Caleb Booker

So I’m flying along, minding my own business, when *POW* I get smacked by Gwyneth Llewelyn’s tag. Now I have to write eight things about myself, and tag another eight people to do the same. It’s like one of those horrible chain letters I generally hit “reply” to with a bunch of angry comments. I’ll start it with: “Chain letters are one thing, but you actually expect me to participate in an old worn-out blogmeme? Why you…”

Except… well… it’s Gwyn. In Second Life’s blogosphere she’s like everybody’s awesome cool aunt that you wish you had more time to hang out with. Seriously, are YOU gonna be the guy to tell off your cool Aunt Gwyn? No, I didn’t think so. Guess I’m screwed.

THA RULEZ for the “Eight Random Facts Blogmeme”:

1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

Hooboy… alright, let’s give this a shot. Why the hell am I feeling nervous? Weird. Anyhow. Here:

1. I tend to become completely obsessed with things until I feel like I understand them “enough”. I studied world religions, both ancient and recent, for years. I used to be a code-monkey. A games geek. Customer service expert. Journalism nerd. Virtual Worlds Guru. I studied film for ages. I could go on. This is not to be confused with “flighty”, although it can seem that way. Everything is fascinating.

2. I think guilt is a plague. It’s a useless albatross of a thing that has never helped anyone. You did what you did. If you don’t like that you did it, don’t do it again. Time spent in regret is time wasted. If you hurt me I don’t care how you feel about it, just don’t do it again.

3. Journalism is still interesting to me, but I have to face facts: I like making things move. Inspiring people to make things move is not not not the same thing.

4. Remember point #1? It has lead me down almost every strange path you can think of. Name the oddity. You probably don’t have it in you to weird me out.

5. I’ve been able to say that this has been the best year of my life for several years now. Of course, I’ve been a miserable SOB for a good portion of my life. Depressed as a child, needy in my teens, dark in my early twenties, and I clawed my way up to moody in my late twenties. I hid it well most of the time; most people had no idea. Life is completely kick-ass of late, mostly because I decided I’d rather just be happy.

By the way, it’s not that I was particularly hard done by. I just had a habit of feeling miserable. It’s addictive, you know.

6. When I was a kid we used to make these elastic-band guns that got pretty elaborate. You put a nail in one end, attach a clothespin to the other end, and then take the metal part out of a wooden clothespin and put a thick elastic through it. Loop the elastic around the nail, and clip the metal bit into the clothespin. You have to have GOOD clothespins for these that hold it really tight so that the elastic can be stretched far.

Once I pointed one at my sister as a joke and right at that moment the clothespin holding the elastic broke off and went flying at her. Boy did I ever get in trouble.

7. I am filled with stories I want to tell but am currently unable to express. They’re beating against the insides of me waiting for release. Moments of joy, horror, rage, numbness, hilarity, and humility… they’re so clear and crystallized in my thinking. I am studying up on writing fiction to let them out.

8. Technology, and how it affects people, has been a point of fascination for me since I can remember. My earliest memory of it…

I remember standing on the street in front of our house. It was overcast, maybe early afternoon. There were no cars. I felt the asphalt under my shoes, and looked down the street. It stretched on until there was a hill and I couldn’t see any further.

In my mind’s eye I continued the line that was connected to my feet, and saw it pass the park, my friend’s house, my school. Uninterrupted, the path continued to where we bought groceries, but even further to the library and the zoo and to Gradma’s house in St. Catharines.

I was connected to all of these places… and I started to think that maybe the road connected me to other places too. Maybe this road connects to roads in cities so far away that they don’t speak my language, and kids don’t watch TV, and they don’t have snow in the winter.

I remember getting down on one knee and touching the rough asphalt with my fingertips, and thinking that maybe somewhere really far away someone else was doing the same thing and thinking about someone like me.

For me, that was the beginning.

———————

I’m going to pick on Jenn Hienrichs to tag, but I’m not going to propagate the evil meme further than that. Why did I pick on Jenn? No reason… just been looking for an excuse to link her. Looking forward to seeing what Tara5 Oh comes up with too.

Posted on December 10th, 2007 under writing. RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback.