1) Youngest of 3. [the first/only child – middle child – youngest child personality thing seems to be more or less true. I am the baby 😛
2) I have a rich inner world that doesn’t mind interacting with the outer one, except at parties.
3) I don’t like most parties and we have too many here. They’re not my friends, and I hate small talk, so I hide.
4) Being “professional” comes easy for me. It’s a script that you can improvise once you know the ‘attitude’ and it’s acting. But I genuinely care about the other person – whoever I’m working with, as I’m a coach/counsellor/therapist/psychologist/friend by nature, so I let that come through as much as I can.
5) I’ve always been obsessed with alt forms of communication. Never got a Ham Radio license (although I bought a used one once and set up a crazy antenna out of a few spools of wire – and keyed the mic a few times, but not having a License, I didn’t feel right transmitting. I wasn’t an official member, and it’s not my clubhouse.
But I did have a CB radio, which I used freely for years until the Internet came along and I switched. I loved meeting all the weird locals at Duncan Donuts and I was one of them 😛
People from 9-88 would show up at those things and everybody was friendly.
6) I never read Lord of the Rings all the way through. Or Chronicles of Narnia. Or Twilight. Or Hunger Games. Or Harry Potter. I know the stories through and through, but I’m too impatient to read every word.
7) I’m always busy. I do what’s important to me, which is sometimes business related, sometimes house related, sometimes project related, but I always have an “audience” in mind when I work on anything. The ultimate question for me is always “*who am I doing this for?*”
1) I’m the youngest of three children. The stuff they say about the personalities of “oldest/only, middle, youngest” child seems to be nearly absolutely true. I’m totally the baby.
4) Spoonerisms (flipping the first and last parts of two different words around) comes naturally for me. So does moving words around, and I’m a natural living thesaurus; somewhat of a curse, because I see many alternative possibilities while I write or talk of the words that I _could_ choose. This resulted in bad stuttering as a kid. They fixed it in the 3rd grade for me for the most part; but speaking in public for more than a few moments always leaves me tongue tied.
7) People think I’m a good listener. Truth is, i was born over 1/2 deaf, so i’ve learned to pay closer attention to what people are saying and to “fake” my way through conversations, picking up just enough of what someone is saying to “fill in the gaps” and understand them.
This training has spilled over into my online life as well. I pay more attention to what’s ‘behind’ what someone is saying, beyond the words. I also get it wrong sometimes.
3) I’ve always had an interest in computers/electronics. Much like Richard. I knew how to operate a computer before I had one, and I gravitated towards them immediately, even more than video games. I was an 80s gamer, just the same but programming was always more interesting.
4) I had a CB Radio obsession as a teenager. Never progressed to Ham radio, although I taught myself Morse code for fun as a kid. [I think it’s not a requirement now]. I enjoyed talking to strangers around town and meeting with them at the Duncan Donuts.
As soon as I had my first modem in 1988, I was online at a whopping 300 bps. That’s bytes. BYTES. Everything I enjoyed doing on the CB Radio, I did online as well and more.
But mostly socializing and getting to know people. I always gravitated towards “alternate” socializing like these.
6) I know a little something about every one of my followers. It’s in my head. I see someone’s name or avatar and it sparks some kind of memory about them. Not everybody to the same degree; but it’s like a ‘feeling” I get about them and sometimes there’s a solid memory of my experience with them, even if it was a short exchange once 7 years ago.
Sometimes I’ll know someone by who they know; and I may not know much about them at all; but just the same, I get a ‘sense’ of what that person is like.
I almost said “like in real life” – but this *is* real life. Even when faking, the real “you” still comes through at some level. Nobody’s a perfect actor 😛
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