Jonquil

On forums I tend not to use my wry sense of humor, but in chat I'll let loose. I find that people who share the same idea of what's funny can pick up on sarcasm and exaggeration easily.

Aging is a good thing. All your investments pay off (if you start playing the piano at 10, imagine how good you’ll be at 40!), your peers are more mature, you have more interesting stories to tell, and you worry less about stupid things.

I really wish I was less of a pushover and less yielding. On the surface it seems like niceness and it helps me to succeed in a job where I need to put people at ease, but all it really consists of is knowing how to let other people talk and open up. It attracts so many draining, troubled, self-centered people to my life, even after a decade of working on it as a personality flaw. The only thing that's changed is that I've upgraded from people having hysterics or deliberately pushing my boundaries to people who only want to talk to me to vent, talk over what I'm saying, etc. I can always cut them off, but it's disappointing, awkward, and I don't have a very big social network of my own to fall back on. Quite frankly, it discourages me from reaching out to others sometimes, especially online. My more assertive friends have had this problem themselves, but nowhere near as often. I have trouble balancing something that comes naturally to others, I guess.

I still struggle with this, but I've been making headway by keeping multiple projects going at once. That way I can shift gears onto a new project that I just plain enjoy working on every time I start to focus too narrowly on the end result of one. Revision is for after the writing, anyway!

Yeah, the genders thing can be frustrating sometimes because you're always being viewed through that lens to an extent - even if people don't box you in with it. That said, both of the sexes have things they're more or less allowed to do. Where I live (US) it's considered more socially acceptable for women to do things like dress in a masculine style and be sensitive, while men can get a lot of flak for dressing in a feminine style or being seen crying. Pick your poison, I guess...

I've always liked the smart, quiet types with a wry sense of humor. When I was younger I used to date people who were very different from me (outgoing, didn't care much for learning, silly, etc) because they were the ones who approached me, I thought they seemed nice, and I was too shy to befriend/date anyone else. As a result, I was never able to make a real connection because we struggled to understand each other beyond the platonic level and we didn't share any important life experiences. Looking back, I'm not even sure why they liked me. At this point, I believe there's no substitute for someone who truly understands your world and empathizes with your concerns. I think I liked my heartthrob the moment he told me that I didn't have to be funny or interesting all the time, because he innately understands wearing a mask for the world and fearing what happens when people see behind it. I act funny because it was the only way I was able to get friends, and he acts intimidating because it was the only way for him to be left alone. It was either that or the smooth, serious voice... or helping me learn his native tongue... or staying up with me for awhile when I was having a fit of insomnia because I said I found it comforting to have him around... Physically, I prefer "average." I will admit that I'm a sucker for a nice voice, though, and have had crushes on people online simply based on their voice.

Divinity: Original Sin. I loved Baldur's Gate, which this is similar to, but everything down to finishing quests is obtuse and there's really no reason for it to be quite this bad. Let me make something clear... I love open environments and puzzles. I hate sifting through dialogue options looking for the right one. That's not challenging, fun, or fulfilling, it's just a chore. I don't know whether or not I want to keep playing. The battles are enticing because of how involved the terrain is (fire can make clouds of poison gas explode) and I'm really enjoying an RPG that I can't just saunter through without any caution whatsoever, but...

If I had to narrow it down, I'd say Warcraft III, Divinity: Original Sin, Bastion, and Pokemon Yellow. Favorite past and current.

I've never been the hugging type, though I do accept it from friends. I tend to be more verbal with affection and give compliments, make jokes, etc. Honest words of praise and feedback seem rare to me, so I like to give them to people who might be hearing a lot of vagueness or too many cliches that don't really get to the heart of the issue.

