the two of me

After a two-year break, it’s time to interview myself again, to see what’s new and/or exciting as I and 8 billion others continue to experience life on Planet Earth.

Previous parts in this series can be found at the links below:

At the end of Part 4, posted June 22, 2021, promised future topics included:

• Writing
• Drawing
• Programming
• Other stuff that ends with -ing
• Vague promises to discuss dating experiences from days of yore
• Not mentioned but implied: More exciting foot news

As always, the interview will be conducted by my doppelgänger, who in this particular interview will be known as Ned.

Ned: Hello again.

Me: Hello there.

Ned: What’s new and/or exciting since the last interview, lo those 30 months ago?

Me: Much has changed. Much has not changed. My underwear has changed. I do that every day.

Ned: Let’s dig into some specifics.

Me: About my underwear?

Ned: …no.

Me: All right. I’m feeling cooperative right now, so seize the moment!

Ned: When last we talked, the world was still in the grip of a global pandemic. How are things now, in December 2023?

Me: I had a COVID-19 vaccination less than two weeks ago.

Ned: So the pandemic is still a thing?

Me: Yes and no.

Ned: Explain.

Me: No, in the sense that life has pretty much reverted to pre-pandemic behavior/reality for most people. Masks are optional, everything is open, and so on. Yes, in the sense that COVID-19 is still around, mutating merrily away, but it’s no longer clogging up hospitals with patients due to vaccines and everyone otherwise catching it at some point. Long COVID is a concern. I’m also unsure if I should capitalize covid or not. Anyway, it’s more a background thing now, unless you’re squashed into a bus with 500 other people, then some guy without a mask next to you starts coughing into your shoulder, and you start thinking about how it would be nice to have a giant hamster ball you could just roll around in public with instead.

Ned: Sounds kind of terrible. I mean, the hamster ball part sounds neat, the rest sounds terrible.

Me: It’s not that bad. I’m sure in a hundred years we’ll all look back and laugh at this pandemic thing, as heads in jars.

Ned: Like on Futurama?

Me: Yes.

Ned: OK, what other big things have changed that you want to talk about?

Me: Define big.

Ned: Pressing global issues and concerns.

Me: Doom.

Ned: How so?

Me: The rise of authoritarianism, the invasion of Ukraine, the invasion of Gaza, probably some other invasions I’m forgetting. The climate is also still getting worse. We are doomed, slightly doomed, or maybe not doomed, depending on what reports you read or which people you talk to. There is generally a fair amount of doom, though.

Ned: How do you cope with all the doom?

Me: I stopped checking the news.

Ned: Really?

Me: Totes for real. Anything truly big still gets to me, so I’m not living in a complete news-free bubble. But it’s nice to not actively and voluntarily read about doom all the time. It makes it easier to relax when I’m having a bubble bath.

Ned: You have bubble baths?

Me: Of course! They are awesome. I do some of my best thinking when immersed in bubbles. I am a fan of Dr. Teal’s bubble bath, specifically elderberry and citrus, both of which smell great. This is not a paid promotion. But it could be. Call me, Dr. Teal, I’ll be your marketing shill!

Ned: So you avoid the news now. What else?

Me: What else do I avoid?

Ned: Sure, let’s go with that.

Me: Social media, by accident. You see, I would always post photos to Instagram and then check it and Facebook when I was tucked into bed every night. Then I thought the blue light from my iPad might be keeping me awake, so I started reading with my non-blue light Kobo ereader instead. My sleeping improved. And then I never found another regular time to check social media, so I just kind of stopped. It’s been nice. Not as nice as a bubble bath, but nice.

Ned: So you are one of ten people on the planet who does not do social media?

Me: No. I still check in every few months. And I am on Mastodon, but the experience there is very different, because there are no ads or algorithm. If I want to see nothing but photos of cats, I can get that on Mastodon. On Facebook, I get an avalanche of ads, a billion “Suggested For You” recommendations that grow increasingly bizarre and questionable as I keep scrolling, then, a lone post from someone I actually know before the avalanche starts again. As an experience, it is gross and awful.

Ned: Have you tried other social media besides Mastodon?

