A night of questions.

I'm finding that -- as my "I'm sick while I'm sick" days go on -- my sleeping schedule is getting even more messed up than it ever has been before. Sometimes I just wont sleep at all because I can't stop coughing, other times I'll sleep 16 hours straight [exhausted after all that coughing and not sleeping]. At any rate, tonight [last night] was looking to be another sleepless one and I found the most fantastic waste of time/way to pass the time.

It's a website called Formspring and basically it's just a platform to ask and answer questions. Some of them are pretty ridiculous but some actually inspired a bit of thought on my part and some careful answers.. I thought, seeing as I spent the night writing [when I intended to blog] I might crosspost a few of the questions that I thought were particularly interesting or thought provoking. Feel free to duck over there and ask anything, also! You can sign up or be completely anonymous, which appears to be something of great appeal to lots of people.

If you had a genie that could grant you three wishes, what would they be? (excludes wishing for more wishes)
This one is hard. I want to believe I'd be selfless and wish for things like world peace, ending world hunger, etc, but honestly with the way my life has gone the last year or so I feel like if I don't give myself the edge, nobody will. Life certainly isn't going to do me any favours.

1. I'd wish for good health for myself and my loved ones. Fantastic health even. I'd never want to experience even the common cold again.

2. Financial security. Not Bill Gates security, but I'd want atleast enough that I could pay out all my and my loved ones debts, buy a house and stuff to fill it and invest the rest and live off the proceeds of that investment if I chose to.

3. Amazing luck. I want to be the kind of person who is always just in the right place at the right time. I want to win random movie tickets, cruises, meet up with friends I didn't know were in town! I'd just want to be a Lucky person -- I feel like that would translate to being a happy person. Also, nothing bad ever happens to lucky people so I feel like this wish is effectively protecting me from anything really terrible, for the rest of my life.

How would you describe your personality?
I have in the past been described as a personality chameleon. I find it very easy to read people and to adjust myself and my personality to reflect what I think they want.

I think a nicer way of putting this is that I'm quite charismatic.

If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and could only bring five things and five people (any era, living or dead), what/who would they be?
People:
- My dad [he's good at building stuff and someone would have to make a shelter]
- Gail [dad would be lonely without her]
- Karen [she's my twin and I'd be bored without her].
- McGuyver [I don't care if he's not real].
- Probably someone random based on what week it was and who I was chatting with a lot at the time.

Stuff:
- A boat.
or, if I wasn't going to be a smartass.
- Waterproof matches.
- Rope.
- A hugeass freaking packet of Nurofen.
- My iPod.
- One of those nifty sun-powered iPod chargers. ;)

What happens to the things you imagine once you forget them?
That's a fantastic question.

I like to think they swim around somewhere in the back of your mind, waiting for you to remember even glimpses of them.. but maybe they're just gone forever. That's a fantastic reason to write everything down, if nothing else.

What are two things standing in your way of writing a book? What are two things pushing you in the right direction of writing a book?
Two things to stop me writing:
- The fear of failure/not completing it/it being really terrible and nobody wanting to read it.. I guess, fear, in general.
- Time. Writing is a huge commitment. I feel like if I had a laptop I'd be more likely to write more often because I wouldn't have to sit down in my office and do nothing else - I could be inspired ANYWHERE. Maybe that's something to add to the wishlist..

Two things pushing me to write:
- My family and their lack-of-acceptance for excuses about why I'm NOT writing a book. <3
- The need to compete with 15-year-old me.

What does fifteen-year-old you have that you don't? What doesn't she have that you do have?
She is blind to the way the world sees her. She believes in her writing with a faith only someone who has never been told "no" can have.

She lacks the experience I have now. The strength of will and determination.

Do you believe in free will, or are we all just puppets of the laws of physics and chemistry etc?
I believe life is like a choose-your-own-adventure Goosebumps book. Everything is pre-written but the decisions you make along the way guide you to one of many pre-decided endings.

So I guess I believe in free-will to a degree. You can decide to go to the beach or not to go to the beach, but the outcome -- either way -- is predertermined and leads to yet another series of decisions that have already been written.


... anyway I thought some of it was interesting. I'm so addicted to this website now, you should go sign up and make an account! Not all the questions have to be deep and hard, it can be fun too, I just picked out the questions and answers that I thought were worth repeating.

xx. A.