By spiffikins at https://spiffikins.dreamwidth.org/1251745.html Only a month late…
1. What Is Your Favorite Type of Art?
I’m not sure I have a favorite… for creating it, I enjoy puttering around in Photoshop and making wallpapers. I’ve been doing that for 20+ years and still love it. In the recent years I’ve started to do some manual, non-computer art such acrylic pouring and which is so much fun. I also dabble with watercolors but I’m too impatient/exhausted to improve in it much because I don’t have to energy or patience to do enough tutorials to really learn it. So it’s more like a toddler drawing and painting with watercolors LOL But it’s fun and relaxes me and that’s the import part. Maybe it’s more craft than art though!
I admire certain singers who have an amazing voice very much. Such as Ofra Haza. And I have general admiration to writers who put out a new novel every year. And people who can draw realistically. And…
2. What Skill Could You Teach in Two Minutes?
I’m not sure… all that I can think of, would take more than 2 minutes….
3. What Was Your Most Precious Childhood Possession?
Didn’t have one, really.
4. How Much Slang Do You Use? What Are Your Favorite Words?
I don’t think I use slang as I understand it? I speak in the local dialect a lot obviously, having spent practically all my life in the same city, but it isn’t slang I think?
Don’t really have a favorite slang word.
5. What Was Your Favorite Field Trip?
In school, the trips to Turku Castle.
With family, bike rides to the beach to swim and lazy the day away (in shade!)
6. Are You Hopeful About the Future?
Currently I’m trying very hard not to despair about the future. Because of the current far right-wing goverment and all the cuts its making to everyone but the very rich. The country as a whole is going in a very bad direction now, including things like in effect stopping supporting green deal and environment and climate things, increasing poverty, weakened employee rights, killing public health care, weakened social rights and support possibly even interfering with human rights etc. etc. Literally nothing the current goverment is doing and planning to do, is improvement.
7. Does It Matter Where You Go to College?
I didn’t go to college, I went to vocational school (office) and library school. Depends on what you’re after. But what other people choose to study doesn’t matter to me, so no.
8. What Is Your Earliest Memory?
I’m not sure. I have some memories that I’m not ure whether I actually remember them, or if I remember them from the photos, or maybe because we did the thing a lot for many years when I was a kid and I know we did it already when I was a baby and we have photos of doing the thing with me as a baby.
Some of my earliest memories that I know are real, are from camping in the summer in a certain private camping area.
9. Do You Believe in Astrology?
Nope.
10. How Much Do You Gossip?
Not much at all. I’m not interested in celebs, and as for people I know, we talk about things that are known – ie updating each other the latest news from from friend X or Aunt Y. We do talk about subjects like whether she’ll end up choosing nursing school or university or whatever but those are based on things she’s said she might do or is actively considering. I don’t think that’s gossip when it’s not malicious and is mostly based on actual happening? To me, gossiping has sort of an ill bent to it.
11. Have You Ever Felt Embarrassed by Things You Used to Like?
Very mildly. But I’ve never really cared. Things I like aren’t any more embarrassing than different things other people like.
12. How Often Do You Talk to Yourself?
Out loud? Occasionally.
13. What Would You Choose to Do If You Had Unlimited Free Time and No Restrictions?
I do have unlimited time – but severe health and money restrictions. I’m not sure – I’m not used to thinking like that because the money has always been such a severe restiction that I don’t like to think like that because it makes me feel bad.
I do know some things – I’d like to move into an apartment where I could have a dedicated craft & office room! Because I don’t have enough space living in this small apartment. And I’d like to take lessons on watercolors. And I’d like to also try out certain crafts – such as glass blowing – and would need more space to store tools, materials and finished items.
14. Is Struggle Essential to Happiness?
I think some struggle helps a lot, but only up to a certain point. And only small struggle – can’t be too big or too hard. If it’s big and goes and on and on and sucks all the life and energy out of you, then it just happiness impossible.
15. What Kinds of Games and Puzzles Do You Like?
None. I don’t do them. Except very rarely and always while visiting someone, they might suggest that we do a picture puzzle – one of those things with a lot of little pieces that make up an image. Those are fine, but I don’t personally own any and it’s the “doing this together” which is the fun part. But yeah, I’ve never been interested in games, gaming, puzzles etc.
16. What Would You Like to Learn to Make by Hand?
I enjoy making little notebooks with pamphlet stitching, and I’ve repaired books when I was working for a few different libraries and I also liked that. So I’d love to learn to bind an actual notebook one day, using fountain pen friendly paper. There are a few different bindings I’d love to learn to make.
17. When and For What Reasons Do You Seek Silence?
Most notably, actual physical silence meaning no radio, no music or TV or anything on… when I’m having a migraine attack. That’s when I require silence. Also sometimes when I’m having a bad headache but it’s not a migraine attack. Silence helps with the pain then too.
