twenty five

[jazzfish]

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

The heck with "supposed to." On the other hand I'm bored this week and have a short attention span.

1. I only use Facebook because it's got a really good iPhone client, and there are a handful of people on there that aren't on LJ that I'm highly interested in keeping up with. I much prefer LJ in general.
   
   
2. I go by 'Tucker' in real life because when I started high school there were too many people named Jo(h)n, and this cute girl a year older than me told me "You look like a Tucker."
   
   
3. I go by 'jazzfish' online because of Howie Green, Steph Drinkard, Virginia Tech's refusal to allow remote access to their mail servers during the summer of 1996, and the guy who snagged tucker@juno.com before I did.
   
   
4. People I've wanted to be when I grow up have included Harrison Ford, Roger Zelazny, Andy Looney, and John M. Ford.
   
   
5. Everything can be improved by adding cinnamon.
   
   
6. I'm a military brat. This has given me the ability to make fast and accurate assessments of people, the conviction that anything that's not perfect isn't good enough, and the instinct to "solve" difficult personal problems by cutting all ties to the situation.
   
   
7. I've always preferred Peanuts to Calvin and Hobbes.
   
   
8. I've been using a computer since I was five.
   
   
9. I've been in love with the Pacific Northwest since about two days after I stepped off the plane in Seattle three years ago. I've been utterly smitten with Vancouver specifically since my too-brief visit there last spring.
   
   
10. Spending more than an hour or two around people I don't know well is unspeakably exhausting. In the extreme case it can reduce me to tears afterwards.
    
    
11. When I used to tell my parents I wanted to be a writer, they'd always ask me how I was going to put food on the table. This leaves me with the moral obligation to take them out to dinner with the proceeds from the first story I sell.
    
    
12. I'm polyamorous and straight. This makes finding people to date harder, rather than easier.
    
    
13. I bring my lunch to work most every day. Usually it's a peanut butter sandwich.
    
    
14. What I miss from high school is the sense of being almost accepted by a big group of people, and sometimes being mistaken for one of them.
    
    
15. I used to think I was a libertarian, or maybe even a Republican, out of laziness and long habit. Abu Ghraib (and responses thereto) convinced me that the Right and I had nothing to say to each other, so I spent a couple of months in summer 2004 trying to figure out where I really stand. "Way to the left of most people I meet" seems to be the answer.
    
    
16. I try coffee once a year or so, just to reaffirm that I still can't stand it.
    
    
17. I have one published playtest credit (in Playing with Pyramids) and two published magazine articles: a game review in Pyramid sometime in 2000, and an article for some sort of gifts magazine sometime in late 2006 or early 2007.
    
    
18. Six years as a Boy Scout (made Eagle, made Vigil) burned out my capacity to enjoy the outdoors. It's coming back but it's required nurturing.
    
    
19. I didn't want to start fourth grade, because that was the first time I was going to be at the same school for two years running.
    
    
20. The xkcd tech support flowchart hangs outside my cube, in the vain hope that my coworkers will use it and leave me alone.
    
    
21. I had several hamsters in sixth through eighth grade. None of them lived longer than six months. The last died within days of moving to the DC area.
    
    
22. It's not so much that I don't believe in a deity as that my worldview doesn't require one.
    
    
23. I get around six hours of sleep a night. I can operate on five, but after a few nights in a row I start requiring an afternoon nap.
    
    
24. My current car is named Straylight and has no gender. My previous car was Glyndwr ("glen-dooer") and was definitely masculine.
    
    
25. I'll know when I'm dead because then I'll stop acquiring unread books.

Comments

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

and the instinct to "solve" difficult personal problems by cutting all ties to the situation.

This is my style too. It worked really well when we moved every couple years and I never had to deal with the same people again. Now that I've been in the same area for 16 years... it's starting to get difficult to go to parties.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

I was going to say- I'm not a military brat, but I've picked up the same style of dealing with people. I'm an immigrant, but I lived in the same place from 3.5 to 19, so I should feel rooted.

For me, I think it's that I had a hard time finding a social group growing up, so I learned that my social network was likely to reshuffle every year anyway. I'm not one of the people that has a bunch of friends I've known since I was twelve. The defining event of my adult life is my divorce (I don't think I was an adult before that, really) and that also involve cutting pretty much all of my social ties. I had hoped that things would change when I made friends with adults as an adult, but this has not proven to be the case.

Overall, I've learned that people are optional and bad ones aren't worth the bother of trying to live with. Like you, this means a lot of parties I don't go to anymore.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

Overall, I've learned that people are optional and bad ones aren't worth the bother of trying to live with.

I just learned this sometime in the past year. I am much happier for it. :)

[jazzfish]

people are optional and bad ones aren't worth the bother of trying to live with.

That's definitely true. And the good ones are worth the bother. I think they're even worth the bother of working past the rough patches in the relationship. Instead, my instinct, which is one I'm having a lot of trouble shaking, is to first gloss over any problems, and then write the people off entirely when the problems become too big to ignore.

this means a lot of parties I don't go to anymore.

When I can remember that I don't like parties very much, this is a lot less of a problem for me.

[uilos.livejournal.com]

I'm at the point where there are people in my life who really stress me out just by being around them. I want to cut them out, but I'm somewhat terrified that if I cut any of them out, I won't have a social like to speak of.

[pictsy.livejournal.com]

Sometime in the past year I decided to make my mental health a priority over everything else, and I am SO MUCH HAPPIER now that I've cut those people out. I just found other things to do. :)

[jazzfish]

What I'm starting to notice is that some of the same problems keep cropping up in my relationships (small-r and big-R both). This suggests that perhaps there's something I can do to prevent them in the first place, or resolve them before they get to the "see ya" stage.

Not that this is applicable in all situations. There are people that I'm better off without, and I've not got such a shortage of good people around that I can't afford to rid myself of the bad ones. (A lesson that's been long and hard in the learning, and not really put into practice yet. Soon.)

[jmax315.livejournal.com]

...I'll stop acquiring unread books

Optimist.

[tamnonlinear.livejournal.com]

Depends on the funeral plans, really.

[jazzfish]

Pessimist, actually. What's the point of life if not to surround yourself with books you've not yet had the joy of reading?

[jmax315.livejournal.com]

Well, yeah... was refering solely to the premise that your death would be sufficient to stop the inflow of books. Myself, I fully expect at least one Amazon order to be in transit at the time of my demise.

[jazzfish]

. . . you know, I think my grandfather may have had at least one in transit. Seems like a good way to go.

[isolde-deely.livejournal.com]

#12 - am that - same issue. I'm just not the "hot bi babe" everyone is looking for

#20 actually was put in an email at work. I have it in my mousepad cover :)

[jazzfish]

Yeah, but you /do/ have two of the three going for you there, at least.

*laugh* That works.

[isolde-deely.livejournal.com]

aww thanks