5 Things

Random collage of pictures from our minimoon in/around Santa Barbara? Why not.

 So, the cool kids have been passing around this 5 Things bit, where the poster types 5 random get to know you type items and then tags a few people to do the same and so on and so forth.

Imagine my surprise last week when MamaH (aka Heather) tagged me. Seriously. It felt like being asked to sit with the popular girls at lunch. 

1. I’m one of those crazy introvert people who doesn’t fit into society’s mold because I’m quiet and have a hard time putting myself out there. I like to read and can be a homebody. The thought of having a million real-life friends kinda freaks me out, because I don’t have actual time or emotional space for them. The thing, though, is that I’m not against those things. They're just not me. As my nearest and dearest can attest, when you get in, look out. I am a total chatterbox, I open myself up to you, and I have, like, a personality and opinions and can be goofy and stuff. My husband actually doesn’t believe this about me, because we clicked right away, so he only ever saw the real (talkative) me. 

2. I was not an English major. I was the English major’s nerdy cousin: the history major. I also double-minored in French and Spanish. I would be remiss if I failed to mention that along the way, I took classes in Portuguese, Italian and Russian. Yep. History geek. Language geek. I wish I had had a chance to do Latin, but it never worked out. That is still a goal. With my (not) super-useful history degree in hand, I trotted off to law school. I got my JD, but along the way realized that I was not meant to be a lawyer. From there, as luck would have it, I ended up teaching 7-9^th grade . . . English at three different schools. I loved the kids, hated all of the crap (meetings and paperwork and having so much stuff to grade that you can’t do a good job and being annoyed that kids can’t capitalize correctly no matter how many times I try to teach them -- stupid internet). Also, I’m more of a writing person than a lit person, even though I love to read, so I never really fit in with the English teachers, but got along great with the social studies teachers. Go figure. Ahem, I have lots of opinions on education, so I get really impassioned about it. I know a lot about the legal system, so it makes me stay more level-headed about it. Never not contradictory here.

3. I love to write, but always having a hard time wrapping things up. I liked news writing in high school, because, in theory, there is no end. In perfect journalism land, each paragraph is of decreasing importance, so it can get cut off anywhere appropriate to make adequate space. That was good. Fiction is bad. Besides not being a fiction writer, because conflicts do not pop into my head (ever), I have a hard time wrapping things up. I can handle research, because there is a definitive need for a particular kind of conclusion that is, let’s be honest, repetitive.  I feel my inability to close is particularly evident on my blog. How do you conclude randomness? I’m not fond of ending things with questions. I often end up employing sentimentality, but I find it grating, especially when I look back on posts. I don’t like trite. I dunno, I am working on it. I do love being free to write with full expression and purposeful ignoring of grammar, like starting sentences with conjunctions. Using fragments (see that?). And using colloquial language (and again!). I could never get through to too many kids why you can write like this on a blog or Facebook post, but not in an essay or business letter.

4. A particularly weird quirk of mine is that I love making citations/footnotes/references perfect. Give me a style book and a document and a red pen and I’ll go to town, happy as a clam. I learned this when I was on the law journal. Journal was, for me, the best thing about law school. Most people consider this a terrible “honor” that is mostly a resume item and something akin to slave labor. Law journal kids have been known to work lots of hours a week for 1 credit (and that resume line). I thrived, because I was really good at it and happy to do it. I spent loooooots of hours making those darn citations really perfect. I can actually see if a period it italicized in Times New Roman without checking digitally. I was a rockstar, and so my 3^rd year when I was an editor in charge of Bluebooking stuff, I got all the really ugly, hard, messed up stuff, because my higher-up editor knew that I would do a great job. And I did. Truly. I'm pretty sure that paragraph is walking that fine line between not having false humility and pride.

5. I am very, very, very opinionated. As a result, when watching TV/movies, I have something to say about everything. Charles' and my first date was to a movie. The theater was pretty much empty and I talked my way through the whole thing. I told a friend a day or two later that one thing I really liked about this guy was that he didn't mind it. Fast forward . . . turns out he can't stand the fact that I talk through everything, and if it weren't for the pause button, well, I don't think "domestic bliss" would describe our lives.

Random enough? I'd love to see Jamie, Lauren, and Andi (even with your not-lame not totally personal blog).