Down She Goes

I’ve heard it said by many tradesmen that “you’re not working hard enough if you’ve never shut the place down”. The reasoning, I suppose, is that it’s so easy to accidentally trip a plant or factory that if you’ve never done it you must not be doing very much work. By that logic, I must be working like a dog.

The first time I ever shut a place down was when I worked at the paper mill. I worked in the pulp plant department, where we had these huge refiners run by monstrous motors. The combination of this equipment was a hell of a lot of noise, and when they were shut down you could hear this very high-pitched hum-whine that practically made the floor vibrate, and you’d know exactly what had happened. On the day in question I was checking out a part of the program on the PLC (programmable logic controller), and it was a small discrepancy in definition that screwed me up. On a home computer or personal device, if you’re “downloading” something, it means you’re grabbing it from an outside location and bringing it onto the device in front of you; if you’re “uploading” something, you’re moving it from your device out to the outside location. However, with a PLC it’s the exact opposite. “Uploading” means taking the program from the PLC and moving it onto the computer you’re working with, and “Downloading” means moving the edited program file from the computer back to the PLC. I intended to “upload” the current running program so that I could have a look at it, but instead I “downloaded” the old program that was currently open on the computer. The next thing I knew the air was filled with that hum-whine that meant the entire place was crashing. Luckily the pulp plant usually has a pretty large buffer before it’ll actually run out of pulp and subsequently shut the paper machine down, so we were able to “download” the backup copy of the program and get everything running again.

That was fairly embarrassing, but it only actually affected about fifty or so people. What happened out on the oil sands, however…well, let me just tell you…

First of all, the plant in question is pretty huge and there was a massive number of people working there at the time. My commissioning company alone had about a thousand people on site, plus four different construction companies, plus the vendors, plus the company that actually owns the site. So whenever the place shut down there were a lot of people standing around doing nothing, wasting money.

So anyway, one morning the programmers and engineers were testing the alarm system for the first time. The idea is that if any gas detector, smoke alarm, or flame detector in the plant is tripped – or if someone hits an emergency stop button – all the horns and lights go off, any running processes shut down, and anyone inside the main plant has to stop work and retreat to a “muster point” (a predetermined safe zone). An announcement went across the plant warning us about the test, the muster was tripped, we all mustered for a few minutes to prove that we knew what to do in case of an actual emergency, and then we returned to work. The system was proven and everyone was happy.

The following day my coworker and I were testing some gas detectors and made a very stupid mistake. You see, the techs in the control room have the ability to bypass the programming on devices that will trip the alarm system, but up until that point we hadn’t been required to do so because the alarm system didn’t actually work. But on this day, of course, everything was now 100% functional.

My coworker opened the portable gas canister that would allow us to test whether or not the gas detector was functional, and half a second later there were flashing lights and wailing sirens going off all over the site. Humorously enough, even though we’d just performed a successful site-wide test the day before, no one seemed to know what to do. An entire site of thousands of workers stood dumbfounded for several long moments before anyone so much as took a step toward a muster point. My coworkers and I, on the other hand, practically sprinted to one so we could hunt down a boss and explain what had happened. Some people were pretty frustrated with us, but it was to be expected that someone would screw up at some point now that the alarms were operational, so we were basically forgiven.

But that’s not the best part.

On the third day, my coworker and I were still working on gas detectors, so this time we were extremely careful to get in touch with a tech in the control room and ensure that all the proper bypasses were set up so we wouldn’t trip the system again. We were extremely diligent and checked back with our tech multiple times. We were confident. We were fine. We were all good.

We pulled a terminal in order to fix a wiring issue.

Flashing lights and wailing sirens.

The way my coworker tells it, he’d never heard so many profanities come out of such a small woman. The next thing we knew, we had a construction supervisor on top of us, radio in hand, demanding our names so he could report us to the head-honchos.

The alarms were cancelled as a false alarm and everyone returned to work without mustering, but a few minutes later I got a text from one of our team leads: “The foreman wants to see you in his office immediately.”

We were certain that we were getting sacked, and we were as frustrated as we were upset because we couldn’t understand why it had happened. We’d checked with our control room tech multiple times! This couldn’t possibly have been our fault, right?

