Who am I? I am the walrus...

[geekchick]

Today is Sweetmorn, day 55 in the season of Confusion, 3270.

I asked this of someone in an email exchange earlier, and thought I'd toss it out to y'all to see if anyone else wanted to play along.    If you had to pick somewhere between three and five things that you think are essential to understanding who you are, what would they be? (With the disclaimer that I fully realize no one I know could be accurately summed up in five bullet points, it's just a starting point.)

For me, I suppose it would be:

1. I am often outgoing and gregarious in online interactions, but in person I'm quite shy until I know someone well.  This often seems to come across as being cold and unfriendly, but that's not the case at all (at least I don't think so); it takes me a little while to get past the fear of reaching out to other people in person.  If you know me from online and then meet me in real life situations, you might be a bit taken aback to notice that while I may flirt outrageously or talk non-stop online, I at first will probably be fidgety and nervous and have trouble making direct eye contact when I first interact with you in other settings.
   
2. I am depressed to varying degrees more often than not.  Usually I manage to stay functional, but at times I will withdraw into a shell and not have the energy to do the social things I otherwise enjoy or the motivation to do stuff like answer email in a timely fashion.  That last bit has been especially true in the last year or so.  My antisocial tendencies are almost always due to depression and not any lack of desire to hang out with people.
   
3. I need some kind of calendar/scheduling program; without one I chronically forget things I'm supposed to be doing.  My schedules slip because I get distracted and wander off to (OOH, SHINY!!) other things if I don't have it written down in front of me that "I will do this at this time".  I think this ties in to my lack of focus that might be depression-related, might be ADD-related, not entirely sure which (if not both).
   
4. I also need time to be by myself.  I chafe at the idea of spending all day, every day in the company of someone, anyone, else;  it drives me crazy. Even if it's just retreating upstairs for a bit with a book and/or a CD, I need that separation. 
   
5. While I certainly ogle attractive members of the appropriate sex(es), what really, seriously attracts me to someone is their brain.  I have a bit of a fetish for smart people, I must confess.  I've developed crushes to varying degrees on several folks on my friends list that I may or may not have ever met in person (such as this person, or this one, or this one, among many examples; shut up, Brian ;) ) just by virtue of reading what they have to say and really enjoying the way they say it.

Hrm, that was an easier list to come up with than I thought, but I'll stick with my original "up to five" plan.

Comments

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

I'm seebling you on all but 3. But I used to compusively write down daily schedules when I was in college, and if it doesn't appear on my work calendar, I sometimes forget.

And I get geek crushes all the time ;-)

[geekchick]

Geek crushes are the best. =)

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

I'll have to think about this one and put something in my own journal, if I can get my brain to work.

I am the walrus...

Koo Koo K'choo.

*scampers away*

[geekchick]

No no, you have to say that with pens stuck in your braces.

(Please tell me you know what I'm talking about. Heh. ;) )

[quasigeostrophy.livejournal.com]

Indeed. *grin*

[winterbadger]

I'll try and do this later in the week, but I'm amused at how similar my reactions are to yours on the subjects you mention.

[geekchick]

And I bet that no one's seen us in the same place at the same time, either. ;)

[winterbadger]

I see where you're going with this, but I don't think we can convince anyone, given that you are a female and quite pretty, and I am a guy and goofy-looking. :-)

[geekchick]

Does anyone know both of us that can vouch for all that? ;)

[brian1789.livejournal.com]

Hey... I haven't teased you *that* much about your geek-crushes, have I? :P Besides, I have facets (1) and (5) to thank, myself ;-).

[geekchick]

I haven't teased you *that* much about your geek-crushes, have I?

Yes. ;-P

Bad boy!

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

1. Knowledge fetish.
and here I falter... let me fake it!
WARNING: stream of conscious me!
2. Hetersexual dating makes no sense. It doesn't seem conducive to figuring out people. Maybe I need to be manic(3) to do that? I doubt it. I just have met very few people worth figuring out since college. Or that have been within striking distance. (Grand total of one, methinks, and I had irc to help there) In fact, all of my good friends are from college. Big surprise. 4. Speaking of college, if you don't value books, you don't make any sense to me. Are you really that surprised to see a person with 8 bookselves? Or two of them in one apartment?

