I grew up in southeastern North Carolina (Wilmington DMA), dancing to every song with a beat, especially the epic news jingles of the 1980s. As the first born child of a family that owned one of those giant home video cameras, a lot of my firsts were captured on VHS tapes. They look a lot like modern day vlogs. One in particular is labeled “Laura Announcing.”

The tape was recorded in January 1986, shortly after the Challenger disaster. My dad, my personal videographer and news director, has always been into space and watching TV news was a key part of our daily routine. Dad vividly remembers watching Neil Armstrong’s moon walk, and he was a science teacher for many years. Needless to say, we were tuned in for all of the news coverage.

I decided we were going to “do the news” not long after. Maybe one day I’ll share the video in its entirety online, but I believe that was the moment, I was inspired to take my love for storytelling and my few years of exposure of news, and created a core memory that shaped my life.

“The flag hung low on the way to the studio today, and I asked why?” And off I launched into my version of the space shuttle disaster. Very brief, but I also attributed it to someone smoking in space, proof that anti-smoking ad campaigns had reached a very impressionable, young demographic. I often told my parents not to drink and drive too…and I literally meant do not drink any liquid while operating a motor vehicle.

I gave the forecast. Shared some local news. I did ads for Barbie, a local store and the library. I’m still impressed at how observant I was at 4 years old. My sister made random appearances trying to steal the spotlight in her Care Bear t-shirt. “She drives me up the wall,” I said, rolling my eyes. Again, I was 4.

In total, I think the runtime may be 10 minutes, but we watched that VHS tape so many times over the years, it has been something we quoted in our family repeatedly. But I continued to read, and in 5th grade, I wrote a poem that my language arts teachers shared with teachers in multiple grades. This sort of set me up as the “writer” type amongst my friends. In 6th grade, my best friend and I were co-writing our first novel. We got a little bored with it, but we had many pages written from what I recall before we fully abandoned it. Cut to 8th grade, and I wrote a poem that won first place in our local poetry contest.

By the time I got to high school, I was guided more toward science classes. I enjoyed that too. I decided I wanted to be pharmacist mostly because of job security. But when I got to UNC, the large science classes made me feel insignificant and not as smart as a lot of the other students. I did great in labs, but the classes and exams that felt like you needed to memorize the textbook word for word, I found myself talking to a friend who happened to be enrolled in journalism school.

“Think back to a time when you were really happy. What were you doing?” She asked me. I instantly thought about the VHS tape and all of my creative writing over the years. Not long after, I was applying to journalism school and got admitted. But I went into the advertising sequence. I didn’t really see myself being a news reporter, graphic designer or photographer.

We were all required to take news writing, and while I loved the professor, she was tough. It didn’t help that it was an 8 a.m. class. But there I was. I ended up landing an internship in corporate communications right out of school that kept me in North Carolina. And about 4 years later, I started my first job at a local media company working on the mobile team (pre-iPhone days).

I left for a brief period to work for an SEO startup so I could learn more about search marketing, and also worked for the local newspaper back home helping them launch a digital agency and modernize their news gathering skills. Then I was called back to the same media company I worked at before. And here I am still.