The Interview Game (please play!)

This post originated on Feb 4th, 2009 & I want it to live forever. This page is the permanent place for my interviews to live, as well as the place where I succinctly (I love that word, “succinctly”) post the links to the answers of those that I have interviewed. If you want to be interviewed, please comment on the original post.

Danielle LaPorte of White Hot Truth & Carrie + Danielle created these custom interview questions for me, which is awesome. So not only am I getting interviewed by one of my blidols (that’s a new combo word I made, merging “blogging” and “idols”), but these questions are just for me!

If by some fat chance I’m one of your blidols, or even if you’re just not annoyed by my posts & you have a blog of your own, read THE INTERVIEW RULES at the end of this post if you’d like me to interview you. Karma, people.

THE INTERVIEW

1. What has cooking taught you? Uh……it has taught me that I’m not good at everything that I do, and sometimes convenience matters most. If my current cooking skills were a subject on the $10K Pyramid, they would be Things You Toast and Things You Microwave, with few exceptions. When I come home I’m usually famished and want to eat quickly. If I’m not famished, I still don’t want to spend time cooking. I have other things to do!
2. What do you avoid? Confrontation. I’m much, much better than I used to be, but somewhere between high school and college I went from always, always, always telling someone if I was upset/hurt by them to…..not. As an adult I’m able to recognize when confrontation is going to be fruitful and when it’s….not.
3. What 3 books rocked your world?

  • Marjorie Morningstar by Herman Wouk is my all-time favorite novel, although I didn’t know it at the time. It’s the only book that calls my name at certain points in my life, and I must pick it up and read it again.
  • He’s Just Not That Into You by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo was my bible when I was single, and provided a huge wake-up call to me about my recent (huge, enormous, painful, shattering, debilitating – at the time) break-up. My best friend and I still remind each other, “Don’t waste the pretty.”
  • Honestly, I’m racking my brain for the last one. I wish I had some great creativity or time management or self-help book that has “rocked my world”, but I just read novels until recently. I would always recommend to anyone who needs a great novel to pick up Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi, despite the fact that’s it’s about a dwarf from Nazi Germany.

4. What do you find yourself wishing for most frequently? An affordable apartment to purchase in NYC! Unless you’re a multi-millionare (with an extra million in the bank to soothe the co-op board’s soul), it’s impossible to get more than 500 square feet anywhere. Plus, you have to put down 20% wherever you go. Luke & I are hoping that Brooklyn will give us more viable options and something larger than a 1BR for lower than our ceiling price. Sigh.
5. How would you describe your best quality? Uniquity. Is that a word? I’m so completely, utterly myself (as my stepdad says, “No bullshit”) and I don’t try to hide it. Does it mean that I’m transparent? Or that I make myself vulnerable all the time? Or that I’m my true self with each and every person I meet? Um, no. But at 31 years old I can finally say “take it or leave it”. I know my values and my goals, my style and my humor, what’s worth holding on to and what’s worth letting go. My sass, my energy, my uniquity, & my chutzpah make me the woman I am today.

THE INTERVIEW RULES
* leave me a comment saying: “interview me”
* all comments will be published, as long as your name isn’t Mr Cameltoe (obviously, Mr Cameltoe, who commented this week, is a robot spammer)
* I will e-mail you five questions of my choice
* you can then answer the questions on your blog {with a link back to my blog}
* you should also post these rules, along with an offer to interview anyone else who e-mails you wanting to be interviewed
* anyone who asks to be interviewed should be sent 5 questions to answer on their blog
* it would be nice if the questions were individualized for each blogger

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On February 25th 2009, I answered questions that Carolyn of a beautiful ripple effect asked me. The original post can be found here, but it’s copied in full below. I’m nice like that.

How I love how The Interview Game has taken off! So far, I have thrown out 100 questions to 20 people, and I love going to my permanent page and updating it with another link. It’s almost as fun as when I discover that my interviewees have become the interviewers!

In the past few weeks, I’ve been lucky enough to “meet” Carolyn Rubenstein, founder of CCC Scholarships, Harvard grad student and author of the fantabulous blog, a beautiful ripple effect. If I wasn’t so much freakin’ older than her, I would worry that we were separated at birth – we have a crapload of similarities, from loving Gilmore Girls to fun office supplies to hearting the same blogs.

So, I was thrilled when Carolyn decided to pay the interview game forward, and of course I jumped at the chance to answer her questions! Here they be:

1) What is your favorite day of the week? Why? Oh, it’s gotta be Saturday. Saturday, when I’m allowed to not set the alarm (yes, I can still sleep for 12+ hours if left to my own devices, despite leaving my teens 12 years ago). Saturday, when the whole weekend of possibility is open to me. Saturday, when I start my day with a toasted sesame bagel from H&H or Absolute, schmear it with lowfat spinach cream cheese from Fairway, sit on the couch with my babeh & watch the latest episode of The Soup. Ahhhhhhh… Saturday.
2) What is your favorite piece of advice? Currently, my favorite piece of advice is to not give advice! It might seem like a cop-out, but ever since I started my life coaching classes I have realized that nobody should be giving advice to anyone else. How else can someone find their own way, and really discover what it is that they want/need to be doing? By me telling them what I think they should do? Uh, no.