I also need to be in silence, without sound, if I’ve been in noise the whole day. These days this happens really rarely, but back when I was working, I had to shut down radio/tv/my music when I got home for at least an hour while I ate dinner etc. because the day noise had been enough already to me and actually missed quiet.
Internal silence (usually I need also physical silence to achieve this)… When I feel too harried. This is when I do a mindfullness excersice to quiet my mind. Certain songs actually work for this too, such as Porz Goret by Yann Tiersen. If I sit and do nothing but listen to that, my mind quits down and peace and quiet comes over me.
18. What Role Did School Clubs and Teams Play in Your Life?
We didn’t/don’t have those here, so none.
19. Which Photograph Stays In Your Memory?
None.
20. How Much Control Do You Think You Have Over Your Fate?
None.
21. How Do You Try to Reduce Your Impact on the Environment?
Well, I’m poor and can’t afford buy most things, travel or a car, so that cuts down my impact on the environment a lot. A few years ago, I calculated on the EU green site my footprint, and it was only about 30% of what’s the normal footprint for a working age person in my country. So i refuse to feel quilty.
I also recycle carton, metal, clothes, batteries, bottles etc. but that’s a normal thing to do here, nothing out of the ordinary.
22. How Do You Celebrate Earth Day?
I don’t. I don’t know when it is.
23. Did Your School Have A Dress Code? Are School Dress Codes a Good Idea?
Nope. Dunno and don’t care. We don’t have dress codes here.
24. What Have Your Parents Taught You About Money?
Don’t take a loan unless you absolutely need it and make calculations with different scenarios to make sure you can pay it back. Be absolutely certain you can pay it back.
Don’t buy things with payment installments but save beforehand and pay it completely when you buy it.
Pay rent and electrity first, then food and then the rest.
Put money into savings account every month if you can (if you have steady income and there’s some left over every month).
Buy (preferably) good quality shoes and winter coats so that they’ll last.
Just in general, be sensible, consider a “fun” purchase for a while whether you really need it/want it and same with a expensive purchase as well, and don’t impulse buy.
They didn’t like sit me down and teach, but showed these things by their own example.
25. Are You a Good Driver?
Back before 2008, when I was healthy, I think I was an average driver. Not great but not bad either. But now? No idea. I haven’t driven in about 7 years. I don’t have a car anymore because my health stuff had started to make getting behind the wheel dangerous because I was always terribly tired and also because constant bad head pain distracted me. I noticed my reaction time had become a lot worse because of the constant tiredness. Nothing ever happened, but there was one or two close calls and they would’ve been my fault and happened purely because I was too idiotic due to the tiredness. So I stopped driving for the most part. The tiredness made it so that I had to judge each and every time whether I was safe to drive and the answer was so often “nope” that eventually we just sold the car because it was just easier to take the bus every time (there’s a good public transport system in my city) instead of always deeply consider each and every time: am I good enough and alert enough to drive? The car was also old, a 1990 model Toyota Corolla, and had tarted having battery problems, and it was somewhat damaged twice by first some idiot trying to steal it (despite seeing that there was a big, thick solid steel wheel lock locked on the steering wheel *and* a wooden fence *and* iron bus stop pole right in front of the car *and* another car in the parking space covering half of my car behind it, so it’s not like the idiot could have factualy driven the car away from it’s spot (hence: an idiot). And then by some vandal who burned down our apartment building’s carbage can shelter which was only two car’s parking spaces away from mine – those two spaces happened to be empty that night, so my car’s right side got heat damage. All those things combined with my poor health lead us to decide that the whole car thing was more trouble than it was worth now, so we sold it just to be done with it.
26. Have You Ever Been Told You Couldn’t Do Something Because of Your Gender?
I don’t remember that I have. I’ve been told I can’t do or be certain things due to poor eyesight or being too short which sucked when it was time to decide what I what to do for a living. But gender? I don’t think so.
27. Do You Have a Best Friend?
Not really, not anymore.
28. Should What You Say on Facebook Be Grounds for Getting Fired?
My knee-jerk reaction is NO! What you say and do outside work shouldn’t matter. But on the other hand, if you’re spouting bigotry and death threats or something, then absolutely you should be fired.
29. Have You Ever Lost (or Found) Something Valuable?
I lost my wallet once. Or rather, I forgot it on the packing area of the conveyor belt in my local grocery store – I left without realizing, but luckily the cashier noticed it pretty much immediately after I had left and called me about 8 minutes later at the same time I arrived home. I went back to get it right away.
I also once forgot my wallet over night on the passenger seat of my car – I used to toss it there after gassing up the car until I got home/wherever I was going and only then put it in my bag when I was parked in my parking space, but stopped doing that after that time and started putting it in my bag immediately after gassing up. It was a miracle but nobody had noticed my wallet on the passenger seat during the evening/night and hasn’t broken the windows and stole it. Luckily I was working at the time, so I was back to the car early in the morning and noticed it while getting in. Had I been unemployed at the time it might have been days before I’d realize my wallet was missing and longer still to remember where I had left it!
30. Do You Like Being Alone?
Yes.