I had a strict self-imposed morning routine starting in elementary school where I would set an alarm to wake up at 5:00 am, get up and go to the backyard where I would do circuits alternating between running laps, jumping rope, jumping jacks, push-ups, and crunches. Then I would sit and watch Pappyland, Golden Girls, and knitting shows until my dad made me breakfast and I would try to get to school very early just so that I could be there before other people were.
I wanted to be a standup comedian when I was four, then a news broadcaster, then an author, to name a few. I wrote a novella in fifth grade and shared it with everyone I could. I loved agility training my dog Holly. I was a voracious reader and checked out every book out in my school library to the point my school librarian started bringing me her own books from home that she thought I would be interested in.
I had approximately one million Barbie dolls and their associated accessories and I liked to make outfits for them and have them act out news broadcasts and murder mysteries. I would take roly polies from the dirt or crickets from the pet store and build habitats for them. I liked gardening with my dad, pulling weeds, propagating cuttings, and planting seeds. I loved going to the zoo and watching movies on TCM with my mom!
My dad is an artist and taught me the fundamentals of art and to use all kinds of different mediums, but my favorite was oil pastel. I enjoyed doing still lives the most. I liked to rearrange and decorate my bedroom—once I made a closet breakfast nook that I was really excited about; I called it Dorothea’s Cafe after my late grandmother and decorated it with her embroideries. I loved Nancy Drew games and other computer games. At night I would take bubble baths in the dark and play whale sounds in my Barbie car that had a built in CD player.
As I got older, I was in youth symphony orchestra (I played viola which is so me), choir, school musicals (wanted to be a Broadway star until I realized I couldn’t dance but also I kept getting cast as a boy), math club, and speech competitions (poetry readings and dramatic readings were my favorite). I liked to write original fiction and comics for my weird goth/emo/scene anime nerd friends to read. I did get into anime and manga at this time and I loved reading nonfiction to learn about as many things as I could.
In high school I gradually retreated into my shell after a series of traumatic experiences, one of which I’m writing about now, until basically I stopped doing all extracurriculars except for Japanese Club (lol). I just really loved my Japanese language teacher and wanted to spend more time with her :-) by that time I would just read classic tones and furiously scribble poetry and drawings by myself. I also liked to collage and do photography and I unfortunately became a Tumblr user. That ’s about it…
