Interviewed by Embedded Pain

The Interview

The Ground Rules:

1. Leave a comment saying you want to be interviewed.

2. I will respond and ask you five questions.

3. You’ll update your journal with my five questions and your five answers.

4. You’ll include this explanation.

5. You’ll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

 

1. What is your fondest memory of childhood and why?

This is a hard question for me. For one thing, where do I draw the "childhood" line? I think my best bet is probably to cut it off at the start of high school, so that leaves 13.5 years of memories to draw on.  The other thing that makes this a difficult question is my distance from childhood at this point.  I don’t mean that in the sense that I am removed by many many years from that time of my life. I mean that whereas I once longed for that simplicity, I think I’m beginning to ground myself more firmly in the adult world, looking forward rather than backward.  That said, there are moments that stand out as particular to childhood.  The memory I would choose stands out to me as remarkably free from adult influence, which I suppose is why I can now look back on it without the taint of adult motives.  It was late fall or early winter when I was maybe 12 or 13, and my friends and I were at Erica’s grandparents’ house.  It was cold, but not snowy, and not cold enough to stop us from shedding our shoes and jumping on their trampoline for what felt like hours.  We laughed ourselves sick with knocking each other over and fluffing up our staticky hair and zapping each other.  It was so simple and such (literally) unadulterated fun.

2. Could you conjecture where you would be had you not met Alan?

Another tough question, since so many of my subsequent decisions have been based on the idea of a future with him in it.  In the first place, I would probably have stayed at UConn.  Although my decision was ultimately for the best regardless of his influence, I’d have to say that Alan was the catalyst in that decision. It’s also possible that I would have transferred to a different school entirely.  The likelihood of my remaining at UConn also raises the risk of other things. I drank a lot there, for one thing, and I slept around for another. Neither is a particularly positive behavior, and both probably would have contributed to a worsening of my bipolar disorder.  As it was, I had already tried UConn’s mental health services and found it woefully lacking and gave up on it very quickly.  The odds are high that I would have ignored my symptoms to the point of possible self-destruction.  The flush of my relationship with Alan also kept those demons at bay for quite a long time.  He’s also been extremely supportive, an attitude I might not have found in the random frivolous relationships I had there.  So while I won’t go so far as to say that I would be dead without him, I may very well have had to drop out of school to deal with a very serious mental illness and I may very well have been committed, as my symptoms have been severe at times.

3. Why aren’t you an author?!… Or an editor, at the very least?

This goes straight to the heart of my most major failing in life. I never finish anything.  I’ve written rough drafts, but I’ve never gone back and edited them and shaped them into something presentable.  So I’ve never submitted them.  I’d like to change that, and I’m going to try this year to edit both of my NaNo manuscripts.  As for not being an editor, well I was never a joiner.  I never wrote for a school newspaper or even participated in its production.  I never interned at either a paper or a publishing house, and I’ve found that even the most junior, entry-level editorial positions require more than a year of experience.  I don’t have it.

4. What’s your favorite genre of books and why?

Another hard one, given my incredibly high rate of book consumption.  Loosely, I would say Young Adult fiction, but I would also follow that up with the subheading of Fantasy. In my experience, fantasy tends to be a more traditional "coming-of-age" story that you don’t get very often with newer teen stories. In fantasy, the young person must overcome not only the traditional adolescent conflicts (attempting to forge their own path, find their own identity, etc.) but they must cope with these things while dealing with adult situations, so that the resulting identity is an adult identity, rather than a purely adolescent one.  I also like typical "adult" fantasy, though I find that it usually takes itself way too seriously, so I lean to somewhat more lighthearted fair, like Terry Pratchett.  I also very much enjoy cultural studies and history.  In that category, I’m a bit of a sucker for the bubonic plague. Yeah, kinda weird, I know.

5. If you could SELFISHLY spend $1000, what would you buy?

A sofa. Seriously.  Maybe a whole living room set.  Hehe… Of course, that requires having a living room at least as large as the average college dorm room, which ours is not (unless that dorm room is a single, LOL).  Such a thing would make me very happy, which just goes to show how thoroughly domestic I’ve become.  I just really hate this futon.  With anything left over I would buy clothes (like I really need any more) and books (I definitely don’t need any more).

 

Those were really good questions, I must say.  I’ve got more to say, but it’s almost ten o’clock, I’m still in my pj’s. Hey, gimme a break, I woke up with the mother of all headaches.  The fact that I’m vertical is an accomplishment right now.

~Liz