A Fun Exercise to Test Your Sense of Self

“Hey, check this out.”

I swiveled my chair from my little corner of the office, a freshly-minted graduate student mulling over my first steps towards passing my qualifiers or “quals” as they are known in the program.

“What’s up?”

He pointed to his recently-acquired monitor, one that actually gave him more desk space as opposed to our CRTs (jealous). I was expecting him to show me something funny on his MySpace page, but instead, a white and blue logo greeted me…thefacebook.

“Look at this cool 3D connection diagram that this guy has. He just opened this site up to universities on the East Coast.” On the screen was a bubble with his name in the center that radiated connections outward to other names with different colored bubbles.

He clicked and dragged the diagram as it went around and around, a constellation of twenty-odd names.

“I got a few invites to play around with it. Want one?”

It was 2007 when I signed up to my first social media platform. Eventually, it would escape the confines of just being a way to connect college students and spread to high schools, and then the rest of the country.

One of the first things that it allowed you to do was to create your profile with the usual ascriptions (age, sex, major, university, etc.). It also asked about things like your favorite bands, movies, TV shows, and book series…

Those things are still there to this day of course, and if I were to start all over again (which is more than just a passing thought given current events), the following is what I’d update it with for my “Starter Pack”.

Favorite Album

While I’ve listened to lots of albums throughout my life, the one that has pushed me through my toughest moments in life is “This is War” by 30 Seconds to Mars with Jared Leto. Released in 2009, it was the one album that resonated with me while I spent that entire year writing my dissertation, which I successfully defended in 2010.

Imagine having to write a book about the last five years of your academic life.

The running joke is that it’s like going through a pregnancy (which I now know is not even remotely close with two kids). There are some similarities, though. It takes about nine months of your life, and you do carry around drafts, revisions, and edits that gradually get larger, heavier, and more cumbersome to lug around with you. Emotionally, mentally, and physically, it’s with you every waking moment of the day (and most nights as well).

At the very end, you push it out to your committee in one final effort to convince them that you deserve to have three letters tattooed in perpetuity next to your name.

And there, the comparisons, stretched as they are for this analogy, end.

That album was the bedrock that kept me going. Without it blasting around me at 3 AM when I was alone in the office staring into the screen tapping away (not unlike what I do these days), I would’ve lost my mind and my mojo.

There hasn’t been any other album that has received more playtime before or since.

Favorite Movie

Outside of the intensity of my musical tastes, this one is a no-brainer.

Disney’s “Lilo & Stitch” released in 2002 (and apparently the next remake for this year).

Stitch has been my spirit animal. He’s funny, a little crazy, loves caffeine, has a crazy imagination, likes to dress up and play music, and is a prankster who loves a good time.

I have a plushie of him sitting on my desk at work as well as a stuffed pillow version of him hanging out next to my bed for my kids to be around as well. For the last twenty-three years, this film has been the go-to for me when I need something running in the background as I run around doing errands. I can mindlessly quote it at any point in the movie no matter where I am in the house.

There was a point in my life when I could recite entire movie scripts when I was a child, but I haven’t tested that with this one strangely enough. Maybe I’ll try it someday if I want to torture my kids on our next long trip up to West Virginia to visit my wife’s side of the family.

Favorite TV Series

I’ve watched plenty of anime series, sitcoms, and animated ones now with my kids, but none really stand out to any extent. “Bluey” is obviously one that I’ve pretty much had no choice but to have absorbed in recent years. I don’t think that counts, as wonderful and insightful as it is…

There are very few TV series that I’ve actually watched even one entire season of, so this one is a tough one. I simply don’t have time to sit through every single episode of any series in my life…

Except when I’m sick.

And that’s what happened to me three weeks ago.

So I watched the first season of “Reacher” on Prime Video, and I was not disappointed. The writing was excellent, the character development and the relationships that developed around the trio of protagonists was very balanced, and the pace was just the right amount between suspense and action.

I’ll definitely be watching the second and third seasons the next time I get a chance.

Favorite Book

My reading rate has rapidly increased since I started writing on the internet…oh that reminds me that I need to do February’s book review! Anyway, if there were any book series that I would recommend reading, it would be the “Sword of Truth” series by Terry Goodkind, but this category is about a favorite book so I’ll stick to my favorite one in that category…

“The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas is my favorite standalone book.

Why? The guy is betrayed by his best friend and thrown into a seemingly inescapable dungeon, his fiancée is then mislead into marrying that best friend…

Epically screwed and without hope, he’s at rock bottom. At least he is until an old prisoner comes along and proceeds to teach him all he knows as well as promise to reveal a place with untold wealth to him.

The rest of the book is about his journey, his escape from the dungeon, his quest for revenge upon those who stole everything that he loved. With the means, the intelligence, and the skills he acquired, he is reborn as someone who is more than a match for those who wronged him.

Who doesn’t like a good comeback story?

What about you?

I love these little questionnaires, and they’re great ways to test how well you know yourself in additional to testing your ability to articulate your opinions. I’m still a long way off from it, but it’s getting better with every post, issue, and article I write.

Oh, and this is the 150th issue of this newsletter. Can you believe it?

Let me know about your “Starter Pack” in the comments below.