When you’ve been writing your whole life,
it’s hard to say when you became a professional.

My family recounts evenings of me as a 5-year-old sprawled over a newspaper in our Bay Area home sounding out complex words.

I didn’t know I was destined to become a journalist 20 years later.

Before I joined the ranks of the publishing world, I spent two years in Brazil learning more about life, people and myself. There I learned more than any book could ever convey.

College came after I grasped the Portuguese of my beloved Brazil. I developed that ability into an affinity for learning and speaking Romance languages. I’ll always have a special place in my heart for Brazilian Portuguese, but Spanish is so useful for communication.

So I became a Journalist, intent on Changing The World. My mission. My plan to teach — with words.

I changed. But the world didn’t change much.

More than five years passed with me as a professional journalist. I used photography and the written word to share stories of hope, investigations of tax-dollars at work, homicides and city council meetings.

Journalism changed me more than I changed the world. It reinforced dedication learned in my typical Protestant Work Ethic from hundreds of years of my ancestors.

Nothing would adequately prepare me for the newest phase in my life.  A newlywed in a distant Los Angeles suburb — also known as the desert.

This is my Web site and I am Chris Daines.