Lesson 11 - Interview questions

Copy the 20 sentences below into a document called My Interview Questions. Take time to write thoughtful answers to each question as if you need to help me capture the essential reality of who you are so that I can depict you accurately. Pretend that you and I are face to face, speaking to each other.

1. How would you describe yourself in three sentences?
I’ve had to think about this as I write profiles for a blog, a book review, etc. Nothing ever seems just right.

I’m a 39 wife and mother to two great step children. I’m a writer and enjoy networking with others of like minds.

2. What have you done that you are proud of?
I wrote a fan fiction that I am sill enormously proud of. I still reread it and make changes and corrections to it. It’s given me the power to get back into writing. I’m proud that I waited to marry a man I could love and respect and would let me be myself but be partner too.

3. Do you have any bad habits?
Lots of them! Most especially procrastination and a tendency towards reclusiveness.

4. How do you feel about the way you look?
I honestly don’t like the way I look. I’m too heavy, not toned, have always battled acne even at my age. I’m unconcerned about clothes and shoes (to the dismay of my husband and mother-in-law).

5. What kind of work do you do?
I work in an office now, 8-5. Most of what I do uses my organizational skills, my ability to project into the future, communication skills. Some of it is repetitive while other parts are always changing.

6. How do you feel about your parents?
Lots of mixed feelings on this end. Only within the last few years have my father and I gotten a long. It’s like once I got married, we finally had something in common. My mom I have a lot of guilt over. We were estranged for a long time and I hadn’t realized what a resource she was in my life. Now she is terminally ill and we have reconciled but there is some of me that can’t go back to the way things were before the estrangement. Especially now that I will lose her permanently.

7. How do you feel about each of your siblings?
Again, mixed feelings. My sister is 10 years older than I am and moved out of the house when I was 6. We didn’t get to know each other until we were adults. She’s made a lot of choices in her life that I wouldn’t have made and I get tired of listening to her place blame for those choices on others.

8. What's your attitude toward money?
Like money but hate bills. It’s been especially hard since I changed jobs and lost about $800 a month income. My husband and I are both bad about budgeting and seem to never get around to it. That shows both our attitudes.

9. Tell me about your childhood in one paragraph.
I have a really hard time remembering my childhood most of the time and what I remember, isn’t pretty. Running away from home for a few hours when I was about 8, trying to commit suicide on the playground, my mother chasing my sister with a butcher knife... There are some vague happy memories especially after my mother got sober and after my parents divorced; going for a driving vacation along the 101 highway with mom and her friend, a birthday at Magic Mountain, another at Disneyland . By then I was starting to be a teenager though, so not quite a child.

10. What's your philosophy of life?
Live life by your own rules. As long as you don’t hurt others, do what you will.

11. How do you like to spend your free time?
Reading mostly, that’s part of the repulsiveness. Spending time with friends, hiking, writing, watching TV, spending time with my husband.

12. If you could have three wishes, what would they be?

1. To get my novel published and have positive feedback about it.

2. To live life without fear

3. To be my own person and react less to criticisms even well-meaning ones.

13. What kinds of people do you dislike?
Intolerant people. I like to say I can’t tolerate intolerance.

14. What do you do when you're upset?
Shut down. Usually I get really quiet. It’s when I journal most. It’s taken me a lot of work to voice when I am upset to my husband.

15. Who are your heroes?
Those people who live/d their life without asking for permission or forgiveness... Malcolm X, Howard Rourke from the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand, religious/spiritual folks whose words resonate with me - Morpheus Ravenna, Orion Foxwood, Caroline Myss, T. Thorn Coyle.

16. What are some of your favorite expressions?
“Some mornings it’s not worth chewing through the straps.” Emo Williams (I think)
“Well-behaved women rarely make history.” Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

17. What is a common posture for you when you sit?
Slumped over the keyboard. :)

18. What is your attitude when you meet new people?
It depends. If I am in situation where I know some people, I can be open and smiling. At work and in situations where I don’t know anyone, I am pretty wary. Because I am Wiccan, I sometimes have to be careful around new people and censor myself more.

19. What distinguishing habits of speech do you have?
I use the vocabulary I know. I use words like “incongruous” not to show I I know big words, but because that in the precise word for my meaning. It means not harmonious. “Mismatched” doesn’t convey quite the same idea.

20. How do you feel when socializing?
Awkward. I don’t like people easily. I have been told I am stand-offish. I think I am more easy going online. Again, because my spiritual and religious practice takes up a large part of my thoughts, time and energy, it’s important to me and if someone is going to bash me for it, I don’t need to know them. Not to say that all my friends are pagan. I have Christian friends and we get along well. We may even talk religion, but I accept I am not going to change their opinions, and they won’t change mine. But to me, it’s stimulating to share ideas and learn more about what’s important to each other that way.