s income gives me some sense of security. I’ve set aside the guest room as my office and am in the process of looking for a comfortable chair. I have plans to buy a new laptop and printer, thankfully tax-deductible. I just had the help of a logo designer and came up with a logo today. I will keep you abreast of my progress.

Today I posted the topics I will write about and will let you know when I’ve added new material. You won’t have to wait until I’ve finished writing on a particular topic. It will be a running dialog, a work in progress, so to speak.

One of my greatest obstacles has been developing my website on WordPress. After calling two people I was referred to and discovering they were not as techy as I thought and finding out a website developer I know is not doing face-to-face consultation because of the Corona Virus, I realized I was going to have to do it myself. I listened to three WordPress webinars. I still have to apply what they suggested. It’s easier just to play around with the customizer and figure it out that way.

Anyway, thank you for joining on this journey and please be patient with me. This is a process and I know with time my writing will improve and be more fun to read. In the meantime, follow along and feel free to give advice. It would be appreciated. God bless you and I’m looking forward to getting to know you.

Published by barbaraziogasgmailcom

My quest is to be a free-lance writer. This has been my dream for many years, and now I believe it is the right time. God’s timing is perfect. I would like to write about social issues pertaining to poverty, domestic violence, the criminal justice system, religious education and other human interest topics. My past work experience included grant writing, writing issue papers, newsletters, creating flyers, brochures, news releases, and public service announcements. My business experience gave me skills in writing business plans, consignment contracts, newspaper articles, content for social media marketing and ads in a weekly paper. My purpose is to serve God and glorify Him through my work. View all posts by barbaraziogasgmailcom