We walked into our foreman’s office with trepidation, ready for the hammer to drop. What we weren’t expecting was for him to take one look at us and burst into laughter. “I love giving people nicknames,” he said, “and I’ve got the perfect ones for you two: Muster and Evac!”

We were relieved, that’s for sure, and even more so when we found out that it really hadn’t been our fault. Some moron programmer had wanted to test something and had – without consulting anyone – disabled all bypasses. My coworker and I had just been unlucky enough to be the first poor schmucks who had tripped something while the bypasses weren’t on. Twice. Two days in a row.

It’s been three years since that particular mistake, and I haven’t shut down any sites since, but I’ll never forget the hum-whine of the refiner bay grinding to a halt, or the feeling when those sirens started howling on the third day and everyone just turned and looked right at us. In fact, people on that site still joke whenever the sirens go off for a legitimate reason: “What did Tracey do now?”

But…at least it means I must be working.

Finding the Answer to the Problem

Before I start this story I want to mention that I’ve never sat down and spoken about this particular topic before; not with my husband or my parents, or anyone else close to me. People may have caught glimpses of the issue here and there, every now and then, but I’ve never taken the initiative to grab someone important to me and just talk about what I was feeling. Honestly, that’s just the kind of person I am. I like to keep my baggage to myself. But today, inpsired by a fellow blogger who recently had a very helpful doctor’s appointment, I’m going to tell you a little about what I dealt with internally for several years.

Some time before I was married, I found myself in my doctor’s office with a laundry list of complaints. I wasn’t sure if they were connected in any way, but I was hoping that there was some simple answer for why I was tired all the time (regardless of how much sleep I got), was often very lethargic, and had a lot of difficulty losing weight, amongst other annoyances. I’d done a bit of research and thought that perhaps I had a thyroid problem. Communicating this idea to my doctor was a bit tricky because he’s a difficult man to talk to sometimes; he tends to quickly make up his mind about what he thinks the problem is, and then he’s like a dog with a bone, refusing to let go even when new information is presented. For comparison, when my daughter was an infant and was constipated for over a week, I had three separate appointements with this doctor during which all he kept telling me was to give her fruit juice…despite the fact that I’d explained several times that she flat-out refused to swallow it.

So here I am, talking to my one-track-mind doctor, trying to convince him that I think I have a thyroid problem and that I’d like to be tested, and he comes out with this gem: “I think you’re depressed. I’m going to prescribe you an antidepressant.”

I was flabbergasted. I honestly couldn’t see how the complaints I had added up to a mental problem. I was certain that it had to be a physical issue – something that was off about my body, not my brain. “And besides,” I thought, “I’m not sad.” I knew that depression could come in many forms and that being depressed doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re sobbing all the time, but I genuinely didn’t feel like I was anything resembling depressed.

Somehow that day I managed to convince dog-with-a-bone to send me for the thyroid test before pushing pills on me, and I left that appointment satisfied that I was going to get some blood drawn, return to my doc, and get a prescription for thyroid meds that would make me feel loads better. But then my tests came back perfectly normal – on the low end of normal, perhaps, but still normal. I was honestly quite surprised, and the dog took his opportunity to start gnawing at that old bone again. I left the second appointment with a prescription for antidepressants and a gut feeling that they weren’t going to do a thing for me.

Now here’s the thing: I’m sure that there are lots of depressed people out there who truly don’t believe that they are depressed, or know that they are but don’t believe that medication will help, or are so concerned with all the stigmas that are associated with mental health problems that they refuse to admit that they might have one. But I wasn’t one of those people. I knew that depression wasn’t my problem. I couldn’t tell you how I knew, but I knew. And I was right. After over a year of taking the antidepressants as prescribed, I felt absolutely no different.

I officially stopped taking the pills after my wedding, when my husband and I decided that I was going to go off my birth control. I figured that since I was getting nothing out of them anyway, there was no point in risking that the medication might have an affect on a possible pregnancy. I stopped taking both the antidepressants and my birth control pills at the beginning of November 2009. In March of 2010 I took a positive pregnancy test, and in early December of 2010 I gave birth to my beautiful baby girl.

