Who Am I?

So, I am starting a creative writing club at school and before you stop what you are doing and give me a standing ovation, allow me to get changed into something more regal or failing that at least practice smiling for a few minutes first. After a short preamble describing the long set of rules, guidelines and initiation rituals for our club I gave the new members their first writing "assignment" (I am placing that word in quotation marks so none of them thinks that it is an actual assignment and also because I love using quotation marks and often misusing them too just so I don't come across as "the guy who perfectly uses quotation marks" because I know that guy and he is...how do I put this..."strange"). For our introductory piece I thought we'd all write about ourselves (I briefly flirted with the idea that we could all write about each other or write on each other or just hold a pen above a piece of unlined paper and sit at a desk in a white room with no windows and resist the urge to scream). Now, I have written about myself a few times already, but I don't want to skip the task outright or to just reuse something old, so here I am again. How to talk about myself without sounding redundant? Or should I just give in and be not only slightly redundant but incredibly, boldly redundant - so redundant that I should consider editing this sentence at a future date and either bolding or italicizing the word redundant or should it be the word "so" or both? Not sure... I mean while I'm highlighting certain words why not invite them all? I just don't want to bold or italicize too many words because then they start expecting and anticipating it and that doesn't mesh well with how I live my life or at least how I am trying to live my life since the day the crows came. For those that don't know me well, like the students in my club, no crows actually came to this point, but they are always welcome. I have a "crows always welcome" policy at my house and I always will until the crows actually come and then it will only be fair to allow another bird or animal or even my uncle to come visit, although that would mean having to reverse my current "no uncles welcome" policy that I've wanted to lift for some time now what with all of the amazing uncles I come across on a daily basis.

The kids in my creative writing club are probably wondering who am I really and since there is a good chance that I'm reading this to them right now, they may be looking at me as I'm sitting in front of them with my large purple water bottle next to me and wondering why is that water bottle so big with the short answer being that I am thirsty, a lot, and the longer more perplexing answer is being turned into a musical theatre production that should hopefully be opening at a kindergarten class near you at a later date. It is both easy and hard to write about yourself. Easy to hide behind lots of half-truths and transparently obvious falsities and hard to tell the gripping, teeth-rattling, knee-shaking, appetizing truth that everyone claims they crave. Everyone is always craving things sort of like single-cell organisms needing whatever they need for survival (is it oxygen? another cell? all-access cable tv for when the football-loving relatives come to visit round holiday time?) I try to toe the line on my floor all the time as sort of a test of the agility of my toes. I also metaphorically toe the line between what people want to hear and what I want them to hear. If lines had more sides I would also be balancing those two with what I hear while they are hearing things (not much outside of the sound of my voice which is lovely I have to say) and practicing my falsetto as you never can quite predict when it may come in handy - a sing off? my daily performance in front of the mirror before I leave the house? scaring away bears and other unwelcomed wildlife? In my writing I usually settle on starting off with the best of intentions, but then I get horribly sidetracked - horribly is completely the wrong descriptor as I love the sidetracks I walk down - they are far more interesting then the regular path that everyone seems to want me to walk down. Why walk that way, when I can go this way and have more fun, despite all of the mosquito bites and plethora of scrapes and scratches? Even though I go off on weird tangents and never quite get to the point I wanted to get to, I am a strong believer that the final destination is a whole lot less important than the trip to get there and I feel that about writing, preparing a meal and actual trips which is why an intended afternoon at the beach with the family is often spent at the museum of natural history accompanied by girl guides. And another thing, why are original points so important in the first place? My theory is that the word point intimidates us, or at least me and that is why I try to avoid points as much as I can which is why I never win at ping pongs. Not enough points. If those students are still facing me and avoiding eye contact as that may be misconstrued as acceptance then I guess I can take a short break here to enjoy the moment before continuing on.

