Category: NaBloPoMo

Plinky asked, “Which of your friends have you know for the longest amount of time?”

2009-05-23: Morn­ing Sky Green­ery (rest) IMG_9780

I’m just going to count peo­ple I’m reg­u­lar­ly in touch with offline who are not close kin, or things would be very com­plex, as there are lots of old friends and rel­a­tives on my Face­book friends list.

I’ve tech­ni­cal­ly known Tate since high school, but we did­n’t get to know each oth­er very well until this past year. So I sup­pose James, who I met via Sam back in 1998, wins the prize for being around the longest, poor guy.

Plinky said, “List your top five strengths.”

strength

1) When I give my word or my heart, I don’t change my mind. I’m loy­al to a fault.

2) I can learn just about any­thing I care to learn. Intel­li­gence is use­ful.

3) I don’t lie or mis­rep­re­sent myself. I’m the same per­son online and offline. I prac­tice rad­i­cal hon­esty.

4) I inher­it­ed cre­ativ­i­ty from both of my grand­moth­ers. I’m great with col­ors and am a tal­ent­ed stitch­er.

5) I’m a sur­vivor. I’ve expe­ri­enced some ter­ri­bly painful things start­ing in child­hood and haven’t allowed them to ruin my life.

This mon­th’s NaBloPo­Mo theme is “Jump.” All the prompts have been cen­tered around that theme, but I haven’t yet used them. I’m going to play catch-up here.

What is the first thing that pops into your mind when you hear the word jump?
The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the word “jump” is a fam­i­ly lore that said I could not man­age to jump as a child. I tried and tried, but I just could­n’t get off the ground with­out some­thing to jump off of (I was fear­less then, though). ¹ Maybe that’s one rea­son I’m just not ter­ri­bly excit­ed about this mon­th’s theme.

What is some­thing you recent­ly jumped into?
I jumped back into play­ing the ukulele, after some con­tem­pla­tion.

How do you feel about start­ing new projects? and How do you feel about new peo­ple jump­ing into your life? and Do you need to look before you leap?
I’m not fear­less at this stage in my life. I def­i­nite­ly look before I leap, espe­cial­ly regard­ing bring­ing new peo­ple into my life. I don’t jump into projects, either, although I would prob­a­bly be more like­ly to do that if I had more mon­ey avail­able. I’m hop­ing to return to work soon and improve that sit­u­a­tion, at least.

What is some­thing you’d like to jump into if you had more time/money?
As I men­tioned in a recent post, I would try weav­ing. I might even try spin­ning.

Plinky asked, “Who’s the most famous per­son you’ve ever met?

OPRAH

Oprah, def­i­nite­ly. I was on her show about ten years ago to talk about inter­net safe­ty and our fam­i­ly’s expe­ri­ence with cyber­stalk­ing.

I’m so tired of all the depress­ing sto­ries in my Face­book news feed. Every day there’s more news about all the ground lost in wom­en’s rights (espe­cial­ly repro­duc­tive rights) in this coun­try, or some­thing like the ter­ri­ble results of the Wis­con­sin efforts to recall Gov­er­nor Walk­er, or some child gone miss­ing, or peo­ple shot dead while doing some­thing innocu­ous like attend­ing a funer­al (that hap­pened in Dekalb Coun­ty, here in the metro Atlanta area, yes­ter­day).

So I delib­er­ate­ly try to find pos­i­tive things to coun­ter­act all that neg­a­tive stuff. I’m always on the look­out for them, and would love any sug­ges­tions y’all have for such.

• Pos­i­tive Press, home of the Pos­i­tive Quote of the Day list, Pos­i­tive News list, and oth­er resources.
• The Dai­ly Good is an entire web site full of good news, with a mail­ing list you can sub­scribe to in order to get a dai­ly dose deliv­ered up to your mail­box. Of course they’re on Face­book, too.
• Open Your Mind is a Face­book com­mu­ni­ty full of good stuff.

Plinky asked, “What ener­gizes you?”

Trans­par­ent Role­play­ing Dice

I strug­gle with major depres­sion (actu­al­ly, treat­ment resis­tant depres­sion), so it’s dif­fi­cult to find much that ener­gizes me. How­ev­er, real­ly great con­ver­sa­tion with just a few peo­ple does it quite well. The same goes for sto­ry games, or a real­ly good table­top role­play­ing ses­sion that focus­es on char­ac­ters and plot rather than hack and slash.

Being around too many peo­ple drains me of ener­gy, and I need alone time to recu­per­ate. A nice soak in the bath with nobody else around, time with a good book, or time to enjoy some qui­et music are all plea­sures I use to help recov­er from being drained.

I’m def­i­nite­ly an intro­vert, as evi­denced by what ener­gizes me and what drains me. I used to be able to fake extro­ver­sion for short peri­ods of time, but I’m not entire­ly sure that I could do that right now.

Plinky asked, “Have you ever bro­ken a bone?”

Gs cast

Not a full break, but I’ve had a hair­line frac­ture in my left elbow and right fore­arm. I remem­ber trip­ping and falling down steps at some­one’s wed­ding and crack­ing the elbow, but I no longer recall how I hurt the fore­arm.