Fast forward to about two months after my daughter’s first birthday. Though I hadn’t thought about them in a while, I started to notice that some of my old symptoms were bothering me again, with an added joy: I started to have some pretty awful mood swings. I didn’t often express them out loud, but I would find myself getting extremely over-emotional about stupid, pointless things. If my husband left his clothes on the floor I would get enraged and want to put my fist through a wall. If I couldn’t get the baby to eat I would have to struggle to fight back the tears. At first I attributed it all to stress, since at this point my husband and I had both been unemployed for about five months and were just starting to seek employment out West. But the mood swings continued in full force even after I was back to work. I would be perfectly fine one moment, and then with the slightest provocation I would find my face growing hot and my throat choking up as I fought to keep myself from either bursting into tears or punching someone right in the nose. For the most part I managed to keep this inner turmoil stuffed firmly down in the bottom of my stomach, but every now and then I would say or do something that would have people looking at me like I’d suddenly lost my mind. It was all terribly frustrating and I wondered on several occasions if Iwas losing my mind. I almost went back to my doctor to ask for another antidepressant prescription. I was still confident that it wouldn’t help, but I hated feeling this way and couldn’t think of anything else to do.

It wasn’t until early 2013 that I started to realize some things. First, I’d had a truly excellent pregnancy. Though I would up with some pretty bad back pain in the last trimester, I’d been quite happy and issue-free throughout the pregnancy. Second, although I’d had to deal with the lack of sleep and mountain of emotions that come with having a young baby, the first year of my daughter’s life had ultimately been quite normal as well. My various complaints, along with the descent into Mood Swing Hell, had only cropped back up a little while after my daughter’s first birthday. So, I thought to myself, what was the common thread between the time before I’d gotten pregnant and the time after my daughter’s first birthday?

It didn’t take me very long to come up with the answer: my birth control pills. I’d gone off the pill in order to get pregnant, and had gotten pregnant only a few months later. After my daughter was born I’d opted for an IUD for birth control because I’d read that the hormones from the pill can leech into breastmilk. But then, when I officially decided that I was finished with breastmilk, I’d gone back to the pill because I’d had issues with the IUD – and that was right around the time of my daughter’s first birthday. My symptoms had disappeared a few months after I stopped taking my birth control pill, and had returned (with friends) a few months after I started taking them again.

Luckily, only a few weeks after my revelation, I had an appointment with my OB-GYN, who is a much easier doctor to communicate with. So, determined to prove to myself that I wasn’t simply insane, I took a deep breath and asked the doc, “Could my birth control pills be giving me mood swings?” You can’t imagine the relief I felt when she looked back at me and replied, “Oh, absolutely.”

I left that appointment with a prescription for a different brand of birth control pills – one that is known for being less likely to cause mood problems. And though the changeover to the new pill caused a couple of issues with my cycle for the first few months, I’ve felt a hundred times better ever since. My moods are back to normal (or as normal as the moods of the mother of a toddler can ever be), I’ve been sleeping better and subsequently feeling more awake and alert, and I’ve found that I’ve been gaining a rekindled interest in things that I had once been too lazy and lethargic to bother with for a long time. I’m still having a hard time losing weight, but there are a host of other reasons for that.

The reasons I’m choosing to share this story now are threefold:

One, as a reminder that it’s okay to complain if you aren’t feeling well. Even if you think that your complaints are trifling or that no one will take you seriously, you should still see someone if you think that there might be something wrong. Follow your gut.

Two, if you think that your doc isn’t taking you seriously, or that they are taking you in the wrong direction on something, insist on a second opinion. Find another practitioner or ask to see a specialist. Just don’t settle for the first opinion if it doesn’t feel right. Medical diagnostics is not an exact science; doctor’s make mistakes.

Third, sometimes it’s just nice to talk about these things – or in my case, write about these things. It can be embarassing, it can make you feel weak and pathetic, but it can also feel great. We all keep our crap buried down deep inside where it sits and festers, but if you’re brave enough to turn over that soil and plant some seeds, maybe – just maybe – something beautiful will grow.

