For Once, It Was Hard to Write About Myself

Recently, I had to submit my bio for work. Considering I’ve spent the last six years expending copious amounts of bandwith on myself and my varying levels of awesome, this proved surprisingly challenging. I had no idea what to say.

So, today, I submit the (sadly, completely true) bio I wish I had written:

Shannon Stamey is our Administrative Ninja. Her duties include barking at vendors (when she isn’t requesting free ponies), making inappropriate editorial comments during staff meetings, and running every aspect of the known Universe.

She is on her third, or perhaps fourth, career. She started out as a secretary at a fancy hotel. Then she was a political consultant for a few years there, where she slept under her desk many nights and lived up to her Cherokee heritage by occasionally trading her cubicle for some shiny beads.

There was a wilderness year or two, when she inadvertently killed some minke whales. Consumed with guilt, she upped and married a near-stranger and moved to Bogota. There, Ms. Stamey specialized in newsletter editing, overly detailed festive party decorations, shopping, and daytime drinking.

She continued her illustrious career in Sarajevo, where she served as a Community Liaison Officer. Her most brilliant achievement was the Shot for a Shot Happy Hour, in which she encouraged her colleagues to receive flu shots by promising Jell-O shooters in return. Her other tasks included the invention of Sarajevo Rules Karaoke Revolution, ordering a divorce over the Internet, and achieving a level of depression spiral that she is still finds quite amazing. After all, why shower or sleep when there are 12-hour crying jags to be had?

After she crash-landed home, she took a part-time temp job as a file clerk at a government agency. She ran documents through a scanner, fooled the IG into believing all the required informational binders had actual contents, and occasionally left staples in the documents for the awesome screechy sound they would make. This job, and her continued apathy with regards to showering, inspired her to rename her blog, “Disaffected Scanner Jockey.”

Ms. Stamey has temped her way across the administrative offices of virtually every nonprofit in Washington. Her favorite assignment was two weeks of formatting boobs in a breastfeeding manual. For a period of several months, she could not look down while showering without picturing ducts, machinery, and properly positioned infants.

Ms. Stamey has a (still in the box, minty fresh) degree in Journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her Spanish language skills are rapidly deteriorating, but she has retained the entirety of her six-word Bosnian vocabulary.

Ms. Stamey is intermittently single and, to the relief of many, has no children. Her hobbies include falling off of things, orchestrating the social lives of her friends, and hugging pretty much anybody who will let her hug them. She showers daily.