Me: I have peeked in at Bluesky and Threads. I have no idea if Blueksy will amount to anything. They tried making the word “skeet” a thing, which is cringe times five hundred billion. Threads is owned by Meta, so it will eventually be ruined by ads and garbage, just like their other platforms. I deleted my Twitter account, though I rarely used it.

Ned: Oh right, Twitter.

Me: More doom. In one year, it has been transformed into flaming wreckage full of Nazis, conspiracy theorists and racists. Kind of impressive, in a way. Yet it shambles on, because the doom is powerful. But enough about doom. I’m trying to end the year on a positive note and you, sir, are not helping.

Ned: Right, sorry! Moving on, let’s talk about your feet.

Me: I have feet, two of them.

Ned: Last time, you were having problems with your feet.

Me: I am happy to report my feet have been problem-free since then.

Ned: That’s great.

Me: Yes. I have happy feet now. But don’t ask about my knees.

Ned: What about your knees?

Me: I think there’s a strong chance I was awful in a past life, and I am now being punished in this life via my knees.

Ned: Sounds bad. Yet intriguing!

Me: It could also be a hereditary thing. My dad had famously bad knees. Well, not that famously.

Ned: What happened to your knees?

Me: Once I quit my job in IT–

Ned: You quit your job?

Me: Yes. Ask me again later, I may elaborate. Or not. But after I quit my job, I had time to resume a regular running schedule, and eventually was back to doing 10K runs at Burnaby Lake. It felt good to be on the trail again, touching trees and such. I never actually touch trees while running, though. That’s probably dangerous.

Ned: Go on.

Me: In the spring of this year, I noticed my knees staring to get stiff after runs. It got worse. It then got a little worse again. I was concerned my knees would explode or something. I took pictures (of my knees). I went to my doctor. He identified a Baker’s cyst™ behind my right knee.

Ned: That sounds gross.

Me: It is, kind of. Basically, your knee cap has a bunch of fluid under it, to keep it lubricated and allow it to shift around without horrible things happening to it. With my right knee, that fluid was instead pooling up behind my right knee. Sort of a squishy bulgy thing.

Ned: Yuck. Did they amputate?

Me: This isn’t the 14th century, you know.

Ned: I know. I just wanted to say that. So what happened?

Me: I went to a physiotherapist, and he poked and prodded my knees and legs. By the way, when a physiotherapist says they’re going to do apply pressure to a part of your body in a way that “won’t feel great” believe them. Eventually, my doctor and physio guy cleared me to resume running. My knees are mostly better now, but I’m still mainly doing 5K runs, building back to 10K eventually. It’s meant I have run less in terms of distance, but have still managed to run regularly for most of the year. The whole thing lasted longer than the foot thing, but was less painful.

Ned: So you are now fit as the proverbial fiddle?

Me: Well, my weight keeps going up, despite efforts to lose it.

Ned: Have you been on an all-donut diet?

Me: No. But now I kind of wished I had been, because the results may not have been that different, and I’d have had a bunch of yummy donuts in the meantime.

Ned: Any new plans for fighting the fat?

Me: Less snacking. Vaguely hoping for a miracle. Things like that.

Ned: Excellent. Now, let’s talk about that job you quit!

Me: My last day was August 27, 2021, about a week before the school would have re-opened to in-person classes. I was vaccinated, but the idea of going back, and of enduring that commute, was not something that made my socks roll up and down with excitement.

Ned: Did you quit because of the pandemic?

Me: I’d say it accelerated the process. I had reached a point where the work was immensely unrewarding, even boring. I did not want to keep doing it. And the manager of my particular section of IT assured me that there was nothing else for me there, just working on the service desk, doing the same monotonous stuff with no foreseeable hope for promotion or a new role or anything.

Ned: That sounds less than ideal.

Me: Indeed. But it brought clarity to my position and made it easy to leave. Then I left!

Ned: And then what?

Me: I started learning how to program, so I could make my own games. I figured if it didn’t work out, I could just dig ditches or something until my body was reduced to a broken heap.

Ned: Fun! How is the programming going?

