5 Things You Don’t Know About Me
I’ve decided to blog about something a bit different. I’ve seen other people share an occasional personal blog to show their personalities and I thought it was a nice idea. So here I am, giving you a glimpse into my personal life and history.
I was an only child. My father was in the Air Force and we moved a lot in the first 10 years of my life. We lived in Florida, California (in multiple towns) and Oklahoma until he retired to a state job in Syracuse, NY. When I was 2, my maternal grandfather passed away and my grandma came to live with us. It was great having her around for my entire childhood. Every year we would travel across the country to visit my paternal grandparents in Upstate NY. As an only child, these trips could be very boring. And that leads to the next entry.
I’m an avid reader. When you’re an only child of only children, you find yourself in the company of adults a lot … and their conversation choices are not very interesting to a child. So I carried a book with me everywhere. I remember reading in the car on all of those cross-country road trips and using the headlights of the car behind us to continue reading after dark. I also learned that parents rarely say, “No,” to a child asking for a book. It was a guaranteed purchase, unlike the Barbie accessories or Hello Kitty stuff. Speaking of Barbies, I used to act out Sweet Valley High books with my Barbies. And I may have made one of the first books-on-tape when I recorded myself reading Superfudge.
I have a lot of hobbies. As an adult, I find I have a hard time sitting for any length of time and not doing something with my hands. It usually leads to mindless eating. To counteract this, I do all sorts of hobbies to help keep my hands busy. While enjoying a Netflix marathon, I can also be found cross-stitching, coloring, working in a puzzle magazine, doing a Paint by Sticker book, playing solitaire on my iPad, or whatever new fad I’ve come up with. (Someone mentioned diamond cross stitching the other day … must check that out.)
I love Nashville, TN! It’s my happy place. My mother’s as well. It’s our happy place. We used to go to Nashville multiple times a year but have cut it back to once a year, for Tin Pan South, a songwriting festival in the spring. To be honest, I’m not a huge fan of popular country music, but I love great songwriting. And Nashville has some amazing songwriters. If a song can make me feel something, it doesn’t matter to me what genre it is. Just none of that ‘Bro-Country.’ Ugh. Enough with the fast cars and even faster girls … Give me a good heartbreak every time. But I digress … The best part of Nashville is that the caliber of musicians playing in the little honky-tonks is amazing. And since I’m over the large stadium concerts, it fits my aesthetic perfectly. And songwriter rounds where the original writer of a popular song is singing it … that beats the famous singer by a mile. There’s so much more emotion from the person who wrote it.
I’m an amateur concert photographer. My mother and I travel a lot to see some of our favorite musicians and my photography is a direct result of that. I used to use a cheap point-and-shoot and managed to get some pretty good shots in those dark venues by controlling the ISO. Then I got my first low-end Canon DSLR and a 50mm lens. And it was glorious. I joke that I learned how to take photos the hardest way, with no light, and I struggle when there is light. I also enjoy taking candid shots at gatherings and have dabbled in a bit of urban exploring. If you’d like to see some of my photography, it can be found here.
I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about me. I’m sure there’s a lot more I could share, but that’s a blog post for another day.
