So, here’s the thing. I’m kind of boring when I’m writing. I can’t tell you what’s going on with my characters right now, and that’s really the bulk of what’s going on with me at the moment. But I realized the other day that I started the 100 things meme and stopped at 79 in May of 2009. I think it’s time to get back to it!
80. I compose e-mails in my head while I’m away from the computer. Which is great, until I think I’ve actually sent the email when I haven’t. I wish there were a way to just download my thoughts and send them. I’ve tried dictation software, but it’s not effective for me. So if you feel I owe you an e-mail, there’s a big chance that it’s bouncing around my brain.
81. I don’t like birthdays, so I don’t tend to tell people when mine is. One of my friends feels it’s unfair that I know his birthday when he doesn’t know mine. He’s been calling every day since mid-January to sing happy birthday to my voicemail in protest. If you do know when my birthday is, don’t tell. Let’s see how long he keeps it up.
82. The birthday thing has nothing to do with age, I just like ordinary days better than “special” ones.
83. I have a high tolerance/need for alone time. I absolutely love people and can be incredibly social, but I have learned that I’m most productive when I balance that with time alone.
84. I have a fear of having a fear of heights (Acrophobiaphobia?). At Ithaca, I had to do set construction crew for a show freshman year. I was kind of a tomboy and spent a lot of time climbing trees as a kid. So when they needed someone to climb up to the catwalk, lean over the railing, and grab a backdrop hanging a few feet away, I volunteered, because I thought it would be cool to get to walk around up there. I climbed up (I think it was 60 feet in the air, but maybe this has turned into a fish story – 40 feet?), got halfway across the catwalk and started to grab for the backdrop. I suddenly thought that if I pulled too hard when I grabbed the backdrop, I could stumble and fall off the other side of the catwalk. The next thing I knew I was on my hands and knees and COULD NOT MOVE. AT ALL. My body completely gave out on me, and it came out of nowhere. It took the crew chief and a few other crew members about 20 minutes to talk me down. Someone finally had to come up and crawl back down with me, step by step. It was mortifying, and so frightening to have my body/mind fail on me that way. Now, I get major heebie jeebies about heights, but it’s not a fear of falling as much as a fear of triggering that kind of fear response. I never want to feel that frozen again.
85. As a teenager, I worked in an office that played adult contemporary music over the intercom. As a result, I know the words to an obscenely wide array of easy listening songs, which I sing at J when random words/situations remind me of them. For example: Getting a bogie in Wii golf the other day meant J had to listen to me singing this all afternoon.
86. I completely and totally realize how lucky I am to have married a man with such a great sense of humor and incredible patience.
I’m well aware of this powerful ritual. In my case its writing in a journal and have been since I was 12. You can see I was able to talk about journals on my http://about.me/michaelpokocky. There’s a link to Snap shot and Notebooks featured on Moleskine. So I know what I’m talking about. There are not to many people that have kept this great habit up for as long as my 55 years has allowed, and hopefully many more. I tweeted you on no.80 with the idea of using Evernote. I got it on my iMac, my Blackberry and PC and sync is automatic. I posted on http://Facebook.com/AntresolCafe a story of how Tim Ferris used Evernote to write his last book. Have a look and write me mwpokocky(Replace this parenthesis with the @ sign)gmail.com if you want me to help or to expand. ~thefox (michael pokocky)
I’m kind of amazed when I remember the lyrics to a song I don’t own, haven’t heard in years, and yet remember from start to finish. Maybe we heard those terrible 80s soft rock songs when our brains were still young and spongy and they just stayed there.
Oh my goodness, so many of these could be about me. I compose e-mails and blog posts in my head, and they’re never as good when I actually get around to typing them on the computer.
I’m not a birthday person at all, but mostly because I hate feeling pressured to have this amazing day, when so many of my birthdays have been disasters. I also need my alone time!
I also have a ridiculously large knowledge of ’70s and ’80s easy listening songs. I blame my dad’s poor taste in music and his listening to the easy listening radio station any time we were in the car. The sad things is, I’ll even admit to liking a lot of the music, but I think it’s mostly for the nostalgia. (I had totally forgotten about that song though!)
P.S. No one named Bertie Higgins would ever hit it big these days. I hope he enjoyed his 15 minutes :)
I do #80 a bit, too. But my real problem is when I do that with conversations, because I’ll have a conversation with someone in my head and then forget if it actually happened or not. That’s why a lot of my conversations begin “Stop me if we’ve already gone over this…”