The question on my mind right now is not important at the moment, so I won't ask it. I also find that asking questions in my writing is a completely unsatisfying experience as I never get an answer, unless I play the game of answering myself almost as if I have multiple personalities with one being the youthful, upbeat questioner and the other being the more grounded, voice of reason who supplies the answers and everyone once and a while a third guy pops in out of nowhere and orders a pizza. I don't expect lots of answers from the public when I pose questions that I choose to not answer myself, but people must either think I'm being facetious or rhetorical, which is easily understandable as I attempt to dedicate a minimum of 25 minutes each hour all day to both of these which is hard enough during the day but really challenging while bathing or sleeping (I never bathe and sleep at the same time not even on a dare unless there is the promise of plum pie  -that's how much I love plum pie. I've never even had plum pie. I will move on now). I would love to sleep facetiously or rhetorically but it is exceedingly hard to nail and usually just comes across as regular, plain old, sleep. Anyways, I do have questions on my mind like "what should I tell these students about me?" and "what stuff should I make up completely to give off the illusion of importance and dignity and tallness?" Let's see...I love my family, but that is pretty obvious- most people do and if I didn't, I definitely wouldn't be writing it in a blog that my family occasionally skims through and groans at. Also, not loving my family would make me a pretty contemptible figure that would make being the protagonist in my works of fiction really challenging and I don't think I have the mental wherewithal, vocal training or collection of shirts to be a villian. I guess I should tell the students about my brain and my heart all the while keeping it vague as I don't really know that much about brains and hearts - it is quite shocking that I've made it this far and know so little about two of the most important things in my life outside of my humanitarian work and my stamp collection. Really - I should make a shrine for each of them and pray before them except that I'll have to cut back on all of the praying I do before my stuffed baby tiger (gotta love that little guy) and the picture of my friends Harry and Frieda that no one can tell them about or else I will definitely not be invited over for the next taco night on the account of seeming creepy and I won't be able to blame anyone but myself and my red sharpie that I just had to draw roses with all over their picture. Outside of my love of my family, I also love being active, I love cooking and I love puzzles. To save time I have decided to condense the three loves into one. So, I am trying to find someway to go for a run while cooking and doing a puzzle or perhaps I am going about this way too literally (big shock) and maybe I need to find someway to make the exercise and cooking a puzzle in and of themselves or make a cooking puzzle that the act of solving would help me get some cardio in. I'm not sure what the answer is, but there is an answer out there somewhere and while I totally get the value in finding answers for myself in life I just don't have enough money for a flight to Bermuda right now. Nope, I'm the guy who saw the other guy about the thing that was not only monstrously expensive but also, long story short, caused me to put a halt to my winter plans that included some industrial strength rope, something those in the know call "whale juice" and car freshener.

I would go on and on for a while, but I am trying to keep this somewhat short as my way of paying homage to all of the pumpkin growers out there right now (I am horrible at paying homage and even when I accidentally get it right, my ability to choose the correct recipients is questionable at best). I guess all that I would like to say before I leave you is that I always aim to write how I talk, so that if you were to read something I wrote while sitting in a cafe it would be an eerily similar experience to hanging out with me at a cafe and it would be even more confusing if the piece of writing you were reading to yourself at the cafe was about the two of us sitting together at a cafe talking about me writing a piece about us sitting together at cafe. I have also thought about trying to talk how I write, and although I believe that after hours of practicing (followed by a really nice herbal tea) I've nailed it, it just comes across as a long series of clicks and I just can't get pronounce the sound the space bar makes. I think everyone should try to capture their voice in their writing and I like to think of my voice as a brilliant red cardinal who once flew so gracefully in the skies majestically drifting in awe-inspiring fashion until the fateful day when the rains came and the cardinal finally listened to his mom and just got out of bed and went to school because that is what twelve year old boys do, they go to school and they dream of training seemingly untrainable wild cardinals, or at least I once did when I was twelve. But then I grew up, as all young boys do, and I came to realize (mostly through an amazing set of educational videos my mom just happened to have in storage that she just happened to have done the voice over work for - I did think it was oddly coincidental that I loved the exact bird that my mom had been involved in making educational videos on and I briefly contemplated my mother's role in this before deciding to take a much needed nap) that wild birds must stay wild, especially the transplendant cardinal, for they are the red dots on the lower case "i"s of the world and to capture them would be akin to not serving a homemade aioli with the grilled veggies at a dinner party. Look I know that doesn't make a lot of sense- I don't make the rules here, I only report them. And you read them. How could you!?!?

So there you have it. I think I've introduced myself, kind of. I think those that have read this now have an incrementally small amount of knowledge about me that they didn't have previously. I'm sure some of them wish that it could have either taken less time or that they could have been eating cookies while reading this. I hope you have found this entertaining and I think the long-term impact it will have on you is almost limitless, all you have to do is dream. Have I inspired you to prepare a traditional Japanese holiday meal? Have I  encouraged you to dig a large hole in your backyard for no apparent reason? Have I convinced you that understanding differential calculus won't keep you warm at night? Have I made any progress in convincing you to knit me some woollen mittens to match my sweater or at least not clash with the rainbow pants I am knitting right now as I write this (okay I lied - I clearly can't be writing and knitting at the same time and since I'm clearly writing who is knitting these pants I am proudly wearing? I promised my grandmother one day quite cryptically to never forget where my lunch is and also who made my pants, but then again I promised my adorably daffy grandmother lots and lots of things - it made up much of our daily conversing). But, most importantly have I answered or explained who I am? For those inclined to say "yes" - thank you! The cheque is in the mail (if by "cheque" I mean "this large handful of nearly-expired coupons that I want to give away in the effort to cover my bulletin board solely with colourful pushpins" and by "mail" I mean "here you go, enjoy"). And for those who feel that the answer is "no", I applaud your brevity and your hard-hitting style - it will take you far in life, hopefully far enough away from me so you don't have to hear me crying from the disappointment of a failed writing activity. But, I'll be okay in the end, your "no" will only strengthen me and toughen me up so that one day I will rise with a new, thicker (and hopefully more durable) skin and hopefully I will find a way to utilize this skin to gain some sort of fame or at least membership in an underground club that I am unaware of at this point. And, lastly, for those of you who either want to answer "maybe" or who were blissfully unaware of the question in the first place as yet another thing you are blissfully unaware of in life, thanks for showing up and continue to enjoy this seasonally warm fall day.