But if my arm was twisted, or if I was just shooting the crap with someone, then my favorite piece of advice is, “Surround yourself only with positive people.” It took me a lifetime to learn that one, and it was really, truly difficult for me to let go of those energy-suckers for various reasons. But now, while I don’t have the same quantity of friends, I have so many more quality ones.


3) Who is your favorite writer? Why? Right now, Kelly Rae Roberts is my favorite writer. It kind of makes me mad that she’s such an incredible artist, too. She has this way of writing that’s so inspiring and personal and stirs up so much in me – but without being preachy or worrying about being “right” (she starts each sentence on her blog with a lowercase letter). I strive for that. Her book, Taking Flight, is so friggin’ powerful that I’m scared to read it. No joke.


4) When you were in high school, what did you want to be when you grew up? An actress! A musical theater actress. A Broadway performer. It’s all I ever wanted to be, from the age of I-can’t-think-back-that-far until I hit about 27. Finding a new passion was both difficult and heart breaking. I can go into it, but I already have – you can read about it here and here. I thought it was impossible until I found life coaching. Having the ability to assist others through that transition is just a dream for me. I know that if I found a new career that I’m passionate about, anyone can do it.


5) What are your three favorite quotes? Ugh – it’s so tough to choose! I’ve been collecting quotes for years and years. I guess my favorites would have to be:

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.” ~Brian Littrell

“Follow your bliss.” ~Joseph Campbell

“Dance like no one is watching, love like you’ll never be hurt, sing like no one is listening,and live like it’s heaven on earth.”~ William Purkey

I hate answering this question without delving into my quote books, but the fact that I can think of these off the top of my head must mean that they have some effect on me. The first quote I heard when I was in high school at a Ben Vereen concert (yes, I was a super cool high schooler) and it sent chills up & down my spine – I think I might have even gasped. The second quote I bought engraved on a ring on the first day I got back to the city after graduation (I spent 6 months or so at a theater in Pennsylvania right after college). It reminded me to always keep my dreams close at hand (pun not intended). The third one is a quote that keeps being gifted to me, twice on a notebook given to me by my closest friend & Luke. I guess those that know me best celebrate the fact that I beat to my own drum, and I never want to lose the sense of my uniquity. I know that “uniquity” is not a word, but, y’know, the drum thing. I have started a Quotes page here, and you can be assured that I’ll keep on adding to it from my collection and from new ones that speak to me.

Thanks for such great questions, Caroline! You rock the house.

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HERE ARE THE LINKS TO THE ANSWERS OF THOSE THAT I GOT TO INTERVIEW!

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HERE ARE THE ANSWERS FROM THOSE THAT DON’T HAVE A BLOG/AREN’T ABLE TO POST IT ON THEIR BLOG CUZ THEY DON’T MAKE THE RULES:

Mark from Hacking Hollywood Daily said:

  • How did you know that your wife was your soul mate? We were driving home from our first trip together – to Minneapolis. I had never spent that much time together with a girlfriend before, and I just KNEW that it was right and that I wanted to marry her. It was one of those lightbulb moments… no joke. Since that moment (which is almost 14 years ago) there has never been any doubt.
  • Out of all of your goals, what the one that’s the most important to you? The one I scored against my brother, who was an amazing goalie. Oh THAT kind of goal. Probably achieving a level of professional success where I’m in a position to work really hard when I want and relax really hard when I need it.
  • What’s your favorite part of being a celebrity gossip blogger? Having my voice heard. I think my opinion is different enough from most of what’s out there and I enjoy sharing it. That, and the drive to be #1, which is going to be a long road.
  • What do you want to create more of in your life? Time spent in nice weather. I realize that for this to happen we’ll have to move to San Diego, which may just happen one day. Even here in Kelowna, which probably has the best overall weather in Canada, there’s still too many days spent indoors. It’s amazing what a good, long walk in nice weather can do for your spirits and overall state of mind.
  • What would you do with an extra hour every day? Exercise. That’s the one thing that seems to get the shaft when I’m busy. I may always find time to swim but I think if there were an extra hour I would use it to my advantage and really work out properly. I’m sure there’s a whole lot of other things I can think of, but I don’t want to take up too much space on here.

