It's a meme kind of week
Jul. 21st, 2010 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
batskeetsAnd now, five questions, courtesy of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daemonwise :
1. When was the last time you were happily scared?
It had to be when we moved up to Portland in 2007. A large part of how the decision to move came about was because my roommates and I were essentially being kicked out of the house we'd been living in, so the owner could sell it. Things happened pretty quickly, and as excited as I was, there was also a lot of potential for terrifying results. What if I can't find a job? What if I don't make any friends? What if I end up on the street, juggling swords and weaving baskets to make ends meet?
But, all told, it was a blessing. I love this town and could be happy in it for a very, very long time. :)
2. How did you get into martial arts/Wushu?
My introduction to wushu was entirely the fault ofjunsiew . Our moms have been friends for years, and she's basically the awesome younger sister I never had, so when she came down to the UO for college, we wound up in the same Japanese language class, and spent a lot of time kicking around together on-campus.
She got pulled into the UO Wushu Club by another friend of hers, but the club was *much* smaller then: maybe half-a-dozen or so people would show up to train with any regularity, and she was often the only girl at practice. Of course, at the time, I tipped the scales at ~220 lbs. or so, and even in my thinner days, I'd never been anything even remotely resembling a natural athlete, so it sounded crazy to me. Still, after enough needling from her between classes, I finally caved and went to practice with her, in Fall of 2003.
Long story short, something about the beauty and challenge of the sport wormed its way into my brain, and I found myself at practice 3 times a week, 2+ hours at a time. It beat the hell out of me in ways I'd forgotten were possible, but it became something of an obsession, before long. And now, six-and-a-half years later, I'm *still* training regularly, and I have no intention of stopping.
3. How does your perception of yourself match your picture of everyone else’s perception of you?
Well, I don't think I have a particularly good sense of how others perceive me, I suppose. But for a long time, I'm pretty sure it didn't match, uh, at all. A lot of that was your garden-variety low-self-esteem sort of thing, but, being a somewhat-private person, I've always felt that there were layers to me that others weren't aware of.
One thing I do know about myself is that I'm most definitely the Stiff-Upper-Lip Girl. If something's bothering me, most folks are completely unaware of it at the time. I regularly have people tell me, "you seem completely fine," even when my universe feels as though it's caving in, and I'm actually working on breaking down this tendency, because I've historically done this to a fault.
I also came to hate the word, "shy," growing up, because it was often applied to me, and I felt that it said so little about who I really was. I'll admit that quiet, distant, awkward, and easily distractable was a frequent state of being for me, and it remains a natural state for me to this day, but "shy" never felt like the right word for that. People who've seen me act, or do karaoke, or wushu, or any of the random things I latch onto, know that I can be pretty darned loud and showboat-y, when I have a mind to.
Anyhoo, point being, I think that letting myself be more open is leading me towards a place where my self-perception might actually line up with how others see me, in the none-too-distant future. :)
4. Money, space, time, and hired talent (if need be) are no issue; tell me the business you’d be running at that point.
Wow. Well, in an ideal world, it'd be a creative collective of some sort, where I'd tap into the talents of the people I know and love (while being open to new ones, of course), and we'd bring our skills together for greater awesome. What the shape of that would be is... uh... not exactly clear. I'm not exactly a natural at entrepreneurial pursuits, however, so this is a tough question. For me, having my own business is at least as much about the relationships I build as it is about assets or products, and any business I run would have that as a major part of its mission statement.
5. What’s the most embarrassing thing (that you’re willing to share in a meme) that ended up going fantastically for you?
You know, I'm not sure I can think of anything embarrassing that ended in a fantastic way. Most of my embarrassing moments are just flat-out embarrassing. ;) I may edit this later, if anything comes to mind.
I'm not going to do the giving questions part of the meme, because I'm lazy. And I also have a lot of work to do. ;)
daemonwise :1. When was the last time you were happily scared?
It had to be when we moved up to Portland in 2007. A large part of how the decision to move came about was because my roommates and I were essentially being kicked out of the house we'd been living in, so the owner could sell it. Things happened pretty quickly, and as excited as I was, there was also a lot of potential for terrifying results. What if I can't find a job? What if I don't make any friends? What if I end up on the street, juggling swords and weaving baskets to make ends meet?
But, all told, it was a blessing. I love this town and could be happy in it for a very, very long time. :)
2. How did you get into martial arts/Wushu?
My introduction to wushu was entirely the fault of
junsiew . Our moms have been friends for years, and she's basically the awesome younger sister I never had, so when she came down to the UO for college, we wound up in the same Japanese language class, and spent a lot of time kicking around together on-campus.She got pulled into the UO Wushu Club by another friend of hers, but the club was *much* smaller then: maybe half-a-dozen or so people would show up to train with any regularity, and she was often the only girl at practice. Of course, at the time, I tipped the scales at ~220 lbs. or so, and even in my thinner days, I'd never been anything even remotely resembling a natural athlete, so it sounded crazy to me. Still, after enough needling from her between classes, I finally caved and went to practice with her, in Fall of 2003.
Long story short, something about the beauty and challenge of the sport wormed its way into my brain, and I found myself at practice 3 times a week, 2+ hours at a time. It beat the hell out of me in ways I'd forgotten were possible, but it became something of an obsession, before long. And now, six-and-a-half years later, I'm *still* training regularly, and I have no intention of stopping.
3. How does your perception of yourself match your picture of everyone else’s perception of you?
Well, I don't think I have a particularly good sense of how others perceive me, I suppose. But for a long time, I'm pretty sure it didn't match, uh, at all. A lot of that was your garden-variety low-self-esteem sort of thing, but, being a somewhat-private person, I've always felt that there were layers to me that others weren't aware of.
One thing I do know about myself is that I'm most definitely the Stiff-Upper-Lip Girl. If something's bothering me, most folks are completely unaware of it at the time. I regularly have people tell me, "you seem completely fine," even when my universe feels as though it's caving in, and I'm actually working on breaking down this tendency, because I've historically done this to a fault.
I also came to hate the word, "shy," growing up, because it was often applied to me, and I felt that it said so little about who I really was. I'll admit that quiet, distant, awkward, and easily distractable was a frequent state of being for me, and it remains a natural state for me to this day, but "shy" never felt like the right word for that. People who've seen me act, or do karaoke, or wushu, or any of the random things I latch onto, know that I can be pretty darned loud and showboat-y, when I have a mind to.
Anyhoo, point being, I think that letting myself be more open is leading me towards a place where my self-perception might actually line up with how others see me, in the none-too-distant future. :)
4. Money, space, time, and hired talent (if need be) are no issue; tell me the business you’d be running at that point.
Wow. Well, in an ideal world, it'd be a creative collective of some sort, where I'd tap into the talents of the people I know and love (while being open to new ones, of course), and we'd bring our skills together for greater awesome. What the shape of that would be is... uh... not exactly clear. I'm not exactly a natural at entrepreneurial pursuits, however, so this is a tough question. For me, having my own business is at least as much about the relationships I build as it is about assets or products, and any business I run would have that as a major part of its mission statement.
5. What’s the most embarrassing thing (that you’re willing to share in a meme) that ended up going fantastically for you?
You know, I'm not sure I can think of anything embarrassing that ended in a fantastic way. Most of my embarrassing moments are just flat-out embarrassing. ;) I may edit this later, if anything comes to mind.
I'm not going to do the giving questions part of the meme, because I'm lazy. And I also have a lot of work to do. ;)