Me: Math is hard. I started working with the game engine Unity, then the executives there decided to enact a bunch of idiotic policies and destroy all trust with their users, so I switched to Godot, which is free and open source. I am making progress. It has been an interesting experience. It’s better than having a Baker’s cyst.

Ned: When is your first game due out?

Me: Next year. And by next year, I don’t mean in 19 days, when it will technically be 2024. But some time in 2024. I am keeping the details mostly mum for now.

Ned: That’s quite a change from working at a service desk.

Me: Yeah. I’ve gone from soul-crushing work to brain-crushing. But it’s by choice, plus I get to make my own hours and the commute can’t be beat.

Ned: Let’s talk about stuff you avoided talking about last time.

Me: I hear my kettle boiling.

Ned: You big fat liar.

Me: I’m not that fat. Fine, ask away.

Ned: Writing?

Me: Yes.

Ned: You are writing?

Me: Yes.

Ned: What are you writing?

Me: Mostly blog posts about whatever pops into my head. I also started a Substack newsletter which features some writing. Newsletters are hard. I did five issues, with the time between issues growing more…expansive.

Ned: Is the newsletter dead and buried now?

Me: Nothing is ever dead and buried on the internet. That’s what makes it great. And terrible. But for my newsletter, I decided to reboot it and start again in 2024.

Ned: 2024 seems like it will be a busy year.

Me: You know it, baby. Maybe all this work will help me shed some flab. *sobs*

Ned: I have complete confidence in you, unless you are secretly hiding cookies.

Me: No cookies, except for the internet kind.

Ned: Anything else, writing-wise?

Me: I’ve started noodling around again on my novel, The Mean Mind.

Ned: Aren’t you just the ambitious little go-getter!

Me: With so many plates in the air, I’m bound to, uh…hmm. I think I lost the analogy there. But yeah, I’ll be working on that, too, plus comics and things. And the game. And vacuuming.

Ned: Excellent. I look forward to hearing about the success of your many projects in Part 6!

Me: Whoa, let’s not get crazy here.

Ned: Sorry. A final writing thought to share?

Me: Just this random piece of trivia: I once wrote and submitted a teleplay for Star Trek: Voyager, called “Worlds Apart.” It was decent. And rejected.

Ned: Moving on, you refused to talk about dating last time. Let’s hear you dish now.

Me: Kettle boiling.

Ned: …

Me: Someone is at the door. With my boiling kettle.

Ned: …

Me: What? What is there to say? I’ll give you a very short summary, and you’ll have to try again in Part 6. Or Part 60.

Ned: Fair enough.

Me: I lost about 40 pounds in 2008. I was feeling spunky after this, and started dating again. I had many experiences, that ranged from, “What was I thinking?” to “What was he thinking?” to “This guy seems to want to end the date suspiciously close to the start of tonight’s episode of Survivor.” (It was 2008, people still watched regular TV.) You’ll have to wait, possibly forever, to hear more than that.

Ned: Aw. Just a little more?

Me: If I wrote a book about my dating experiences, I would call it Fruits and Nuts.

Ned: Any other personal, embarrassing experiences you’d like to share?

Me: No.

Ned: Not even one?

Me: Let me think. No. Also: No.

Ned: No?

Me: Correct.

Ned: Until next time, do you have any inspiring words to pass on to anyone reading this?

Me: Yes, actually.

Ned: !

Me: At the last scrum on the last day I was actually working in my previous job as a drifting, directionless slob at an IT service desk (my last two weeks were on vacation, which is a nice way to quit a job), I was handed the proverbial mic. After nearly nine years of being there, I offered my soon-to-be ex co-workers this: Do what makes you happy. Unless it’s being a serial killer. Don’t do that.

Ned: Great advice! See you in a couple of weeks.

Me: What? That’s not in the contract!

Ned: Haha, I’m kidding. Maybe in 2024, the year you do everything.

Me: Maybe.

Stay tuned for Part 6 of this apparently endless interview, coming in 2024. Or some other year. Probably not, like, 2397 or something, though.

Previous entries:

In which I interview myself (Part 1 of 2)
In which I interview myself (Part 2 of 2)
In which I interview myself (Part 3 of 2)

When last we left me way back in 2016 the world was a different place. Now it’s way better.