Nice idea for mixing things up! I'm going to go with loyalty. Most of my friends aren't the nicest people around, but they have a solid moral compass and I know that they'll still be there if things go south, if we have an argument, etc. I can trust that they're in it for the long haul and like who I am deep down, whether I'm happy or unhappy, successful or unsuccessful, etc. Honesty is a close second, but largely because I tie it in to loyalty. A lot of friends have been dishonest over the years and wound up hurting me because of it, but the lie wasn't as important as what the lie was covering up in many cases. As long as it's not a guy picking a fight with me just to see if I like him enough to get upset, I could forgive.

Unfortunately, yeah. I had a close online friend who disappeared and cut contact with all his forum friends last year. We talked about serious life issues like our dysfunctional childhoods and even worked on creative projects together, with him illustrating what I wrote. I thought he’d committed suicide initially because of the way he’d been talking. I have a few new online friends now, but I find it hard to trust anyone in quite the same way or involve them in my projects. Every time I try I just think of the last time and how wrong I was about someone I'd been close enough to for exchanging handwritten letters. Still too early, I guess…

I've been writing for several years, so I do have experience. A lot of it has been fanfiction and half-finished novels, but I want to start publishing some flash fiction and short fiction to make a little money on the side. Mostly what I need is more experience and a lot of attempts at reaching that goal. I don't think you need to worry too much about quality as long as you put in time and effort, honestly. There's a lot of subjectivity when it comes to tastes (so if you're passionate about an idea, there may be others who are, too) and you can always improve your understanding of things like story structure, pacing, etc. It's a growing experience. Really, the only ones who should be concerned are the ones who don't care enough to even capitalize sentences.

Opposites don’t attract, and I don’t hate my own company so much that I need to have someone offset what I am by pairing up with someone more outgoing, etc. The first love or first time having sex isn’t the best or most memorable. I don't need to party and drink to have fun or experience life, and I don't need to travel to learn more about the world.

I've always been a hands-on learner and am excellent with categorical information. I won't remember anything I read in a textbook, but I'll remember everything I handle and various facts about people I spent time around like their field, their interests, their family, etc.

I tend to attract people with problems, which is fantastic when I'm at work where people need to be comfortable with me and terrible when I'm trying to make friends. More than once I've wound up as someone's non-consenting therapist and had to put my foot down, which occasionally ended the friendship. I can really only listen to it so many days in the week, especially when I'm sick in bed. Sometimes I think people get stuck in some kind of cycle of venting, where they complain to try to make themselves feel better and wind up feeling worse because they've spent all afternoon dwelling on it. Then they have that to complain about.

I designed pen and paper RPGs for things like dinosaurs and Pokemon. Loved vegetables, especially peas and carrots. Hated my room being too clean and would sometimes toss a few stuffed animals out onto the floor to make it look better. My mother has a picture in the family album of me in my training pants when I was very little and covered in sticky notes. I don't remember that at all...

I have crushes less and less as I age, but I do really have a thing for a friend of mine. We talked about it and, because of the bad period he's in right now, he has no idea what he feels for me beyond that he feels something. I get the impression that he's had a really hard time socially (never taken a girl on a date, supposedly), but I think he's perfect for me since we live very similar lives, have similar backgrounds, and we tend to complement each other despite him being very serious and me being very silly. I like pretty much everything about him, even if he sometimes says insensitive things because he didn't think it through. Right now we're just living our lives and enjoying spending time together. I'll be happy if we wind up together, but if not I'm just glad he's around. There is some distance between us, so it's nothing to just jump into considering how taxing a long-distance relationship would be.

Well, cupcakes have a way of changing even the hardest hearts...

Yeah, that's pretty much been my life at 24. I won't go into detail, but most things about me are alternative or downright weird, even when I'm among alternative or weird communities. Generally, people prefer those they relate to and share important values with so it's left me with a few lonely periods in my life where I struggled to connect and make reliable friends. I used to consider it depressing because it meant I would never quite fit in as well as others, but I've become more comfortable with the quiet life over the years and it gives me alternative perspectives for creative purposes. I haven't found any methods for honing in on others like me and have always bumped into them at random.