Where were you in 1995?

What I mean is that there are a lot of people here in different stages of life and of their writing journey, and observing the varying ways others approach writing and getting to understand their perspectives is something I find very interesting [not in regards to trying to glean off others to obtain something I should be developing myself but just being exposed to a diverse group of writers]
Life experience is very important, I agree. I know what I've encountered, even in the rather short life I've had, has shaped all the work I've produced in one way or another and as I continue going through life that wealth of information will only enlarge

 

Try the sixties and seventies. Computers were all in government and big banks. Nerds like me flew model planes. D&D wouldn't become a thing until the late seventies and I was trying to distance myself from nerdiness. In 1979 I got a job in a factory making CRTs.

I was sent on my first overseas trip to Taiwan to inspect an auto parts factory that was a supplier who was having a quality issue I was to sort out. Solution was to have a critical component, a spring, made in the US and shipped to them.

Living in Canoga Park and driving out to Ventura working on coaxial relay switches for aircraft.

 

Toward the end of that contract, I had to drive down to Camarillo to oversee the fab of two huge elements of the ISS. I split lanes on my motorcycle for about three months, thinking this is the day that will end me.

 

Babe, you gotta have brass balls, a death wish, or both.

I have never split a lane on a motorcycle. I will never split a lane on a motorcycle. The very idea terrifies me, especially in something like southern California traffic, which I sincerely hope to never experience again.

 

At that earlier time I did know I wanted to be a writer, I did some writing and had ideas for some of what I wanted, that I wrote a lot of things down for which due to circumstances was lost later, things were quite desperate in life to deal with, that it was getting postponed, until over a decade later I faced my mortality and with changed circumstances I started with giving serious priority to the writing I wanted to do.

 

I was probably an elitist snob like everyone else in the 90s. But I was also a kid doing kid stuff like playing video games, watching movies, and reading pulpy books.

 

Were was I in 1995? I was starting my second year of my Bachelor's Degree (and my second year of writing stories). =P Like most other callow 19-year-olds, I thought I knew best.

Now I know better. ;-)

 

I was six years old, at my elementary school. Why? Was I supposed to save the world back then? xD Well, sorry y'all, but there was a distinct lack of an old wizard man appearing in my room saying that I was the one foretold by ancient prophecies of old. xD

 

Ah, but did you have round glasses and a lightning-bolt scar on your forehead?

 

No. I was (and still am) half-blind and half-deaf. Apparently wizards hate disabled people. Well fuck ‘em.

 

I take care of myself well, to remain as well as I can be. Yet limiting myself from some things I really do give time I have now available to writing. By that I mean fiction writing. Writing about my writing is something I don't care about doing as much.

 

I make more and more time for my writing. I both like doing this and feel time growing shorter for getting my writing seen.

 

I was 9 years old, still playing with dolls! I lived in England (still do) with my my mum and dad, the fish and my hamster

 

I was in England then, too, studying at Oxford.

(Well, mostly studying.)

 

So even the non-elites were elite?

 

In Kansas, the Deer and the Antelopes play all the time.

 

I was 9 years old. Lived in England with my parents and the fish. I still played with dolls, barbies etc. This time of year I'd have been in the garden, and would be newly 9 as my birthday is 27th July.

 

I was 15 and sleeping on park benches, the beach, the woods, and wherever I could lay my head - a vagabond. Running from family, running from the law, and running from responsibility. Wild times, I was rebelling against the entire world. I wanted to become the thing my parents hated most. It would take three more years before I finally decided to integrate back into society.

 

But you made it back. Good for you.

 

Let's see. That was a pretty eventful year, I guess. I had more friends than I'd ever had before (having left behind a bad bullying situation at a private school the year before,) I was 15 most of that year, so I smoked a ton of pot, became a joint rolling prodigy in the process, snuck out my window at night a lot, got caught sneaking back in once (Gus the basset hound ratted me out,) listened to endless hours of grunge and classic rock, watched awesome 90s movies, regrettably bumped my cigarette habit up from occasional to daily, rounded 2nd base that summer, just managed to get into the magnet school across town, played alto sax in the marching band, bought my first car for $500 (a canary yellow 1972 Subaru hatchback that I'm still pretty convinced was haunted,) and started driving that November. That's about all I remember that's worth reporting. It was a good year.

 

Not in Oklahoma, Mr. FBI man.