An Interview With Myself

The orig­i­nal post of “33 Ques­tions For An Inter­view With Your­self,” by Dra­gos Florin Roua, is at http://​www​.dragos​roua​.com/​3​3​-​q​u​e​s​t​i​o​n​s​-​f​o​r​-​a​n​-​i​n​t​e​r​v​i​e​w​-​w​i​t​h​-​y​o​u​r​s​e​lf/

I liked Dra­gos’ ques­tion list enough to bor­row it for a blog post­ing, so here goes:

1. What Do You Do For A Living?

I teach com­puter sci­ence at a two-​year col­lege. I also make and sell lam­p­worked glass beads and jew­elry. The one sat­is­fies my left brain, the other my right brain, though both over­lap into the other half.

2. Who Do You Love?

I love my hus­band, first and fore­most. I never thought I’d find some­one like him — he’s my rock, my strength, my shel­ter, my sound­ing board; he’s got my back, always, yet he doesn’t hes­i­tate to tell me when I’m off track or unreasonable.

I love my son — how could I not? I love my cats, and they love me back uncon­di­tion­ally and unjudge­men­tally. I love the rest of my fam­ily, even though I don’t always like them.

Beyond that it depends on how one defines “love.” I some­times say that I love mankind, but I can’t nec­es­sar­ily stand peo­ple — it sounds like a joke but there’s a lot of truth there.

3. Do You Have Enough Money?

I have enough for what I need — food, shel­ter, trans­porta­tion, cloth­ing. I don’t have enough to be extrav­a­gantly friv­o­lous but that’s a very good thing, since I’ve found I’m hap­pier liv­ing more simply.

4. Are You Healthy?

Basi­cally I’m pretty healthy, I think, though I’ve appar­ently inher­ited the fam­ily prematurely-​failing thy­roid and I have to stay on med­ica­tion for depres­sion. I try to eat rea­son­ably healthy, but I could cer­tainly get more exercise!

5. Do You Think You Are a Good Person?

I try to be a Good Per­son, and I like to think that I mostly suc­ceed. I have my mean and petty thoughts, and I lose my tem­per, and I wish ill on cer­tain peo­ple, mostly those who abuse other peo­ple and ani­mals. Basi­cally I try to treat oth­ers as I want to be treated, the old Golden Rule.

6. How Old Are You?

These days I’m usu­ally about 26 years old in a 53 year old body. Some­times I revert to 13 y. o., though.

7. Who’s Your Best Friend?

My hus­band. He just KNOWS me and accepts me. I’ve had close female friends through­out my life, but they tend to come and go — we’ll be close for some time, and then it’s past.

8. What’s Your Child­hood Dream?

I don’t remem­ber. I’m sure I had some, but they’ve long ago faded away into mist.

9. How Often Do You Laugh?

When­ever some­thing strikes me as absurd, which is usu­ally at least daily.

10. What Makes You Smile?

(List at least 10 items.)

1. LOL­cats
2. Watch­ing glass melt
3. That first cup of cof­fee in the morning
4. Snug­gling up against my hus­band as we go to sleep
5. Chat­ting with cus­tomers at shows
6. The kit­tens in the kit­ten room at Good Mews
7. A nicely dec­o­rated Christ­mas tree
8. My cats
9. Open­ing the kiln the morn­ing after
10. Choco­late
11. Pup­pies
12. Hear­ing some­one tell me how much they’ve enjoyed an item that I made & they bought (or received as a gift).

11. Who’s Your Most Dan­ger­ous Enemy?

Myself, or rather the part of me that still remains inse­cure and afraid, and doesn’t always think before acting.

12. Where Do You Live?

I live in a condo in sub­ur­ban Atlanta, which feels like home only because I’ve made it feel like home. When I bought it I wanted a place that I would own rather than it own­ing me, a place where I could set down roots rather than hav­ing it feel tem­po­rary. I have to have a place that is MINE or I don’t feel grounded.

I don’t really feel like sub­ur­bia, or a big city, is my place though. I’d far rather be in a smaller city, and I’ve always felt much more at home in the moun­tains than in flat­ter land.