A Memorable Idea

This past weekend was full and tiring. My parents visited Friday night, and two awesome friends visited Saturday night. There was drinking and eating and cleaning up before and after visits, and between all that we had the baby outside in her pool, going for walks and playing with the neighbor’s grandkids. In addition to all that I had a hard time sleeping Friday night, and we were up drinking and playing foolish trivia games until 3 am on Saturday night, so I’ve developed a rather debilitating sleep debt.

This is currently the face of my jealousy.

So it is with bags under my eyes and an enormous yawn on my lips that I sat down at my laptop and struggled to think of something to blog about for today. I considered a number of previously-planned options that made my head hurt because I am simply too tired to deal with them right now. I thought about reading the first chapter of The Artist’s Way and talking about that, but it turns out that there are half a dozen introduction chapters that seem pretty important before you get to the actual program part of the book, and my addled brain can’t really handle that at the moment. I thought about simply writing about my weekend, about the tomfoolery that occurs when the husband and I get together with our friends and some good liquor, but I couldn’t figure out how to work that into anything coherent and interesting.

With those ideas set aside, I thought I’d mention something that I had been meaning to bring up for a while. It’s an idea I came up with one day a while ago, something that’s one part memory exercise, one part mental therapy, and one part keepsake-that-can-be-helpful-when-writing.

I call it a Memory Book, for lack of something cooler. I don’t remember when or why I came up with the idea, but one day I picked up a pretty notebook and a nice pen, and I began writing down memories. I don’t make the memories long and complicated; they’re generally just a one-or-two-liner that gives the basic idea. For instance, I might write, “That time I decided to roller-blade to school, but the hill was too steep and I ended up having to admit defeat.”

The memories can be good ones (“The first time Jason told me he loved me…he looked so cute and nervous!”) or bad ones (“The first time I left for out West and I was waiting for the plane while struggling not to cry.”) or just random things from my past that mean nothing but that are non-the-less cluttering up my brain (“The time our cabin water was shut down so we kept having to collect stream water in buckets in order to be able to flush the toilet.”). Any random memory that I can think of can end up in the book.

So what’s the point?

Well, for one thing it exercises my memory (which has gone so downhill over the past six or seven years of my life) to bring up information that might be buried deep; alternatively, re-reading it allows me to recall things I may have allowed myself to forget about.

For another thing, it can be very therapeutic. Instead of struggling to think of something to write for my works-in-progress or my blog, I can just sit with this notebook and spill out information that’s already in my head, like a mental Spring Cleaning.

And lastly, having this notebook handy has actually been helpful to my writing. See, one of the hardest aspects of writing fiction (in my opinion) is coming up with relatable characters, people whom the readers will love and sympathize with. Part of this is making the characters feel more real, and in the past I’ve been able to accomplish this by using my Memory Book and juicing the memories up a bit to craft pasts for my characters. Why is a certain character so shy? Because of this embarrassing event, stolen from my Memory Book and blown up a bit to make it sound even more mortifying. How did two other characters meet? Steal something from the Memory Book and spruce up the details a bit. See what I’m saying?

A Memory Book might not be useful for everyone, but it’s been useful for me in several ways, so I thought I’d share and invite everyone to give it a try. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy…it could be a Dollar Store notebook tucked into your purse or wallet, or a Word file on your computer. You can write about any kind of memories you like, and you can write quick one-liners like me or write a whole page for each. Whatever makes it work for you.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes! I’d love to hear from you!

Keep Yourself Out of Internet Mud…or You Might Never Get Clean Again

As previously mentioned, I’ve been taking a bit of time to read some “craft books” on writing, and the first one I’ve been looking at is Kristen Lamb’s Rise of the Machines. The focus of her book is social media and how writers can use it to create a working “author platform”, but she also touches on other subjects such as traditional vs. indie publishing, marketing, and occasionally a little bit of (related) neuroscience. Yeah, you heard me.