Haha, just kidding.

Anyway, Part 3 ended with the promise that I would “quiz myself about dating, writing, running and ugly feet.” Let’s get on with it, with my doppelgänger, again known as Dopple, asking the questions.

Dopple: Has it really been five years since the last part of this interview?

Me: According to the calendar, yes.

Dopple: How time flies.

Me: I’ve learned that time is not linear. It’s elastic and that elastic gets flabby and loose as you get older.

Dopple: Sounds deep. What does it mean?

Me: It passes a lot faster, the taut snap of the elastic isn’t there anymore, so it flies by, like a bungee jumper who has about 20 extra feet of cord tied to his ankles and bonks his head on the bottom of the river instead of dangling tantalizingly above it.

Dopple: Sounds painful.

Me: Accurate.

Dopple: So let’s go to the topics that were originally going to be discussed before getting into all the crazy changes of the last five years.

Me: Lay them on me, baby.

Dopple: Don’t call me baby.

Me: Sorry. Carry on.

Dopple: First up: Tell me about dating.

Me: What would you like to know? I don’t date anymore.

Dopple: Tell me about some of your best dating experiences.

Me: [long pause]

Dopple: [awkward silence stretches out]

Me: Well.

Dopple: Surely there were some good dating experiences?

Me: Let’s come back to this question. Maybe in Part 5.

Dopple: There’s going to be a Part 5?

Me: Who knows what the future holds for us?

Dopple. OK, let’s move on to writing.

Me: [extremely long pause]

Dopple: Are you still there? Hello?

Me: Writing in Part 5.

Dopple: This is going to be a short interview…

Me: Sometimes succinct is good.

Dopple: How about running, then? You still run.

Me: Technically, I still run, but there have been…issues.

Dopple: What sort of issues? Amputation? Unnatural hair growth on your feet?

Me: Well, part of it is I got a bit lazy.

Dopple: Bad.

Me: Agreed.

Dopple: For shame.

Me: Okay, that’s enough.

Dopple: Sorry. Continue.

Me: But really, it was just my left foot being weird and stupid. If there was a movie about my left foot called, let’s say, “My Left Foot” people would find it frustrating and dumb. They’d ask for a refund. They would not attend the sequel, “My Right Foot.” I would not win an Oscar.

Dopple: What’s up with the left foot?

Me: First, I have this weird issue with the ball of my foot where it gets really sore after a lot of walking or running. I mostly solved this by getting a custom orthotic made. It kind of amazes me how well it works. But my left foot still just feels…off. Not physically detached, but different. Like the bones don’t quite connect correctly. Maybe they’re too big or too small, or it’s really a clever alien symbiont posing as the bones. But whatever it is, it still causes my left foot to feel not quite right. No pun intended.

Dopple: Pretty sure that pun was at least partly intended.

Me: Fair. The other big thing happened in July 2020. I had just started summer vacation and decided to do a walk around Burnaby Lake. The total round trip is about 18 km. I was heading back, probably around the 16 km mark, when my left foot suddenly began to hurt. Just spontaneously, with no warning at all. I found it very odd. I still do. I made the sad decision to skip running during vacation to allow my foot to recover from this sudden phantom injury caused by just existing and breathing. Gradually over time the pain lessened and I eventually resumed running, but I never moved beyond 5K runs. Then in December the injury returned, like an unwanted sequel.

Dopple: Like Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?

Me: Exactly. Speaking of, did you know they are shooting a fifth movie? Harrison Ford is 150 years old now. Maybe the whole movie will be him digging up things in his backyard garden and thinking they’re priceless treasures because he’s lost his mind after making the last movie. And speaking of, The Rise of Skywalker was the worst sequel that sort of had Harrison Ford in it.

Dopple: But back to your foot.

Me: Yes, my stupid foot. It started hurting again big time in December, to the point where I actually avoided walking outside, like anywhere. It was bad. I was sad. I felt had. My doctor asked me to describe the symptoms and said I had plantar fasciitis. I looked it up later and the symptoms matched perfectly. The best part about this is it’s an incredibly slowly healing injury, so it lingers on for centuries. My next of kin will inherit it. If I had any, that is. It doesn’t hurt anymore now, but I can still feel it, if you know what I mean. I’m now doing 7K walks and run roughly half the time. I’m building back to doing a 5K again. Sometime this summer if my left foot doesn’t spontaneously explode or something.

