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Today's Featured Biography
Gail Ghigna Hallas
Lifelong writer, hopelessly draw to the happy dance of words, sentences, paragraphs and pages. Since kidhood, I've loved the mix of words, art, rhythm, song, and harmony. An introvert who respects other’s private silence to read and to think.
Back when I stood about four-foot-three, I opted out of fitting in.
I was a scrawny piece of work. Painfully short. Lots of flyaway hair the color of burnt toast. And front teeth that took up every available space in my mouth - which I put to good use mangling my fingernails.
Some grownups said I was athletic. So, in a brave effort to increase my overall body length, I'd pivot feet above head and settle my toe tops to hang upside down from a 2x8-inch wood frame someone had long ago whacked nails into with the intent of erecting a child's swing. Except there was no swing dangling from that board. Just me. Stretching and thinking. Always thinking.
And praying to the goddess of height. Upside down.
The blood rush must've given me a sort of a-ha moment, because one day when when I was nine, I gave up on the idea of getting tall. So, I stopped praying and decided to do something more worthwhile: mowing other people's lawns. For 25-cents a pop.
Thus began my first entrepreneurial venture.
The original goal was to fund my roller skating addiction. Which, for two reasons, was scary at best. First scary reason: my father would’ve killed me for borrowing his precious rope-cranked lawn mower. And, second scary reason: After school I wasn't supposed to leave the yard when my parents were gone. But since they were always at work or supporting the neighborhood beer joint, their rules seemed illogical if my grass-cutting gig was to prosper.
I just wanted to skate. Because when there’re 8 wheels under your feet clickety-clacking across maple boards in the neighborhood rink, and a 6-mph breeze waifs across your face creating quiet time to dream and solve life's mysteries, well, that's reason enough to break a rule or two.
By the time I was 15, my willowy wishes had come true. Now 5’ 8” tall, with joke-worthy, out-of-proportion legs (all that stretching), put me in the middle of what's now called bully-bait. Which somehow ended when my teachers started giving me more-appealing titles. Like voice artist, visual idea-maker, storyteller, and authorpreneur. Yummy stuff that gave me ideas for a resume, which, at age 16, got me hired by the local paper to design pictures, paragraphs, and dangling participles. Writing a full-page syndicated column. (Oddly - and for reasons I cover in my memoir - when I wrote that column, I had never actualy read an entire book all the way through, which inspired me to devote my career to advocacy work.) Even though I craved reading books, and came out tops in my graduating class, teachers didn't know my homework assignments had been quickly scanned during study hall before the bell rang - and partly made up. But once I was on my own, free to read and write and draw, my previous print-word starvation developed into an unquenchable love for books that pushes even Amazon's inventory to the limit.
With blessings from no one but the tiny voice in my head (and the goddess of all-things-good), a whirl-wind career opened doors. I've delivered massive public addresses for ridiculously huge sums, sat through law school, founded several nonprofits for nurses, disabled and disadvantaged children. Throw in an over-lapping 7-year stint as professional PI and skip tracer. And fun stuff like creating art. Even ran for the Florida Legislature (where I learned stuff I was better off not knowing). Then I switched to the quirky combo of licensed RN and artistic dance roller skater, sewing my own competitive costumes, while stashing medals, trophies, and hospital name tags in a closet full of dust.
Now I run the nonprofit for kids I founded a decade and a half ago. And teach.
Always I write. Day in. Day out. Morning, noon, and all through the night. Latest book “The Burner” out as a charter publication through Amazon’s Kindle Vella.
Life is good.
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