Resistance is futile.

There’s a meme running around on LiveJournal, where people ask one questions and one answers them. So these are the questions posed to me –

1. What is the best thing for you about being a parent? The worst?

The best? That’s easy. There are these *awesome* people living with me. They are continually surprising and delightful, and watching them achieve things is the best part of my day.

The worst? My life is not autonomous. In some unavoidable ways, I kinda belong to these kids. I have made commitments to them which limit my freedoms. Now, I could blow off those commitments — I have a number of exes who would probably expect me to do so, honestly. But I haven’t so far. And, oh, it is frequently tempting. Tempting in ways small and large. I could skip out while they are in circus class and go see a movie. I could not read to them. I could stop taking them to classes. But I don’t do those things. I do the things I’ve committed to doing. I hope I continue to do so.

2. Describe the moment when you decided on your career path.

My ex was friends with a controller she’d met at The Townhouse (the gay country-western bar,) and wrangled us a tour to the center. I thought it looked interesting, and I got a copy of the study guide for the air traffic controller hiring exam. I worked my way through the study guide and practice test in a nigh-holy-fire. This, this is what I was good at. THIS is the only thing my brain is good at, besides mapping dungeons in RPGs in my head. (Well, not the only thing, but I thought so at the time.) I knew that atc was likely to be the only job that actually *used* my skills that I would encounter.

3. Tell me one thing that you refuse to regret from high school.

I can’t bring myself too regret any of it — even the appalling parts, even the obvious mistakes — because that’s just who I was. I don’t regret being me. I shake my head in dismay, I yell backwards through time at myself, but I don’t regret myself. I could wish for wisdom, I could wish to not be so vastly and consumingly self-absorbed, but the whirling highs only existed in a framework of crushing lows. I don’t have either of those, these days, and I thank heaven for that even keel. But I wouldn’t strip my former self of any of the glory, any of the eternal youth, any of the brilliant intellect and dazzling wit my friends and I possessed. We were untouchably golden and basely corrupted, we were going to save the world and we were going to kill ourselves, we were going to be utterly original just like every other teenager in history. None of us actually managed to die while we were in school; that was my goal, my standard of success when I was fifteen. Since we met that goal, I find I can’t regret any of the rest.

4. Tell me something that you’ve promised yourself you will do before you die.

I hate to phrase this in the form of a negative, but I have promised myself to not give up on getting published. Actually getting published is not entirely in my control. But I don’t want to quit.

5. What’s your favorite travel experience?

I don’t really like travelling that much. But in the nine months the ex and I lived in Costa Rica, there are a number of moments that stand out as good. Eating ceviche in a beachside cabana on Bocas del Toro, on the Caribbean coast of Panama. Hearing howler monkeys outside J.L.’s cabin. Dancing at San Jose’s gay bar on women’s night. Good stuff, good memories.