| 8 may 2001 a brand-spanking-new review! the whole city, you say? yes! | kim and stuff I've been wondering lately if I shouldn't break down and answer a few questions that you guys have been asking. The thing is, sometimes I wonder what to call this thing I write. A ? weblog ? A column? It seems a little of each, I suppose-- I reveal less about who I am, and more of what's on my mind. I'm never been terribly comfortable with full disclosure of the activities and people that comprise my personal life, but am AOK musing over my observations as I go along each day. I've never put much stock in trying to categorize my own writing; that's for other people with more time and energy than I've got. If I had to name it, I suppose I'd claim allegory as a buddy. That works for me, yep. So, today it's just you and me. No macaroni and cheese. No Wilma. It's me and you and my laptop. What do I do for a living? I'm a writer. To pay the bills, I'm a contract/freelance technical writer and web designer. I spend my days writing everything from end-user instructional documentation, to technical specs, to seemingly-endless sweeping proposals that will eventually bring companies into the new millennium. Sometimes, it's as dull as it sounds. Most of the time, I feel as if I'm providing a most useful service that scares the poop out of most people--they'll do anything but write. Just please don't make them write. So they hire me. It works. Where am I from already? Okay, born in Phoenix, Arizona, to parents who were born and bred in Southern Indiana. I was mostly raised in Northern Indiana and in the mountains of North Carolina, but my parents travelled a bunch and took Kelli and me most everywhere. But at our core, we're sturdy Midwesterners with solid values, good Southern manners, and generally good dispositions. While I'm pretty well-travelled, I'm about as urban as a tomato plant. Give me mountains over the beach any day, within reasonable distance to the nearest supermarket. I'll manage. What am I like ? Depends who you ask. Most of my good friends will tell you that I'm pretty laid-back, got my head on straight, rather goofy, and nice to small children and animals. I have a low tolerance for loud people, the blissfully ignorant, racists, and lazies. I sometimes have an overabundance of energy that I try to channel into interesting projects, but sometimes it just keeps me up at night. I worry unnecessarily about things that are out of my control. I don't dress up much, and wear sensible shoes and sunblock. My favorite color is yellow. Some people say I'm sort of hard to get to know. Maybe that's good. Helps to weed out the creeps before you're all big buddy with them, and it becomes too late to give them a friendly boot. I have a couple of borderline horror stories that I suppose I could tell you sometime about those-who-tried-to-get-too-friendly-too-fast. You know the types. They think that because you've been hanging out for a couple of weeks that they're your psychic friend. They want to feel your pain, even though you don't really have any. They're uncomfortably sentimental. They say things like, "I know what you're really thinking, but you don't want to say it." At that point, I'm usually thinking, "dude, you're freaking me out." But they're right--I don't want to say it. My guess is that they have absolutely no idea what's on my mind. Sometimes, I wonder if they know what's on theirs. |