Dopple: How is your right foot?

Me: Happy as a clam. Well, how happy are clams, anyway? When I go to the beach I see thousands of empty clam shells, which suggests a brutal and unhappy life for clams. So let’s just say my right foot is fine, always has been.

Dopple: Moving on, yet staying somewhat on the same topic, tell me about your “ugly feet”?

Me: Have you seen those idiotic nail fungus TV commercials?

Dopple: Where the medical professional in the white lab coat seems to suddenly be in someone’s living room, like he can teleport in straight from his office?

Me: Yes, those ones. Well, that’s what I have. Not the teleporting doctor, but nail fungus. I’ve had it for years and had basically written off my feet ever looking handsome again.

Dopple: How sad and horrible.

Me: I know, right? Imagine if I’d had a foot fetish. I would never take off my shoes (which probably contributes to nail fungus). Anyway, my doctor gave me a topical cream to use, which helped, but worked very slowly. But then we switched to pills and they’ve been working much better.

Dopple: That’s good!

Me: But the pills might destroy my liver.

Dopple: That’s bad.

Me: But so far they haven’t.

Dopple: That’s good!

Me: But they still might. I need to get my blood tested again when the current prescription ends. Still, my toe nails look pretty close to normal now. I can take off my socks in public and people will not run away in horror.

Dopple: Have you done that?

Me: It’s more a theory to be tested.

Dopple: Let’s talk about some of the other things that have happened since 2016.

Me: [whiny voice] Do we have to?

Dopple: Strictly speaking, no. We could go back to your dating adventures.

Me: Fine, fine. I’ll talk about what’s happened since 2016.

Dopple: What’s changed the most?

Me: I’ve gone from hair to hairs.

Dopple: That is tragic. Do you invest in hats?

Me: I have enough caps to form a line to the moon.

Dopple: Good, good. Anything else?

Me: I came to realize that IT work is crushing my soul. Maybe my left foot, too, for all I know. In fact, I started to realize this in 2016, but it never really gained clarity until late last year.

Dopple: What are you doing to prevent further soul-crushing?

Me: I have some ideas, but nothing I would talk about publicly–yet.

Dopple: Aw, not even a hint?

Me: Okay, one hint: It does not involve my left foot.

Dopple: That hint stinks.

Me: Talk to the foot.

Dopple: I think I’ll pass. So it’s safe to assume that you don’t see yourself staying in IT long term?

Me: Correct. I would rather do many other things instead, some of them actively unpleasant.

Dopple: I see. Well, maybe we can revisit this in the future.

Me: Revisiting it in the past would be tricky.

Dopple: Speaking of, do you believe in time travel?

Me: Not really. I mean, if people could do it, wouldn’t we already know? Unless they’re very, very sneaky about it. But humans suck at being sneaky about that kind of stuff.

Dopple: About time travel?

Me: About big, reality-altering things.

Dopple: What about the thousands of people that kept mum on while working on The Manhattan Project, when the U.S. secretly built the first atomic bomb?

Me: Sure, start using logic and valid examples, why don’t you?

Dopple: Sorry.

Me: No problem. I expect nothing less of me.

Dopple: What else has happened?

Me: Nothing comes to mind.

Dopple: COVID-19?

Me: COVID whatnow?

Dopple: [stares]

Me: Look, since it literally affected the entire planet, I can’t really speak to it as some unique experience. Except maybe uniquely horrible. To me. And probably others. But it does have some upsides. Working from home is nice. I can get up from my desk and grab a snack from the fridge. I can start laundry. I never have to be concerned about a co-worker interrupting me by coming to my cubicle and blocking me from escaping. I don’t have to pay for overpriced cafeteria food. I don’t need to ride transit. I haven’t had a cold or the flu in 15 months! My home computer is way nicer than my work one. The air in my condo is nice, not the horrific toxic poison soup that squirts through the HVAC system in the office.

