What's something you regret? For a while, I used to think of my semi-estranged-but-now-on-the-mend relationship with my parents as the only price I paid for boarding school, but living with LittleSister made me realize how much distance actually lies between my siblings and I. Not that we're estranged or hostile, but there's an intimacy that exists between my three siblings that doesn't connect to me because I was gone while they were growing up. I thought, for a while, that I could catch up after living with LittleSister for a few years, but it's the sort of thing that can only be created when we're adolescent, and the adult version of sibling relationships is a cooler, less intense thing.
I realize that my decision to go to boarding school, like my decisions on university and post-college life, had its reasons, and I can't know if my life would have been better if I decided to attend a day school instead of going to Saints. I might've received just as good an education, made similar friends, but my sense of self might've been more fractured, or more repressed, or maybe not. It could've been better, worse or just different. But, regardless of the decision I made, I could have and should have stayed close to my brother and sisters. Not only for my sake, but for theirs as well.
Aside from that, most of the things I regret are various acts I've perpetrated on people. Lies told, facts hidden, little slices of deceit that I may have practiced, not out of malice, but out of some misguided notion that it was all for the best.
What's something you know you're really good at, and are proud of? I know that my friends respect my opinions on news, history, politics and economics, and it's never been something that's unnerved me ... unlike when people compliment my writing, or my looks. That's partially because it's the aspect of myself that I'm most familiar with, and I've been doing things like discussing and arguing about world history since I was, like, six -- whereas I only started working on my writing when I was a teenager. And I was only aware that I might be sort of attractive at some point late in college.
What do you wish you were better at? Following through on plans. I've got an ok track record for organizing some things, but there's a million other projects that sort of get left off and forgotten for no good reason. I'll find excuses to procrastinate on pointless things, not necessarily because I don't want to do something more substantial, but because I don't want to do it so badly that it takes primacy in my mind.
What's a rule you have for yourself? If you're going to tell a bunch of people that you're going to do something -- go ahead and get it done. Dream as much as you'd like, but only declare the dreams that you really, truly want to follow.
Where would you most like to be right now - say, in the eight or so hours you'd be at work? on my bike, in a neighborhood I picked at random, looking for a park where I can spend the day, reading a book and watching the crowd go by.