Free Questions: A Crisis, or an Opportunity?
I’m working on Parts 4, 5 and 6 of my Marines story, and they should all come pretty rapidly compared to the dead zone that is Binary Trash lately. So thanks to Crisitunity for her mini-interview. I was very happy to get some free blog material. She came up with some questions that took me a good 90 minutes to come up with decent answers to. I rambled on and on, especially on the first one, then I went back and chopped these answers down by at least half. I am a rambler.
1. What quality about yourself that you think is important, if any, do you feel doesn’t come through in your blog?
I am a high strung, high energy person. I am very competitive but rarely show it, though I would never step on another to “win” (except when playing Monopoly…I am a big, fat cheater when it comes to Monopoly). I don’t sleep well. I am very busy, all the time, balancing a full time job, two kids, a husband who misses the way I was when we were dating, writing manuscripts, and oh by the way did I mention I’m heading up a CSA this year? I have been stressed out my entire life, so I only know how to operate under stress. Therefore if I do not have stress, I tend to create it, so Ican thrive in my comfort zone.
I am working on this.
2. Do you think your job says anything about you at all, or is it just a paycheck and an expression of your past job experience?
If my job says anything about me, it is that I can adapt. I am a right-brained person succeeding in a left-brained world. It’s a paycheck to be sure, but I do not live for it and I do not feel as if my job is my identity. I do enjoy my job a lot. I like the people I work with a lot. I give 110% to whatever job I do, and I know that if I was waiting on tables I would be just as good as waiting on tables as I am working on ‘puters.
Please though, if you all know what is good for you, don’t let me near the launch button. I’d press it, because I strongly believe that buttons are meant to be pushed.
3. What piece of advice about family (your parents/brother or your husband/children) would you go back and give yourself, and at what age would you give it?
I would go back to my three year old self and give me a lot of hugs, and say: “One day, a long time from now, you will feel fearless.”
I would go back to my thirteen year old self and say: “There are reasons that they act this way, and one day you will understand what those reasons are. Until then, forgive them and try not to hate them.”
4. What place have you visited that you thought you’d like to move to, even if it meant all kinds of lifestyle changes that were impossible?
Paris. Just for a year or two. And I don’t know that the lifestyle changes would be impossible, but they sure would be difficult. Especially the part about having to wear a damn beret all the time.
I love moving. Having children and moving…not so easy. Some do it, but I want to give my kiddos some stability. There are many places that I haven’tbeen that I would like to move to for a year, just to say I did (Sitka, AK; Whitehorse, YT; Ushuaia; Moscow. I nearly did something crazy like that when I started the process of signing up for the VSO , but then I ended up moving to Colorado instead. And one day, should I live long enough, I want to join the VSO after all. Hopefully my husband wants to come along for the ride. Or maybe he can just do photography for a year or two. Either way the plan depends on raising my children so that they are independent and functional in society by the time they are eighteen. I will be damned if I’m running a hotel any longer than that.
5. What common pet would you refuse to have (bird, turtle, hamster, ferret, nothing exotic like a deskunked skunk or a boa constrictor), no matter how much your kids wanted one?
Cat, dog, bird, fish; all of these are okay with me. Two pet rules I live by:
1. The pet must have legs.
2. The pet may have no more than four legs.
I would never be able to do hamsters or mice or guinea pigs…I’m not one to love rodents, and I would get much more pleasure out of them by feeding them to a larger animal than by having them as pets. When I was a kid I was at my cousin’s house (five boys, two of them twins) and they had a guinea pig. We took it out to play with it, and it escaped into a vent. It crawled around the house vents for a long time and then one day it just stopped…crawling. *shudder*
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Thanks again for taking the time to write these for me, C! Also I am happy to return these favors, so if you need blog material due to tiredness, laziness, or blog-block I would be happy to send you five personalized questions. Just let me know in the comments section.
Nighty-night!
Mother, Father, Sister, Brother 
I have to chime in with the others about not loving the rodents – I like insanely large dogs or crazy cats.
Though, I’ve been watching a lot of Kim Possible lately and a naked mole rat seems like a cool pet. 😉
Great post though – the interview question post is a great idea! 😀
I don’t know that I could handle ANY kind of naked pet!
“I’m not one to love rodents, and I would get much more pleasure out of them by feeding them to a larger animal than by having them as pets.”….hahaha…at least your honest…I think those hamster type rats are cute from afar, but then they smell bad and poop those annoying pellets…sigh…
Pellet poop!
Your “stress” issues are understood. I find that I don’t know what to do when there isn’t some kind of stress. Almost like I go looking for it. This was very revealing…
I am NEVER short on blog material, but I think I owe you some answers to any questions you might have for me…fire at will.
You are also excellent at helping someone who needs some professional advice…for that I am eternally grateful…THANK YOU!!!!!
Thanks for the nice words. I am always happy to help! And I will send you an interview soon! I love exclamation points!
I think you left off one of your finer qualities….that you’re able to laugh until you cry
Some people think it’s nearly freakish how often I do this…but thank you for your input.
Monopoly? Do dish, how do you cheat at that because my kids keep kickin’ my arse at that game! *snort*
I’d love to play along as sometimes I just don’t have the energy or the brain power to write a blog out.
Depending on the age/brainpower of the person you are playing with, I look up and use one of these lines:
“Hey, look! It’s a dinosaur!”
“OMG Is that a crack in the wall or am I just seeing things?”
“The neighbor lady is in her bikini again.”
Then I grab a couple of 100s out of the pile, or any property that’s yellow, orange, green or blue. Pretty low, really. But I hate Monopoly SO MUCH because it depends on luck more than strategy too often. Now I’ll play Trivial Pursuit until the cows come home just because I love to show off my enormous vat of useless knowledge. Interview coming soon!
Thanks for the good answers! My thought about #4 was this: I visited Switzerland once, and freakin’ loved it, and while I don’t think I want to live outside the US and don’t speak French or German and can’t imagine the hassle of moving overseas with all the paperwork and so on, I thought, wow, it sure might be nice to live here. I think you got that that was what I was thinking about.
Yes that is what I got. I would love to live in Paris for a year because it was so exotically different from the US, which in many ways is the same reason I would have a hard time doing it.
LOL that you cheat at Monopoly! My cousins used to steal money from the bank when we weren’t looking. I like your leg rules for pets. But I do feel so sorry for that poor guinea pig.