One of the side-topics that has come up in what I’ve read so far (enjoying it so much!) is this idea of ruining your platform without even realizing it. In other words, turning your name to mud by accident. In a world where everything can be re-Tweeted half a million times before you blink, it’s easy for one stupid mistake to go viral and effectively ruin your good name for, well, for good. This doesn’t only apply to writers (or the celebrities we so often see spiraling the metaphorical toilet bowl); it applies to everyone. That’s why I wanted to talk about it today, because this is the kind of thing that everyone should know, but which most people never think about.

I’ve spoken before about how anonymity does not truly exist on the internet and how we should watch what we do and say because it can come back to bite us in the ass. In that previous post I was focused on what I called “The Golden Internet Rule”, which is simply “don’t be a jerk on the internet”. This time I’m not talking specifically about being a jerk, but simply about understanding that whatever you choose to talk about on the internet has now become searchable, findable, and quite possibly eternal.

Don’t want to be wearing this for the rest of your days, do you?

I’ll give a personal example, because what better way to show people what you mean than by sharing your own morbid embarrassment?

When I was in university, studying to be a technologist, I had ups and downs. I had chosen my path partially on a whim because of a stressful situation (the course I had originally chosen was cancelled two months before the start of the semester, so I had to pick something else quick or simply not go to school). The result was that I often wondered if I’d chosen the right thing, whether or not I should drop out and choose something else, and was I really suited for this kind of career? I kept pressing forward because change is scary, and eventually I found myself in the fourth and final year of program, having an all-out panic attack. It began to occur to me that I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do when I graduated. I didn’t know what kind of jobs I was even qualified for, how I would go about applying for them, where the work would end up taking me, or whether I would even be any good in the field. Sure I’d made pretty great grades in school, but the real world is a lot different from the class world. I didn’t know what kind of work I would be doing, but I was pretty confident it would not be writing short lines of computer code to set tiny LED lights to flash on and off at timed intervals.

One night when I was particularly stressed, I went online to a forum that I frequented in those days. I wrote a long post about my concerns, my worries, my stress level. I ranted about things like “wasting time and money on a degree I don’t even understand” and how I would disappoint my parents if I suddenly up and decided to do something different, and how I was terrified of the idea that I might have to move away from home for a job and “why oh why didn’t I choose a career path with a clearer future?!”

It was a rant born of stress, passion, and an overwhelming desire for someone to wrap their virtual arms around me and say that it was going to be okay. I did get that virtual hug from my virtual companions, but I also made a teeny tiny mistake. Within the confines of that rant, I used my full, real name. It wasn’t a concern because most of the folks on this forum knew my real name anyway, but in this particular post I wrote one line that described what my diploma would look like when I graduated, with my full name in the center of it. I added that bit in to make a point concerning my rant, but I didn’t consider what adding my full name in actually did to that post.

Haven’t figured it out yet?

It made me instantaneously  and easily locatable on Google.

For the most part this was a non-issue. I was a nobody that no one cared about. Who would even go looking up my name on Google, and if they did find my post, why would they care? At least that’s what I thought until someone did happen to Google my name and did click on the link that led them to my post. It was my uncle. I can’t recall the reason that he searched my name in the first place, but when he did he happened upon my post, read it, and subsequently wrote me a very long, very concerned email.

I was mortified.

My uncle was just trying to be helpful and calm my concerns, and he was very sweet. That’s not the mortifying part. The mortifying part was that he read my post in the first place. When I wrote that post it was with the intentions that only my internet friends ever see it. I just wanted a little bit of anonymous support from people who I never had to deal with face-to-face. For good or ill, I’ve never been the kind of person who can share their pains and emotions with their closest loved ones, so when one of those close loved ones found my whining, complaining, melodramatic post I wanted to crawl into a hole and die. And while in this case I had the opportunity to go back and change what I’d written (posts on this forum were editable), in another place I may have been stuck with what I’d written forever.

This is what we’re dealing with when we put ourselves out there on the internet, and my example is absolutely nothing compared to what some people have put themselves through. Every one of you reading this right now has seen at least one photo of someone who uploaded their pic on a social network site only to realize later that there was something excruciatingly embarrassing about it. One particular photo that comes to mind is of a teenage girl who took a “selfie” of herself and uploaded it to Facebook before noticing that her vibrator was sitting in plain view in the corner of the pic. As if that’s not mortifying enough, before she noticed it dozens of people had copied it and posted it elsewhere. The picture went viral. Because this girl failed to take a few seconds to actually look at the photo before posting it, she is now an internet meme that will never die.