Toy trains are figuring prominently in my dreams suddenly. I have nightmares about classwork. I daydream. I have daymares about civil wars and WWII.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I'll play.

1: I hate double standards. Not in the quiet way I hate brussel sprouts, more the way I hate cooked spinach (it's physical I retch and gag). It raises a blistering ire and makes me want to smash things.

2: I read, voraciously. I want to know things. A friend describes my, "light reading," as scary.

3: I'm self-contained. I like people but, for the most part, I don't need them. Even my dearest friends, I can go years without seeing. It is the time together which matters, and if that doesn't happen, it doesn't.

4: I like to do things. To get my hands dirty, to strive, and to fail. I am a jack of many trades, and damned good at many of those, but master of a very few, and those are almost all internal masteries, things I can do without assistance. Shooting, interrogating, fencing, cooking, yardwork.
I'll get familiar with a lot of things, and leave the skills as seed corn, latent until needed, when I dust them off and polish them up.

5: I like to argue. Not fight, but a spirited exchange of ideas, persuasion. Intellectual honesty matters. I recently wrote off someone I've engaged in debates with for years, because he admitted he had, knowingly, distorted a core fact in an argument he was making. I could ignore the fact he was being insulting (which was part of the tone, and content, of his argument) but that he was false.... and thought having me try to explain the actual facts at issue,(prior to his letting us in on that little factoid) was beneath response, because I was being obtuse.

[geekchick]

Not in the quiet way I hate brussel sprouts

I can't imagine hating brussels sprouts quietly, that's a hate that I feel needs to be shouted from the rooftops. Ewwwwwww.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

4: I like to do things. To get my hands dirty, to strive, and to fail. I am a jack of many trades, and damned good at many of those, but master of a very few, and those are almost all internal masteries, things I can do without assistance. Shooting, interrogating, fencing, cooking, yardwork.

You fence too? What weapons?

I do sport foil, 17th c. rapier, 19th c. dueling saber, and am somehow picking up German longsword...

[geekchick]

am somehow picking up German longsword

Heh, that sounds like it somehow followed you home and settled in on your sofa. =)

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Well, you know.. I showed up with every intention of doing some rapier, but the rapier coach is off writing a book, and there were these wasters everywhere....:P

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

If it has an edge (in fundamental terms, lets call it classes of weapon) I've played with it, rather more than less, from knives (two inches is about the smallest, other than for the kitchen, and chip-carving) to pikes (nothing longer than about 12', but then I'm slight).

The most interesting moments with blade combat was in basic training.

I was, you see, a tad bit older (averaging nine years on the rest of my platoon [summer cycle, 12 of 61 had yet to see their 18th birthday when we started, 11 had yet to see it when we finished... I was 26. They thought me ancient), and they thought me a bit odd, and lacking in certain aspects of martial spirit.

Then comes bayonet training. Nothing spectacular (though I was a tad nervous when I was chosen to practice, and observe [being older, and I suppose seen as more stable] a recruit who seemed to be having troubles. He was... there was something unhinged and the next morning ... ca 0300 he was found being more than a trifle odd, and packed off to the nuthouse, but I digress). Learn the patterns, make the faces, try to learn, "the spirit of the bayonet."

Then comes the pugil pit. Pugil sticks are giant q-tips, but with; at that time, some 10 years of training with blades (we won't discuss how long I've been shooting, much less playing with gunpowder) I took them with a fair bit of attention. I seem to have been alone in treating them as a thing which was sharp on one end, and blunt on the other.

And, though I wasn't thinking about this, I'd spent about six weeks of time sparring naginata with someone. Seriously... one-three hours a day.

It was sad. The first round was anti-climatic, I took one knee and flipped Mahoney over my head.

