…wherein I reveal various & sundry details of my life’s exploits for your entertainment and perusal!
So this particular meme has been running rampant on Facebook, and I decided to join the party…
RULES: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.
1. I racked up more frequent flyer miles in the past year than in the entire rest of my life. All of it flying domestic.
2. I have a habit of meeting the people most important to me on the Internet. Everyone I’ve liked since high school I originally met online, with one exception.
3. I write – in waves – sometimes poetry, sometimes prose. I used to write a lot of fiction but haven’t been reading enough fiction to feed that particular monster.
4. I’ve been a Buddhist (on and off the wagon) for 12 years now.
5. I know enough Japanese and German to annoy people. When I was a young boy I stuck stickers all over my parent’s house to help me learn Russian. I don’t remember any of it, but the sticker is still on the mirror.
6. I smoked for a year, went home for the summer, came back to college and smoked half a pack. Sick for three days, and have never felt the desire to smoke again. (I have tried, just to see if it still makes me sick… it does)
7. I was married for several years in my early 20s. It didn’t work out.
8. I went halfway across the world to live in Maui with a yoga teacher a few years ago.
9. In Maui, I lost everything – money, relationship, home, job – and ended up in a mental hospital for three days. I had a little teeny glimpse of enlightenment when I realized I was still me, still there after everything I thought was me had gone away. Most of the time this makes dealing with everyday worries and fears much easier.
10. I was writing about epistemological philosophy in my journal at 16, right alongside wondering why my life was so difficult and writing down real and imagined flirtations with my current crush (in my own secret code, no less – of which I can only decipher a few letters now…)
11. I took 5 years of Latin, and served as state president of the Maine Junior Classical League. My opponent ran off the stage crying when I won. I didn’t even stay for my victory speech. I ran out after her because I felt bad!
12. I once scored the winning basket in a JV basketball game, a last-second foul shot. My teammates all started running out to me. I waved them all back, all annoyed, because I wanted to take my second shot even though we’d already won. Nothing but…
….air.
13. I walked 2 and 3/4 times around Lake Waban with the first person I met online 15 years ago. We argued philosophy each time. We turned around the last time because I didn’t want to be thrown in (Wellesley tradition says if you walk 3 times around the lake with someone, you’ll marry them… unless you toss them in)…
14. That person tagged me, I think I’m the first internet friend she met. And apparently I’ve had tea in Madeline Albright’s dorm room, when I was on my way to meet my future wife.
15. I’ve run into my former high school art teacher — from Maine — while standing in Times Square with a friend decked out in cocktail dress and heels. She thought this was my girlfriend.
16. There are a few things that particularly attract me: an ability to write wonderfully (yes, words can enthrall me), to evoke sense through words; creative ability in general; excitement and joy at everyday life; quirky glasses; quirkiness in general.
17. I have had some strange experiences bordering on the paranormal – mainly involving knowing things that I couldn’t have known about people, and to some degree being able to ‘energetically’ communicate the sense of touch to people far away.
18. I told myself I wouldn’t get married again until I was at least 30. My girlfriend at the time started asking me about it the DAY I TURNED 30. So I extended it to 35. But I considered it this past year.
19. I’ve always wanted to have a real SLR camera. Last year I finally bought myself a digital SLR and love telling stories with images as much as I love to write.
20. I’ve built web sites for Shiva Rea and Nikki Doane – yoga teachers, Allia the Coconut Man, Koz, the rails core-contributor… all sorts of random people. And I’ve painted lumber mills, been a landscaper stacking volcanic rock walls on Maui, valeted cars in Boston, stocked at an organic grocery store, cleaned condos, managed a Ritz-Carlton, fixed Macs…
21. Speaking of which, I was once blown ten feet across the room by the static charge remaining in a computer monitor.
22. I have ADD. Which most people think means I can’t pay attention to anything. Really what it means is that I can pay TOO MUCH attention to some things and ignore others – both unintentionally. It also means that most illegal stimulants won’t affect me any more than a strong cup of coffee.
23. I’m an incurable optimist, with occasional bouts of worry. I can’t stay down for very long, though.
24. I generally never regret. But I wish I’d done some things differently in the past year.
25. I’d kept different stages of my life pretty well separated – high school, college, my marriage, the Maui years… but in the last year I’ve been reconnected with people I once thought I’d never see or hear from again: the person to whom I lost my virginity; my intellectual volleyball partner from Wellesley, the muses for whom I wrote love poetry and dirges of great sorrow, my freshman college roommate.. I dated the girl whom I first crushed on 14 years ago at Hamilton – last year! I’ve usually been afraid of what would happen if the walls between the parts of my life started to crumble.
But in so many ways it’s been more fruitful, more joyful and more wonderful than I could have ever imagined.