Whatever you say, whatever you post, whatever you do, it only takes one opportunist to back-up your mistake on his computer before you can backtrack. In this way the internet is forever. Ask anyone who has ever found themselves depicted as a cruel jape on sites like 9gag. It doesn’t matter how much you beg or cry or scream, you can’t erase something from the internet once people have decided to use it at your expense. Even if it is an extreme example and you have grounds for legal action, it only takes one person to store the quote/pic/post away to whip out again at a later date. And the bigger a deal you make out of trying to abolish a bad rep, the bigger a deal people will make out of making sure that it never dies.

This is why we have to be careful, not only when dealing with touchy issues like religion and politics, or when letting our tempers get the best of us online. We also have to be careful with everything we say or do on the internet. Before you say or post or upload, step back and think. Think about how you would feel if your parents (or your children) happened across your post. Think about the repercussions if your employer saw that pic. Think about the veritable shit storm you might inadvertently stir up with your status update.

Basically, just THINK. It’s something we don’t do enough of these days, and with the Internet playing the part of devil’s advocate, one stupid mistake can mean that you name is mud for a very, very long time.

Have you ever said or did something on the internet that came back on you in an embarrassing or painful way? Do you know anyone else who has had to deal with this kind of unintentional reputation ruining? Thoughts and comments?

Liebster Award

Yay! A blogging award! It’s been a while since I received one of these, and they’re so much fun! Grizz-Tion recently nominated me for the Liebster Award, which is given to bloggers with fewer than 200 followers as a way to recognize them and support the pursuit of new followers to their blog. The rules of the award are as follows:

1. You must thank the person who nominated you.
2. You must answer the 11 questions your nominator has left for you.
3. You must nominate 11 other bloggers.
4. You must ask 11 questions of the bloggers you nominate.

So first things first, thank you very much Grizz-Tion! I found Grizz-Tion’s blog when we both participated in L. Palmer’s Hello’s and High Fives post. I was attracted to Grizz’s excellent short story, Kyoko the Book Thief. Go see it! Go see it now!

Second things second, I must answer the questions that Grizz left behind:

1. Long hair or short hair, on people?
Depends on the person. Generally I like short hair on men and my preference is for longer hair on women, but it depends on what looks best on the person. Some guys look good with longer hair, and some women look better with shorter hair.

2. Which would you rather do: walk 10 miles or be forced to run 100 yards…both as fast as you could for that pace?
I find myself trying to imagine exactly how long 100 yards is… I would probably go with the 100 yards because as hard as it would be, and as sick as I’d probably feel afterward, it would be over a helluva lot quicker. 10 miles is a long freakin’ way to walk!

3. If you found out that your role model was actually the opposite of what you looked up to, how would you react?
Probably with tears and accusations. 😛
Honestly though, I’m not sure. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve looked at someone as a “role model”. I have people I look up to, but I have a pretty firm grasp on the idea that no one is infallible and that there is no one out there who I’m going to agree with on every aspect, so I pretty much accept that people are going to disappoint me, basically. Does that sound cynical? It sounds cynical to me.

4. Writing by hand in a crowded park, or writing all alone on a computer with no one around, and why?
Depending on my mood, I’ve preferred both, but honestly I seem to write better when there are some distractions around me. Something about silence and being alone makes it hard for me to think…maybe because I’m so used to having a dozen people milling around me at work, or having my daughter running around and my husband talking to me while I’m home. I’ve adapted an ability to write while surrounded by noise and movement, so it’s actually become harder for me to do it in a peaceful environment.

5. Desert island – only 1 book to take with you, just 1. Why did you pick that one?
I’m going to get a little saucy on this one: I choose Survive! by Les Stroud, because…duh.

6. If you were faced with 1 movie monster/bad guy/villain, which would you want to fight and why that one? (Be specific, no generic answers like zombies or vampires. I’m looking for Lestat, or the actual Wolfman.)
I had to think about this one for quite a while. There are a lot of great movie monsters and villains out there, and the thought of fighting most of them fills me with dread. In the end, I think I’m going to go with Darth Vader. Why? Well for one thing he’d probably just force-choke me and be done with it. For another, come on…Darth Vader, man.