Dopple: What are some downsides?

Me: Shopping with a mask is unpleasant. Shopping is something I generally find unpleasant, but it’s worse with a mask. I have also been disappointed at how many people have rejected science, safety and reason in exchange for pretending a global pandemic isn’t actually happening. But we do seem to be finally nearing the end of it and a return to something normal-like.

Dopple: You got your first vaccine shot.

Me: Yes, and my second one is a few weeks from now.

Dopple: How did the first one go?

Me: I haven’t had a shot in years (I always rolled the dice and skipped flu shots. And almost always got the flu. Kids, learn from me and don’t be dumb!) so I built it up as some terrifyingly painful experience. When I took my seat at the vaccination clinic, I started to ask the woman tending to me what it would feel like and she jabbed me with the needle, I said, “Ow” and it was over. So a lot of build-up for basically nothing. I did feel pretty fatigued over the next few days, but it beats being dead, as they say.

Dopple: We are starting to run late. Shall we pick this up in Part 5?

Me: I’ll be here.

Dopple: And you’ll discuss dating?

Me: I may discuss dates.

Dopple: Are you referring to the fruit?

Me: Perhaps.

Dopple: [ohyou.gif]

Stay tuned for Part 5 in which dating may be discussed, along with writing, drawing, programming and other stuff that ends with -ing.

Previously:

In which I interview myself (part 1 of 2)
In which I interview myself (part 2 of 2)

Dopple: Here we are again.

Me: I wish I could quit you.

Dopple: Wouldn’t that be impossible, since we’re the same person? Or is it a metaphor?

Me: It just seemed like a good place for a funny quote.

Dopple: We were previously talking about your writing but I’d like to touch on your acting.

Me: My acting was touched, yes.

Dopple: You took drama in school.

Me: I yearned to be dramatic so it was a good fit. In elementary school it was just dumb skits and variety shows and it was all goofy fun. In junior high we started doing more demanding material, like Puss in Boots. Wait, that’s not a good example. We did stuff like The Boy Comes Home, a drama about a young solider returning after fighting in World War I. I played the boy. It wasn’t much of a stretch.

Dopple: Talk about the inevitable drama off-stage.

Me: The drama teacher in junior high liked me, so I typically got cast for most of the lead parts. I was the cat in Puss in Boots and Androcles in Androcles and the Lion. A friend of mine was not well-liked by the teacher because he was…a scamp, let’s say. Yes. Very scampy. Most of the drama students were female, so she was forced to cast him in each production because there were so few guys (and several couldn’t act, they apparently just wanted to hang around with the girls), usually as some kind of comic relief. This friend would commit subtle acts of sabotage and generally drive her crazy. To be fair, she was very open to being driven crazy by him. But in terms of off-stage drama, there really wasn’t a lot, mostly just the usual anxiety about how nothing seemed to be pulling together and opening night was only days away. Oh, and all the girls kept pulling on my tail when I was Puss in Boots. I hated that. But I still remember the line, “Unlike humans, cats only speak when they have something important to say.” Which is pretty much true.

Dopple: You continued on acting in high school?

Me: Yes. In high school it was no longer Drama, it was Acting. I don’t know why. My friend and I switched roles (ho ho) in high school because the acting teacher liked him and seemed indifferent to me. I got to be supporting characters while he got the leads. We did a pretty good run on Dark of the Moon in which I played Floyd Allen, the brother (supporting character) of Barbara Allen (one of the leads). My friend played the brimstone and fire Preacher Haggler. I don’t know if the casting was meant to be ironic or not. We had a great moment during one performance when four of us were on stage and one of the others missed a line, causing a large and vital part of the scene to be skipped over. We had to somehow get back to it. For a few terrifying moments we stood there in silence wondering what to do. I then blurted out an improvised line: “I bet you want to get Barbara married.” He grabbed onto it like a shark snacking on a harp seal. “That’s EXACTLY what I want to do!” And then we covered the missing material and it was all good. I sort of miss the excitement of that, a live performance where things can go wrong and you have to think on your feet.

Dopple: And you continued acting into college?

