Get To Know Me:

Excellent human Kayleigh Fraser created a fun little adventure called the "Get to Know Me #Challenge" and I figured I'd give it a shot. I don't think I can hold a candle to some of my fellow Vocalites but what the hey, I'll try anyway.

The rules are simple:

We all bare our deepest pains in our poetry and weave them into our fictional tales but who else are we? What are some of the things we do for pleasure behind the scenes of our writings? What are some things no one would likely guess about you?

Choose any 10 of your random quirks or facts that come to mind, don’t overthink them! And share in your stories 🥰❤️✨

Ready steady? Let's kick the tires and light the fires.

1. I hate cooking for myself. Cooking for other people? Love doing that, right up until they actually sit down to eat, because that's when the imposter syndrome hits me like an ACME anvil. But I've never had people actually dislike anything I've made for them except one time when I made pasta sauce concentrate. The good news was we could freeze it and dilute it to make more sauce later on. The bad news was that that particular dinner wasn't so great

2. I don't really buy things. This isn't for minimalism reasons, in fact, I consider myself to be a materialist. I buy everything I want. I just don't wind up wanting stuff and find shopping to be exhausting, especially for clothes. Typically other people get me things and then I use them for ten years. The only major deviation from this trend is books, it is literally impossible for me to have too many of these lovely things.

3. On the topic of books, I hate hardcovers. They just hurt. Trade paperbacks are smaller, less expensive, easier to hold, and have a more satisfying feel. Everything about them is better! Including the smell.

4. I have a terrible sense of smell. I have, many many times, walked into a house where cinnamon buns are baking and not noticed until they come out of the oven. It's kind of embarassing just how much I miss because I can't smell it. On the other hand, I go through like hyper smell days when I can distinguish between cigarette brands based on smell. If I understood it, I would harness this into a hit reality TV show.

5. Accents come easily to me. I once convinced a pair of Irish girls in a bar that I was from Dublin (I grew up in Ontario) only to pull the ol' switcheroo and shift back into my native accent out of nowhere. I've been given an official Aussie card by a friend of a friend who spoke with me in her own native accent for an hour before finding a flaw in my vocabulary. Word choice, not pronunciation. I once had a French teacher from the Congo get mad at me because she thought my fluency was higher than it is because I mimicked her accent that well. So, pluses and minuses.

My family also told me I wasn't allowed to go back to Ireland because after a week there I had a lilt lol.

5. I used to live in a haunted castle. Ok, slight exaggeration, I admit. The truth is that I went to school in a 600 year old castle in the south of England for a year and lived in a residence building about a kilometer away. Beautiful property, if you ever want to look it up, it's called Bader College Administered by Queen's University.

One day I'll write about my different hauntings while I lived there, but if I didn't believe in ghosts before I certainly do now. They're mostly harmless.

6. My lazy nature and love of activities are constantly at odds. Hiking, surfing, skiing, rock climbing, fencing, Canadian football, and paintball are all some of my favourite things to do! It's only a shame that I have to get off my butt to actually do them. If I don't exercise regularly enough I turn into a hobgoblin, but finding the motivation to actually get up and do them is incredibly difficult.

Oh the duality. I really want to learn a martial art, I think that would be fun, but damnit that sounds like a lot of work. I just want to sit and read/write all day, but I also need to be physical and sleep. Such hard choices we must make, eh?

7. I've travelled to 24 countries across every continent but Australia. I think this one speaks for itself. But yes, I've been very lucky to be so widely travelled in my relatively short life. I tried international solo travelling for the first time last year and had an absolute ball. I highly recommend visiting Seoul, Iceland, and Busan alone if you're into that sort of thing. But for me it is certainly more fun with friends.

8. I am a snob about Friedrich Nietzsche. Most people don't understand this philosopher and it makes me unreasonably upset. It's not hard, just remember he wasn't a Nazi, did not believe in fascit ideologies, and his sister gave his work to those people after he died! Also, the statement "God is dead" has nothing to do with the literal death of divinity but rather the place of the institution in an enlightened world. And... ok, I won't ramble too much but this vexes me -.-.

9. I am both a person registered under the Indian Act and an Irish citizen. My dad's parent's were born in Dublin making him and I Irish citizens and my maternal line is Mohawk from the Bay of Quinte. This makes a lot of people unreasonably angry. So naturally I have tremendous fun at their expense because they're trying to be helpful and promote tolerance... by abusing me and denying my identity for not conforming to their prejudices... life's weird, eh?

10. I'm really bad at talking about myself. Yes that's cheating, but it proves my point. The worst part of starting a new school year, or a new job, was always the dreaded "tell us something interesting about yourself." Goodness but I hated that. Like, I don't think I'm that interesting and it's really hard to convince people you're cool by saying, "in my spare time I sit quietly and write/read."

Oh thank Cthulu, that's 10. Whew. Time to unwind by celebrating my sibling's birthday! Everyone who reads this, please wish Rocket a ahppy 18th :)

Lots of love,

Alex