13. Do You Think You’re Strong?

I’ve had to be, so I’ve learned to be. For me strength means cop­ing as intel­li­gently and grace­fully as pos­si­ble with what­ever life throws at you, and although my cop­ing hasn’t always been intel­li­gent or grace­ful, I’ve managed.

14. What Was The Most Impor­tant Thing You’ve Done So Far?

I don’t know that I’ve done any­thing impor­tant, really. I’ve just tried to make my lit­tle cor­ner of the world a lit­tle bet­ter for my being there.

15. What Was The Most Stu­pid Thing You’ve Done So Far?

Of course I’ve done stu­pid things in my life. Some of them I rec­og­nized as stu­pid right off, oth­ers took years. Prob­a­bly the most stu­pid thing is one I’ve done sev­eral times — said some­thing with­out think­ing first that caused me to lose a friend.

16. Do You Love Yourself?

I try to. Some­times it’s really hard.

17. What Do You Fear The Most?

Heights. Even think­ing about them makes my stom­ach clench a bit. By heights I don’t mean high ground, I mean being high OFF the ground (or at the edge of a cliff where I can’t see any­thing right below me).

18. What Is Your Favorite Word?

Wow, I can’t think of a favorite word!

19. When Was The Last Time You Cried?

Prob­a­bly the last time I watched “Extreme Makeover: Home Edi­tion.” That darn show puts tears in my eyes every time. If you mean a seri­ous weep, I actu­ally don’t remem­ber. Prob­a­bly some­time recently when I was PMS­ing and think­ing about my dad. Watch­ing him slowly dete­ri­o­rate is one of the tough­est things I’ve ever seen.

20. What Is The Best Thing That Could Hap­pen To You Right Now?

I have no idea!!!

21. What Is The Worst Thing That Could Hap­pen To You Right Now?

Sud­denly los­ing my husband.

22. Pic­ture Your­self In 5 Years From Now

Not very dif­fer­ent from now, I hope!

23. Do You Regret Anything?

I regret that I lost my mother when I was ten, so never really knew her adult-​to-​adult. I know it was some­thing totally out of my con­trol, but I really only know her second-​hand and that just isn’t good enough.

24. What’s The First Thing You Do In The Morning?

Stum­ble into the bath­room to pee, then stum­ble into the kitchen for cof­fee. Very basic, that.

25. What Are You Think­ing Just Before Going To Bed?

Usu­ally not any­thing in par­tic­u­lar, just about get­ting com­fort­able and relaxed and about how life is pretty damn good these days.

26. What Was The High­est Point You’ve Ever Been To?

I don’t remem­ber being on top of Pike’s Peak when I was eight, other than I know I passed out from alti­tude sick­ness due to the sud­den change. I’ve been pretty high up in the Rock­ies since (the vis­i­tor cen­ter on Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Moun­tain National Park, very pretty even though the weather sucked) and felt rather at home.

Then again, there was the time my ex con­vinced me to go with him to the top of the CN Tower in Toronto. All I remem­ber of that was sheer terror.

27. If There’s One Thing In Your Life You Want To Change Right Now, What Is It?

Oh gosh, maybe to still have my dad strong and healthy (at least for his age) instead of slowly deteriorating?

28. What Are You Proud Of?

I raised a pretty good kid up to be a fine young adult.

29. Sum Up Your Life In One Sentence

Eeep! I don’t know! I tried???

30. Name The Thing That Annoys You The Most

Inces­sant non-​white-​noise, whether it’s some­one talk­ing with­out say­ing any­thing, some­one else’s music, machin­ery, or whatever.

31. What Is Your No 1 Ques­tion To God?

Why do you per­mit so much crap in your name?

32. Do You Have Secrets?

Who doesn’t? We have secrets from each other; we even have secrets from ourself.

33. What Makes You Laugh?

Bad puns and being silly.

Ok, I lied. There are 34 ques­tions:
34. Are You Happy?

I am now. At a lot of times in my life I wouldn’t have answered yes, but now I can and mean it.

******

Now, here’s the deal. If you blog, feel free to copy and paste this arti­cle on your blog (with a link back to the orig­i­nal, of course) and answer each ques­tion at a time. Feel free to skip the ones you don’t like or don’t want to answer. But do keep the link back so I can dis­cover you. I told you, you’re important.