A thought experiment
I recently read a line about you’re more than your job title and skills. I asked Wiggins to help me create personal CV. I asked Wiggins to research me online and then ask me a series of questions, maximum of 10, to create my CV.
I like it.
Alison MacLellan
A Personal CV
From: A smallish town in Ohio. Suburban 4H kid. Cooking, furniture refinishing, and a stubborn streak that never left.
Based in: Renton, Washington. Moved to Seattle with Sean in the 1990s.
On the internet since: Usenet, before the web was a “thing”.
Family
Together with Sean since 1987. Married since 1989. Still like each other.
Three daughters: Iona, Lucy, and Faba, the third daughter by choice. Faba lives in Germany but visits often and is part of our heart and family.
Built a family unafraid to show support. One that says I love you multiple times a day, hugs, and shows up. Both girls leave for college in September 2026.
Maker
Crochet. Knitting. Cross stitch. Needlepoint. Weaving. Macrame (back at it again). Card making. Scrapbooking (on hiatus). Cake design, including isomalt sugar decorations. Can sew. Hates sewing with a passion.
Always wanted to be an artist. Her uncle was one. Craft is where that impulse lives instead. The software she builds is about bringing order to chaos. The craft is about letting some chaos in.
Sometimes it’s social: stamping groups, yarn meetups, making things alongside other people making things. Mostly it’s seeing the picture in her head and figuring out if she can make it real.
Chocolatier
Taking chocolate making classes since the mid-1990s. Registered Alie’s Sweet Revenge, LLC in 2021.
Makes truffles. Experiments with cocoa beans and flavor combinations. Once gave a coworker a box of handmade truffles and he asked where she bought them.
Food is how she shows she cares. The people who matter get the good stuff.
Cook
Not a cuisine person. A traditional cook. The kind whose food makes midwestern transplants miss their mothers and German au pairs feel at home.
Took her first cake decorating class in high school and continues to learn new skills. Attended as many cooking classes as possible before kids. Went to South Seattle Community College for culinary arts because she wanted to.
Thanksgiving 2022-ish: a nine-course Italian meal, each course planned to connect to the next. Iona photographed every plate. There was so much love.
Hosted a big Christmas party every year, complete with Santa. 2024 was the last one.
Reader
50+ books a year. Sci-fi first. Recently into fantasy. A good mystery. Used to love psychological thrillers and dystopian fiction but her nervous system said enough. Now she reaches for peace and joy.
If she’s listening to something, it’s a book.
Watcher
British, Australian, and New Zealand television. BBC. Acorn. PBS. Slow, historical, thoughtful. The kind of thing that calms a brain on purpose.
Used to love live theatre. Seattle has great theatres and she had season tickets to several. Covid changed something. Being around people costs more now.
Learner
University of Findlay, BA in Business. University of Phoenix, MS in Computer Information Systems. Also attended: University of Dayton Law School. University of Illinois. Culinary School. Chocolate classes across decades and cities.
Finishes what matters. Tries what calls to her. Doesn’t pretend the ones she left were failures.
Volunteer
Birthday Dreams baker since January 2014. Over 12 years of making birthday cakes for children experiencing homelessness.
Microsoft DigiGirls, teaching girls to build games and think through product design.
Mental Health Month 2026: offered 30-minute 1:1 chats. People took her up on it. She listened. They were heard.
Writer
Two Substacks: one about AI, work, thinking, and transitions. One about craft and family. 90+ essays since early 2026. Writes to think. Shares to connect.
Community
Doesn’t belong to organizations. Belongs to people. A group of women she’s known for 30 years, online first, still there. When she worried that retirement would mean isolation, they said: you have us.
What You Should Know
She cares, even if she has trouble showing it.
You are safe with her.
She can be bribed with chocolate.
The Through Line
Pitbull with a bone. Tell her she can’t and watch what happens. She builds things: families, kitchens, truffle boxes, essays, cakes, businesses, order from chaos. And she gives what she builds to the people she loves.
Wiggins
I realized Wiggins never asked me about animals. The picture in the essay is my 6 cats and 1 dog. The dog is < 5 lbs. The cats are huge. We make family xmas shirts each year. This was the 2025 picture for the shirts.
Love this :)