IDENTITY
1. If someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to? I had a ready answer when I was working: Broadcast News. I was really good at my job and it was important to me to do it well. I was in advertising for 43 years and managed to maintain my integrity, which wasn't always easy. I was a pain in the ass, I'm sure, but I don't regret it.
I've been retired a year now and so far I haven't seen myself in media. To understand my forever and ongoing inner conflict, watch or read Gone with the Wind. I strive to be Melanie, who is always generous in thought and deed, but I have a shit-ton of Scarlett in me and can be selfish and snarky.
2. Have you ever found a writer who thinks just like you? If so, who? William Goldman was a writer whose humor and iconoclastic attitude really resonate with me, but he was much smarter and more gifted than I am. He wrote The Princess Bride and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
3. Do you care about your ethnicity? Nope. I think ethnicity is like astrology in that when and where you are born is a crap shoot and it doesn't have any real bearing on who you are.
4. What musical artists have you most felt connected to over your lifetime? Oh, God, I'm such a boomer!
5. Are you an artist? I write well, in both my word content and my penmanship. I don't know that I'm an artist, though. I think of myself as a craftsman.
6. Dog person or cat person? I've always shared my home with cats and love them and understand them. But that's a function of apartment living. I know I could love and understand dogs, too. Like Ellie Mae, I have a natural affinity for critters.
7. Inside or outdoors? I do better indoors in summer. I cannot abide temps over 85ยบ. I like wandering when it's cold outside, provided the skies and streets are clear.
8. Five most influential books over your lifetime:
The Princess Bride by William Goldman. He thinks like me! Only so much better.
JFK: Reckless Youth by Nigel Hamilton. How a life looks on the outside doesn't tell you how it feels on the inside,
Saving Graces by Elizabeth Edwards. Strength through vulnerability and faith.
Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. Why do some people survive and others falter? Plus, it tells us alot about America in the 1860s, 1930s, and beyond. Slavery and our continuing fetish for the Confederacy are really fucked up.
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Oh, Atticus! We live in a country where many of our citizens enthusiastically support the casual cruelty and narcissism of Donald Trump. Imagine if our neighbors instead believed that we should protect the innocent, that might does not make right, that we have a responsibility to our communities and not just our own self interest. (Slides soap box away.)
9. Would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else? I think I'll just stay here.
10. List the top five things you spend the most time doing, in order. Cuddling the cats, reading, watching movies, napping, farting around on the internet.
11. Have you ever felt like you had a “mind-meld” with someone? My oldest friend usually gets me. I wish she weren't so far away.
12. Could you live as a hermit? Yes. I learned during covid, though, that just because isolation is comfortable doesn't mean it's good for me.
13. Do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real you?” I don't know. For some reason, a moment in my parents' backyard has really stayed with me. I'm 9 or 10 years old, on my tummy in the grass with a book. Clearly that little girl is still a big part of me, although my outsides don't reflect her at all.
14. Three songs that you connect with right now: "Happy Holidays" by Andy Williams, "I'll Be There for You" (the theme from Friends), and "I take once daily Jardiance at each day's start ..." Once I hear that commercial it stays with me for hours.
15. Pick one of your favorite quotes.