Julie Bestry of Best Results Organizing said:

  • What’s the most important organization tip that you have? “Don’t put things down. Put them AWAY!” I know, that sounds superficial, but the truth is that defining a home, where things belong when they are not being used, is really the key. After all, as I tell all my clients, “everything should have a home, but not everything has to live with you.” First, because deciding WHERE something belongs forces you to really think about whether something is still age-appropriate, size-appropriate and lifestyle-appropriate and needs to live with you at all. Too often, we hold onto things that represent who we used to be, or who we once dreamed we’d be, letting our pasts and faux-futures crowd us out of our present. Second, defining the “home” for something (that is, where it goes when you DO put it “away”, means that you can follow the other rules of organizing, like grouping LIKE ITEMS together, having things LIVE WHERE THEY’RE USED, and bearing in mind the the utility/proximity ratio (which means, the more often you want/need to use something, the closer it should be to you; the less often you need it, the farther away it should be, rather than cluttering up your prime real estate). I could talk about organizing forever, but it all goes back to that essential tip–”Don’t put things down, put them AWAY!”
  • What was your most vivid/frequent dream? (Dream as in sleeping, not dream as in goal) I often dream that I’ve gone back to working in television again. In the dream, I’m dealing with all the old (technical, financial and personnel) problems, putting out all the same fires, and mad at myself for coming back to television instead of staying a professional organizer. In the dream, I feel the same old stresses, plus two new ones–first, I’m mad at myself for having given up on the organizing, the profession I truly love, and second, I resent having to work for someone else when I know I do better when I can drive my destiny. The dream always turns into lucid dreaming, where I calm myself down my reminding myself that I would NEVER acquiesce to being a TV program director again, certainly not at THAT station…and that I must be dreaming. I always wake up very relieved. :-)
  • If you had to give yourself a tag line, what would it be? Well, my business has a tag line: “Don’t apologize. Organize!” If I had to give myself one, I guess I’d have to tweak my own sense of self and make it “Right…about everything…since 1967.”
  • What 5 words would your friends use to describe you? Talkative. Smart. Creative. Funny. Loquacious. (Oh, who am I kidding? My real have-known-me-forever friends would skip *everything* that isn’t a synonym for talks and talks and talks and talks.)
  • How do you recharge your batteries? By immersing myself in excellent narratives: great television and films, brilliant books, songs with lyrics that stay with you for days. Words feed my soul. Though a Peanut Butter Cup and a silly dance sometimes does just as well. Thanks for the great questions!

Jeff Cole of JJC Communications said:

  • Which part of you usually wins out: The Irish or The Jew? Depends on the situation. I am amalgamation of the two. Sometimes I really need a glass of Red Breast Whisky and to sing Whiskey in the Jar. Other times I need to daven and study Talmud. Remember, both cultures hold scholars in very high regard. Both also live by the motto of why tell the truth when you can tell a story.
  • If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be and why? Two places. The west of Ireland for its beauty and the people. Plus, I love the music. Israel because I love the country and I wouldn’t be a minority. Both countries honor writers and poets.
  • If you had a time machine, when would you go to and why? Hmm, tough one. I think to Lincoln’s second inaugural. I would love to hear him deliver the Malice toward speech. He was our greatest president. Second place would be to Sinai to see the 10 commandments come from Sinai.
  • If you were forced to spend 40 hours a week on doing just one activity, what would it be? Easy, writing fiction.
  • When God greets you at the pearly gates, what would you like him/her to say? (And yes, I stole this from James Lipton) That I did my best in everything I did.

Coach Marieke Kramer said:

  • Is living life to the max an emotional experience, a physical experience, or both? Why? Living life to the Max, for me, personally is an emotional as well as a physical experience…The feeling of BEING ALIVE, the energy pumping through your body, knowing you are creating and living the life you have always wanted, is something you feel in your body, mind and soul…Great ideas popping up in your head, an abundance of energy to go out and actually achieve your goals, the immense smile on your face when feeling this alive and happy!!!
  • If you could only take 3 books with you to a deserted island, what would they be and why? The 3 books would be; The SAS survival guide (how to survive on a deserted island), A Long Walk to Freedom; the autobiography of Nelson Mandela and Land of the Living by NicciFrench (absolutely brilliant book, so scary I had to remind myself to breath during the first couple of pages!)
  • What instills a feeling of calm within you? I feel most calm when I realize that everything is exactly the way it’s suppose to be.
  • If you had an “evil” twin, what would her name be & what would she do? The name of my evil twin is Donna Michaela Corleone, she’s the head of a very large “family”…
  • If you had to live in a museum, which one would you pick and why? The thought of having to life in a museum and thus being locked up really, really freaks me out…., but you are probably going to force me to pick one… so I would say the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam… Because it is absolutely gorgeous, big and it is in Amsterdam, my hometown… I miss Amsterdam….Well thanks for this great experience… Loved the questions and the thought process it provoked! Thanks Michelle!
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