Journal & Musing

Tell us one thing you hope people say about you.

My life experiences have lead to the moment soon approaching when I will have to demonstrate great resolve without emotions clouding my view and polluting my words. I have endured by the grace of God. But now, having been given a precious jewel, I have let my guard down. I find myself standing in a doorway to a room I’ve been in before. It’s a room of fear and misunderstanding. A room of desperation and attack. But I don’t have to step inside. I can shut the door. What good are my past experiences if I let myself relive them? The art of learning defines my life. I owe it to myself to reframe the picture I see before me because I have earned the stripes.

I will not step through that door again. I will be resolute. And regardless of the outcome, the words that will have mattered are the ones I will have told myself.

If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time?

In fact, I didn’t sleep. I’ve been awake since 3 am, and now I have to go to work. Boy, this is an easy one. I’d totally go back to bed.

Name your top three pet peeves.

1) when people misuse reflexive pronouns

2) when people mispronounce realtor

3) that I’m okay with the evolution of language as long as reflexive pronouns aren’t tampered with and extra vowels aren’t shoved into places they don’t belong

Bonus) that bad grammar irks me when I’m not qualified to judge

But, honestly, why bother sounding educated if ignorance squeezes itself into dictionaries? Maybe that’s my greatest pet peeve. This willy nilly misuse of words cheapens the genius rebellion of great wordsmiths.

So annoying.

What’s your favorite month of the year? Why?

I like the middles of things. Middle of the cake, middle of the day, middle of the night when time disappears halfway between sundown Saturday and sunup Sunday—the black hole between last week and next when the world sleeps. It’s the things between the things I like best because those are the things that are least noticed. One of the perks of being a middle child, if you like that sort of thing. Of all the middles of things, I like summertime most of all, because the sun gobbles you up and hides you from the world for a little while. July is smack in the middle of Hidden and is where all the least noticed things live. July is boss.

How much would you pay to go to the moon?

What a drab, barren place the moon must be. Cold and grey. Black skies. I’ve always wanted to visit the salt flats and the tundra and look out onto the vast emptiness. I would pay money to see Mongolia or Siberia and ride a horse through the meadows and sled through the snow and ice. Ride the Bering Sea until I’m lost, or walk the endless white sands of a Pacific island. To stand on the edge of a plateau looking over a red, clay canyon. Climb the green, rocky mountains in Peru among the ruins. All under an ice-blue sky with the willful wind trying to blow me over. You can have the moon.

What alternative career paths have you considered or are interested in?

I could have been a legendary rockstar. I suppose I still could be, but I very much like being a figurative one in my current career.

When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?

It’s not to say that I haven’t tried to grow up, because I have on several occasions. The best I can do is pretend, and I’m super good at pretending. There is only so far I can go with it, though.

The world is just going to have to deal. But honestly the only complaints I’ve had are from my immediate family.

Shrug.

What was the hardest personal goal you’ve set for yourself?

Lately I’ve been acutely aware of my timeline: where I’ve been and where I’m headed. The frame is so small when I step back far enough to look at the span of my life. Small and sparse. I thought I’d be more accomplished by now, or at least have more experiences under my belt. More tales to tell.

Alas, there are no new tales to tell <insert rest / repeat>. Certainly not enough old ones to fill a book. I asked my 90-year-old dad where I go from here. He told me to write a book about my life. The problem is that much of what would go in that book is not shareable,.

I have a reputation to uphold.

He also said that the book didn’t have to be about my life but of some made up one, which is interesting because I would have to make much of mine up to fill the gaps between the acceptable moments. He appears to know more about me than I thought.

School wasn’t terribly hard, so that doesn’t count as a particularly difficult goal. I enjoyed pushing a lot of weight when I had a trainer, so that wasn’t difficult in a psychological sense. Physically, yeah, but I was so motivated by the idea of pushing more that I didn’t feel each personal record to be something nearly insurmountable, which is what I interpret “the hardest personal goal” to be.

I’ve experienced awful, difficult things, and I suppose I set a goal to overcome them. But those sorts of things are not a choice to overcome, hence not really a goal to reach. I guess I could have given up. That’s a choice. But I didn’t see it that way. It was sink or swim. Survival was not only instinctive but necessary.

My greatest goal is likely ahead of me. What do I do with my life now that my kids are raised? Teach? That’s it? Teaching is a lot, I know. It’s a noble profession. I know, I know. But I need something more, and I need that thing to be meaningful.

I thought this would be a semi easy prompt to answer.

Turns out I can’t answer it at all.