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William J Monihan
I was born William J Monihan in San Francisco and grew up in Redwood City. I attended Our Lady of Mt Carmel Grammar School, Salesian Junior Seminary, and graduated from Sequoia Uni...view moreI was born William J Monihan in San Francisco and grew up in Redwood City. I attended Our Lady of Mt Carmel Grammar School, Salesian Junior Seminary, and graduated from Sequoia Union High School. I joined the Army, served nearly three years in Germany, and was honorably discharged. Except, I had no idea who I was, nor did I have anything resembling a clear direction for my life.After returning home after my hitch, the local pastor of our church asked me what I was going to do with my life. I said that I wanted to be a journalist. “Oh no, no, no you don’t want to that. Go out and live a Life and write about that.” I’m not going to bore you with my missteps, except to divulge how one job ended and a career began. I was going crazy at United Airlines putting hundreds of screws and washers in little bags and stapling an IBM card to each one of them. Since I had the fewest number of bags in the bin, and because I talked too much, they gave me a choice, leave or they’ll fire me. I left and got in my car, turned on the radio. Frank Sinatra was singing, “That’s Life.” I drove to the City, San Francisco, and enrolled in Chris Borden’s Broadcasting School, and began a career in radio as a disc jockey, interviewer, a national radio host, a voiceover artist, and in TV, a number of episodes on SNL, as well as some film work. However, everything has a “Shelf Life,” as do careers. I moved to Paris and began writing this book (excuse the cliché) and after two and a half years I left and returned to America. I currently reside in the Northwest.During the fifteen years I lived in New York, I enrolled in the Writer’s Voice, the New School, and Long Ridge Writers Group, now the Institute for Writers. I don’t count any of the aforementioned as part of the “Ten Thousand Hours” Malcolm Gladwell wrote about in his book, Outliers. Nor do I include the writing contests. No, I only count the endless hours I spent right here— writing and rewriting this book, and a number of short stories.view less