Coming back from the other side of my Bipolar Wonderland through medication, creativity, and moxie.
List three books that have had an impact on you. Why?
Three books that had an impact on me growing up were:
1. Grimm’s Fairy Tales: inspired my love of folklore
2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: my first book I was taught to read
3. Clan of the Cave Bear: a book that could make reality a little less stressful when reading it.
Describe one simple thing you do that brings joy to your life.
Crocheting, snuggling my partner, and squishmallows.
What jobs have you had?
So many.
Like, in the twenty four years I’ve been working or volunteering, I’ve had more than a dozen jobs.
Some of my favorites were server, craft teacher, candy striper, theater tech, and a summer camp counselor.
Do you practice religion?
I am a practicing Pagan. I am a person of faith, but I don’t know if I consider myself as practicing a religion.
What are you good at?
There are several things I am good at, in my humble opinion.
I am good at being empathetic. Good at crocheting and being anxious. Good at being kind to others, not as good at self-aimed kindness.
I am good at typing on a typewriter, at hand writing thank you notes, and a hundred other little lost arts that have nearly no place in the digitized world of today.
I’m good at panic cleaning and depression napping, at rhyming a spell by the third draft, and reading far too fast.
I am good at being a friend.
How do you feel about cold weather?
Cold weather is my ideal weather. Despite my decade plus spent in the south going to college and after, winter is my favorite season.
Cold weather is wonderful. Layers of warm clothes, holidays that gather family members together, and just the glory that is snowfall. I love it.
There is just something about the silence of snow that is wonderful to me. Mind you, I despise driving in it, because I never learned to drive in snow and my car, before it got wrecked, had just gotten snow tires.
I can appreciate other seasons, but cold weather times are my favorite.
Have you ever broken a bone?
The honest answer is “I don’t know”. I might have broken some knuckles back in my hot-tempered teenage years, as I was an angry, scrappy thing.
But as for major bones? I don’t think so. I’ve pulled a few muscles, sprained some ankles, but I don’t think I’ve broken any major bones.
What sacrifices have you made in life?
Too many to name, for people that didn’t always deserve my attention.
What’s the oldest things you’re wearing today?
The oldest thing I’m wearing today is my pentacle. It’s on a chain my grandmother wore, then my mother, then me. I’ve been wearing it since 2003, literally twenty years now.
List your top 5 favorite fruits.
1. Granny Smith Apples
2. Green Seedless Grapes
3. Cherries
4. Lemons
5. Mandarin Oranges
What is your career plan?
It’s less a path, more a seldom-navigated deer track in the woods. I have a day job that I might turn into a career.
But in my heart of hearts, I want to be a published author. I want to sell my stories and be able to support myself.
Writing is my love.
What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
A job I’d like to do for just one day, just to fulfill my childhood dream, is be a bartender at a tiny, hole in the wall, nowheresville bar. Just once.
I wanted so badly to be a great server and bartender when I was growing up. My mom worked at TGIFriday’s when I was a kid and somewhere in the world is a picture of little six or seven year old me wearing her uniform shirt like a dress.
Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?
In times of strife or stubble, much like I am going through right now, I bring to mind Max Ehrmann’s poem Desiderata. It is a few years shy of a century old poem, but resonates so strongly with me in so many ways.
One line in particular strikes a chord with me to the point of wanting to get it tattooed onto me:
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.
Max Ehrmann, 1927
source: https://www.desiderata.com/desiderata.html
That last line in particular helps me. “You have a right to be here.” I don’t always feel that I do. I don’t often feel like I wish to be here. It’s a daily battle I wage against my own brain gremlins.
I hate that I’m suicidal. It makes me feel like I’m weak or something.
All I can do is keep going.
Postmark Wonderland 