GlossyVeneer

Posted by Jill on January 28th, 2008 in Just Life

Caron from And Still Counting interviewed me for Neil’s Interview Experiment. She’s having some dashboard troubles, so I’m going to post the interview here. Hopefully she’ll be able to get the interview posted on her site as well soon!

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You’ve been blogging longer that anyone else I’ve encountered. How did decide to get started?

It’s so dorky, back in 2001 I was reading in a tech magazine about a new technologies emerging to make self-publishing on the internet very simple and mainstream. I started the blog by testing some of the companies mentioned in the article. I deleted most of those blogs and then stuck with Blogger because it was the most straightforward platform of all the ones I tested. This was before commenting emerged and mainly people used blogs for personal journals. My early posts were such garbage.

When you first started blogging, the name of your blog was Brain Dump. You now blog under the title Glossy Veneer. Tell me about the 2 names, and what made you want to switch.

Like I said, my early posts were awful. They literally were “brain dumps”, I had a thought or received a joke and I dumped it there so it wouldn’t be cluttering my mind. But after a while I decided that I wanted to buy my own domain exclusively for the blog and Brain Dump wasn’t creative enough to still be available. I just played around with lots of names, running them past my husband. GlossyVeneer got the thumbs up. I never imagined that people would start calling me “Glossy” from that, but I kind of like it now.

Congratulations on recently running your first marathon! How did you get started running? What do you do to stay motivated in your training?

I’ve always wanted to be an athlete. It eluded me for a while because I had a bad attitude. I didn’t want to get sweaty, I was too busy, I was tired, I have bad knees; just making excuses. But about 2003, after several health scares in the family, I decided that I wanted to take better control of my personal health. I started exercising more and eating cleaner. Then my mom and I made a commitment to each other that we would do something really “big” when she was all healthy. This was our something “big”. I don’t know how I stay motivated, I just do. It’s gotten to a point where I feel very antsy if I haven’t done a workout.

You telecommute for your job. Are there any unanticipated outcomes in transitioning from a traditional work environment?

At first I felt like I was the luckiest girl in the world, for having employers that valued me so much that they would give me the opportunity to telecommute. But I’ve found that it is very, very, very lonely being by yourself all day; especially when you’ve moved to a new city and started telecommuting. When I first started and I would go back to the office for a week, I got annoyed because it felt like I was interrupted by people who were telling jokes and stories and goofing off. There’s a lot of that in a traditional work environment. But now I feel that interaction and camaraderie are essential to being a healthy employee. I’m trying to figure out how to reinvigorate my life while still doing my job, because I can’t really invite the neighborhood over for a party during the day and call it “work”. :-)

You have Twitter on your side bar. Can you tell a skeptic like me why anyone would willingly play into the hands of “Big Brother?” This is one of those things I just don’t get.

I don’t know. The Twitter thing came about kind of like blogging, just testing new technologies. I’m finding it doesn’t really jive for me though and I may quit. You would think it would fall right into my previous themes of “BrainDump”, but I know more people are reading the Twits than early blog posts, so I’m a little more self-conscious of posting something like, “I feel gassy today.”

Movies. You review them from time to time. Do have an all time favorite?

No one all-time favorite. I love movies though, even the bad ones. We used to see them in the theatres all the time but it’s kind of pain to get to the theatre now since it’s in a casino and my husband works such long hours. But I do have a few that are definitely at the top of my list: Terminator 2, The Last Unicorn, A Christmas Story and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Random, huh?

Breast cancer has tread harshly on your family. How are your mom and grandma doing? What concerns do you have for your own health?

My grandma just finished radiation for her second breast cancer diagnosis and everything is looking really good. My mom has had breast cancer twice now, the latest bout was a couple years ago and she is doing phenomenally well right now too. Truthfully, I am terrified for my future. I always talk about “when” I get cancer, not “if” I get cancer. And it’s not really a guarantee that I will get it either. I just do my best to exercise and eat right so that hopefully I’ll be healthy. I’m trying to refocus my life to eliminate a lot of the stressors so that I don’t have that affecting my health as much either.

You mentioned some food allergy issues. I have some myself, and feel like my world is sometimes revolving around what I can and can’t eat. Have you found any special coping skills around that issue?

Basically I’m very aware of different names for items that may trigger allergies. I read menus, ingredient lists very carefully and if a restaurant is a chain I look through their site before visiting to narrow down my choices before I even get there.

Finally, How’s your butt? I too, took a tumble down some stairs, landing on my butt, and could not believe how much my ass could not only hurt, but how anything could bruise like that!! I didn’t break my tail bone like you did, so, I’m hoping that didn’t cause you any lingering effects.

HA HA! That’s awesome, the Butt Incident! You know the people that say they can predict the changing weather by a feeling in their joints after an injury? Well, I can’t honestly say that I feel oncoming rain in my butt, it just sounds funny to say that. But then, I live in the desert and we rarely have rain so maybe I can predict precipitation! My butt is doing much better these days, although the bruise lingered for nearly 6 months after that incident. The biggest issue that I’ve had as an outcome of that is that I have lingering fear of walking down stairs at movie theatres, since that’s where the injury occurred. I walk like a little old granny down the steps, one at a time.

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Thank you for taking the time to ask such thoughtful questions. You really put together a great interview and I had fun answering these!