and for the new year: five things you don't know about me
I usually don't do the meme thing, but solely so the tag doesn't stop there, I will. people I'd like to see take up the torch: my sister kristel (so she will resurrect her website), kyle matthews (ditto), jacquelyn seigle (because she is brilliant), alex kleeman (ditto), and nick sweeney (ditto, ditto).
five things you don't know about me
I lived in Australia for a year. way back in 1994, my whole family migrated to Sydney and I attended a private school for girls. my uniform was a blue-and-white gingham pinafore, a blue straw hat and a blazer. I befriended two taiwanese girls, one of whom taught me the only piece of origami I know under an enormous tree near the school gates one lunchtime. we spent our time concocting bizarre games that involved running imaginary magic obstacle courses in the school corridors. I had my first ever experience of a heated swimming pool. and I have the fondest ever memories of eating fresh takeaway fish and chips on the edge of a pier in darling harbour, under a spectacular december sky.
I used to be a cheerleader. and in sixth form, a classmate and I founded a contemporary dance team together. we gleefully, adolescently called ourselves 'Off-Limits'; the logo was emblazoned across the chests of our matching custom tank tops. we choreographed and performed dances to some really shameful pop songs: britney spears, limp bizkit, n'sync, janet jackson and christina milian, to name a few. there were ten of us, and we enthusiastically rehearsed during lunchtimes and after school in the main foyer, where small primary school children would walk past goggle-eyed while we rocked those hip gyrations. good times.
I took the MENSA test when I was 15 and again when I was 18; the scores were 176 and 178 respectively, but I remember finding the later test much harder. in a fit of early member enthusiasm, I agreed to be a columnist for the society magazine. my column never made it past the third dispatch. 15-year-old me sucked at the whole pressured serial writing thing; clearly, not much has changed since then.
I am a huge terry pratchett fan. from about ages 12 to 15, I clocked almost 250 days of real playing time, spread out over the three years, playing discworld MUD, an online multiplayer game based on pratchett's discworld novels. I would come home from school every day, log on and complete quests, kill NPCs, chat, idle, TM my skills, gain experience points and level-chase until I went to sleep. I became a Creator for the MUD and learned to code (badly) in LPC. I met people on discworld that I met up with in real life and still know today. at one point I almost had more online friends than real friends. in short, I am an enormous geek. seriously.
I am chronically inert. it's taken me a lot of growth and self-pushing to overcome this, and even today I'm a terrible procrastinator unless I force some sort of schedule structure into my life. I am abysmal with deadlines, and I am either super-organized or in a complete mess; there is no in-between. part of this stems from an ingrown perfectionism; I am like a dancer who wants to be perfectly still until the very moment when she can execute a dance perfectly. it's taken me a long time to realize that this is a form of paralysis. and I still suffer from it; I struggle with the idea of drafts, attempts, rewrites, mistakes, failures. not so long ago, if I wrote a page of notes and made a mistake near the bottom of the page, I had to start over. you see, there are no in-between stages of perfection. but recognition is half the battle won, so, you know, I suppose I'm not doing half-badly.