Give the kid (17... which didn't help him much at all, no patience) points, he came up swinging, in real life he might have hurt me (killed me, without a helmet) before he keeled over.

The next round he took his time... trotted out, I met him... and waited... he tried a thrust.

It was all over... block, stick (develop, the twist they taught people before bayonets looked like big knives, but which is more useful now, because a knife's shape will bind in the wound), step in, move the rifle up (in on the body) lean out... smash to the forehead (forbidden, because that can really injure, even in training, but I wasn't thinking, I was fighting) slice down the chest, and stick again.

SSG Gibson clapped Mahoney on the shoulder, "Son, you're as dead as anyone I've ever seen," and made me stop playing.

It wasn't really fair to Mahoney... sending any of them against me was probably more murder then combat, at least if I had a sharp thing.

TK

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I'd say that's more intense training than most of us - wow!

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Well, the naginata work that spring was fun. It was kittenish play (i.e. serious skills worked on as a game).

The bayonet... well I have a strong desire to not get dead... so I've always taken weapons' training seriously. These kids, the bayonet was an obsolete thing, so why bother.

When you hear the chants we had to yell out (What makes the green grass grow? Blood, bright red blood!) you could even forgive them taking it all as a joke.

More interesting. I went to an SCA fighter practice that Christmas (girl I was interested in, went and saw her over the holiday... didn't work out), and they had some rapier guys there.

I dressed in and discovered I'd lost a flinch. Most of us, when someone swings a piece of metal at our heads, lean back, just a tad... no matter how hard we try.

It gives the other fellow a bit of initiative, a space to fill.

I didn't flinch anymore. I made a straight block and snap-riposte (my foil instructor commented that I was too damned fast... made me slow down so I'd hit better... and then worked the speed back in). I think I got five kills from guys walking onto the point, because they automatically moved in.

One guy did it twice.

TK

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

Your real-life combat training probably put you in good stead against the SCA fencers. One of the hazards (if you can call it that) of sport fencing is that you learn more offense than defense, and it's very easy to fall into the bad habit of trying to hit the other guy and walking right into their blade because you know it won't really hurt you. I'm hoping to unlearn this with the historical fencing - not because we use live weapons (we don't), but because the emphasis is on surviving a duel, not scoring points.

Re: the SCA fencing - it probably varies region to region, but the local group as of ~3 years ago was more focused on getting people to participate than on doing it well - which is great, but not the game I'm interested in playing. I've found a small local group that studies the old manuals and tries to fence as "realistically" as possible without actually drawing blood. Here's hoping...

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

shut up, Brian ;) )

*snerk*

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

Hey, he never made fun of me for crushing on him. Maybe he never figured it out though.

[geekchick]

Maybe he never figured it out though.

Given who we're talking about, I suspect you hit the nail on the head there. ;)

Or he did figure it out,

[vokzal.livejournal.com]

but was then confused when I pulled back cause I realized I was flirting with a *boy*! EEEK! (And I didn't know him well enough to overcome hetersexual panic. Oh well, we'll just have to try again sometime.)

Besides, he'll be gone for a while on that trip thing.
So I figured I'd ask his wife to lunch instead. I'm not sure if she got my query, though.

1) Math fetish
2) Knowledge fetish
3) Computer security/unix/perl fetish4) Normal old-fashioned kink
5) I like poofy cats.

[anotheranon.livejournal.com]

I'll play:

I agree with you re: 1, 4, and 5. Especially 4 ;) But I add in no particular order:

• When I talk, I go off on tangents. This often includes subjects with big words that most people don't know and don't care about ("farthingale", "mordant", "remise", "Fabris"). Let me know when I do this, because I often don't notice until someone points it out.
  
• I find it very hard to self-reveal. In the past I've been burnt by confidants, so if I say something and then never speak of it again, or post a friends-only post that later vanishes into private-dom forevermore, this is why.
  

[kmusser]

Regarding #5, let me introduce you to sapiosexual - though it's been a bit quiet of late.