7. What would you want the conversation to revolve around if you could sit down and talk to Jesus?
I’d want to talk about how his good intentions had spawned countless forms of ignorance, intolerance, and bigotry all over the world, and suggest to him that he really ought to come back and bitch-slap a few billion people.

8. Who should Cap’n Reynolds truly be with – Zoe, Kaylee, Inara, Saffron, or just stay alone and be bad-ass?
Inara, all the way. He should still be bad-ass and foolish, but it frustrates me to no end when those two get all SEXUAL TENSION! and *nothing happens*.

9. Les Stroud or Bear Grylls?
Neither. My vote is for the cameramen who have to put up with Grylls.

10. Personal choice for the event that will end civilization? Basically, how do you want the apocalypse to start?
You would think that my vote would be for zombies, but I’m not naive…I know that I would be one of the first poor bastards who gets eaten. Instead lets go with a giant meteor slamming into Earth. Maybe I’ll be one of the lucky ones who manages to stow away on the specially-built spaceships that takes off in hopes of establishing a colony on Mars.

11. Killing people just became legal, but only for those labelled huntable material. Which 3 celebrities would you want to be labelled as such and why?
Paris Hilton because she is quite possibly the worst role model for young kids who has ever walked the planet. Justin Bieber because omfg I’m so sick of hearing about him and his music is awful. Kristen Stewart because (despite and regardless of any opinion anyone else might have about her) I think she is quite possibly the worst actress I’ve ever seen and I can’t believe she keeps getting roles.

Third, I have to nominate more bloggers. I’m only picking five, rather than eleven, because (to be blunt) I don’t have time to go through all the blogs I follow and try to pick out 11 who have fewer than 200 followers. That said, I invite anyone who wishes to go ahead and continue on with this award as though I nominated them!

1. Lit and Scribbles with Jae

2. bellscave

3. Daniel Koeker

4. Can I Have a Breakdown After I Finish the Dishes?

5. Musings from the Writer’s Desk

Fourth, I have to submit 11 questions of my own:

1. When did you figure out what you wanted to do for a living, and did you succeed with your choices?

2. Why did you start blogging? Has that reason stayed the same or changed as you’ve blogged?

3. If you could bring one fictional character to life and have them be madly in love with you, who would you choose?

4. Be totally honest: do you really hate the sexy vampire trend, or do you secretly kinda dig it?

5. Tell me about something you’ve always wanted to do but never did, and why not?

6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or My Little Pony?

7. Confess a guilty pleasure that you think other people won’t really understand.

8. Pick a pop culture phenomenon (a book, a movie, a video game, etc) that you absolutely hate and explain why.

9. Laid out before you are all the possible pizza ingredients in the world. What kind of pizza do you make?

10. Describe your perfect day of rest and relaxation.

11. Imagine your dream job (say, being a published author). Now imagine the most embarrassing/socially unacceptable version of your dream job (say, writing erotic literature for porno magazines). If you were offered this embarrassing version of your job and you knew that it was the only chance you were ever going to get at your dream job, would you do it?

It’s fun…what other reason do you need?

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

4. How you knew you wanted to become a writer

When I was young I knew I wanted to be a writer at some point in my life because, to be super-blunt about it, it was tons of fun. I started writing (other than for school) sometime around the 3rd grade, and I loved making up crazy stories, particularly ones starring my friends and I as the characters. Sometime near the end of grade school I wrote this series of stories starring myself and my friends (and a few people who I wished were my friends…how sad is that?). The stories were based around the idea that this group of friends could enter video games and experience the game like a real-life adventure. As the series went on there were also real-life monsters that came to destroy us, and I believe at some point there was a convoluted past-life plot line that got really silly and smacked of wish fulfillment (but hey, gimmi a break, I was, like…11). I would be beyond embarrassed for anyone to read those stories now, but at the time they were the best thing in the world, they were a blast to write, and they cemented my desire to write professionally some day.