Interview with You

So, I was looking through some old writing prompts to see what I can finish or polish up, and I found a list of imaginary interview questions I made to ask someone I admire. They're pretty intriguing, and I thought I'd share them here, along with my own answers to them, and see if anyone else wants to jump in and be 'interviewed'.

1.  What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
2.  When do you feel most loved?
3.  What comes easily to you?
4.  What frustrates you most about yourself? About others?
5.  What's the first thing you do when you wake up?
6.  What's the last thing you do before you go to bed?
7.  What's a compliment you get most frequently?
8.  What's your favorite thing about your spouse?
9.  What's your greatest specific accomplishment, something you did or finished?
10. What's your greatest accomplishment that was or is more ongoing?
11. What has surprised you most about your own life and where you've ended up?
12. Do you have a mantra or a catchphrase?
13. Do you have any unusual habits?
14. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
15. Whom do you admire?

After I came up with these questions, I answered them for myself; they're a couple years old, so a few are outdated (#5 is the one I particularly noticed), but I'm not going to edit.

Me:
1.  My favorite guilty pleasure? Sleep is what comes to mind, though to me sleeping till 8 o'clock would feel pretty dang guilty. Every once in a while, I go back to bed in the morning when I'm especially tired, and I love every minute of those guilty days.

2. When do I feel most loved? When someone notices me, particularly when they notice what I’m doing and successfully connect it to who I am at my core. That is deeply, deeply fulfilling to my heart and means true love.

3. Organization, numbers, details come easily to me. Delaying gratification in some ways comes easily to me.

4. I’m most frustrated by my own lack of connection with some of the social expectations, trends, and groups of people around me. And at the same time I’m frustrated by others when they seem to be so stupid and easily led by such trends and expectations. Yeah, unfortunately, I think stupidity is what annoys me most in others, followed closely by laziness.

5. The first thing I do when I wake up depends on the day, but often it’s putting on my exercise clothes. Then I make breakfast, which is what I do first if I’m not going to exercise.

6. The last thing I do before bed is generally pray with my husband. I’d say 99% of the time. And the other 1% we still pray, it’s just that we for once remembered to do the prayer thing before another thing...

7. A compliment I get most frequently is from my husband, about my amazing brain. He tells me a lot that he really respects the way I think and what I do with it. From others, I more often get compliments on my kids or my healthy choices for my family (the latter being those kind of compliments that sort of imply I’m a little cuckoo). Then strangers are more likely to comment on my natural red hair.

8. I’ve often said what my favorite thing about my husband is -- his sincerity and genuineness. He has many other endearing interests, including his love of poetry, film trivia, and exploring incessantly. I must confess that his snitching is pretty cute too, though I rib him about it a lot.

9. My greatest accomplishment was probably my college degree.

10. And my other greatest accomplishment is clearly my family -- marriage and children. I’m so thrilled that much of what I’ve hoped and worked for has borne such good fruit, both physically and spiritually.

11. Really, I’m surprised that I’ve gotten so good at -- and so comfortable with -- mothering. I’m also quite surprised that I like to exercise so much, and have decent grace and coordination. I would never have guessed either of those things. And then of course, there’s the constant mild shock of realizing that somehow I’ve ended up in Delaware.

12. I have a mission statement that I wrote when I was about 15, which is still amazingly applicable. I also like my self-titled job description of Chief Entropy Fighter. My husband (and others) would say that my mantra is probably to do something the hardest way possible...

13. Unusual habits, I’m sure I do but they’re not as obvious to me necessarily. Not showering as often, or using makeup much, things like that probably. Also cooking from scratch quite so often, in terms of infrequency of restaurant visits, is probably very unusual. Resisting consumerism in all its forms is what makes me most unusual in lots of little habits, I think.

14. Maybe with a bunch of foster kids? Or a seminary teacher, or playing in a musical group? On a mission? I have no idea. I just know I’ll still be married and striving to love and serve and learn. I’ll still be writing and exercising, I hope. And eating good food. You know, most likely is that I’ll be some kind of natural living advocate/activist, huh?

15. I’m really not sure, as these prompts have shown! Julie Beck is up there, but I’m still searching for those mentors/examples, looking especially on the Mormon Women Project for a sense of the range and interests, challenges and triumphs of powerful, gospel-centered women.

Leave me a nice long comment with your own responses, I'd love to learn more about all of you!

(I'm also thinking of doing these on FB for some of you that know me there, maybe one a day, but I'm not sure that I want to commit to being on FB constantly enough to do that.)