Me: Yes. I went to Malaspina College straight from high school but dropped out in the second year, filled with self-doubt and greasy hamburgers. While I was there I took part in Oh What a Lovely War, a World War I musical. It was a sprawling ensemble piece and I got to play seven parts, ranging from a Belgian general wearing an extremely tall and silly hat to a Scottish gillie to a soldier singing “Silent Night” in German during a lull in the fighting. I also made a duck from a rubber chicken to use during a hunting bit. Pamphlets were handed out onstage during a town square scene where Emily Pankhurst, a political activist, protests the war. The pamphlets were all handmade and had authentic anti-war slogans on them, except for one which read: “What did you do in The Great War, Daddy?” “I died from eating a McRib!” You never knew if you would get the McRib pamphlet. The intent was to cause the receiving actor to crack up and fall out of character. Theater is a bit strange that way. The McRib was pretty new at the time. I liked it, proving I had no taste when I was young.

Dopple: Since you’re now in tech support, you obviously decided not to pursue acting as a career.

Me: I last acted in the 1988 Vancouver Fringe Festival. I played a nut who died tragically at the end. It was a fun part but the review in the SFU paper was not kind. It unfavorably compared the play to Happy Days. I did one more play the next year but wrote and co-directed and didn’t act. Oh, I did some roleplay in a course this year where I was apparently very convincing as an indifferent tech support person. I’m not sure how I feel about that.

Dopple: With your dreams of acting left behind, what did you do next?

Me: Went to school, then got jobs. The End.

Dopple: The End?

Me: Well, there’s a few details here and there, but those are the broad strokes.

Dopple: Those strokes aren’t broad, they’re planet-spanning.

Me: I think big.

Dopple: What’s the worst job you ever had?

Me: Making pizzas at Mrs. Vanelli’s. I can’t say why, exactly, but I just really hated making pizzas. It was like making them destroyed the magic of eating them. Pizza was my favorite food.

Dopple: Mmm, pizza.

Me: Exactly. I also found working as a TSR at Shaw to be soul-draining.

Dopple: You were a Terminate and Stay Resident program?

Me: The only people who will get that joke are old and wearing adult diapers. As a Technical Support Representative, I logged into the phones at the start of my shift, took calls all day, then logged out and went home. It was strangely wearying to sit there and just take call after call. I felt like my mind was getting sucked out through the headset. I quit after six months, which is five months and 20 days longer than I lasted making pizzas. There was also a cull of 500 employees while I was there. As you might guess, it doesn’t do a lot for morale or your feelings of job security. The people were nice, though.

Dopple: Any funny stories?

Me: No.

Dopple: What’s the zaniest place you’ve worked at?

Me: I have not worked at any place I would call zany. My first job in Vancouver was working at Expo 86, but it was in a souvenir store and was actually pretty dull. It was comparable to making pizzas, though not as messy. It might have been zany if I was dressed as some kind of Expo mascot but I just wore pants.

Dopple: What career advice would you give today’s youth?

Me: Avoid retail at all costs. And call centers. And especially retail call centers, if they exist.

Dopple: You worked retail and didn’t like it?

Me: Let’s just say yes and multiply that by a thousand. I am not a salesperson. I’m not even much of a people person. This is not a good thing in retail. After my last retail job I vowed never again and I’ve stayed true to my word. I think I would prefer going feral and live off wild berries in the woods to working in retail again. However, I worked at Starbucks many years ago, which may technically be considered more of a service job, and it was not that bad, other than smelling like coffee all the time. I had some good times there. It was still generally terrible, but definitely less terrible.

Dopple: I have a lot more questions but I see it’s getting late again.

Me: Part 4 of 2, then?

Dopple: It’s a date. That reminds me, you totally kiss on the first date.

Me: I do, sometimes. Well, not now because I’m not dating anymore.

Dopple: Do you have colorful dating stories to share?

Me: Perhaps. But as you said, it’s getting late. We need to get some sleep so we can run in the morning.

Dopple: We’ll talk about running, too. And more on writing and a bunch of other stuff.

Me: This is pretty narcissistic, don’t you think?

Dopple: Absolutely. Is that an issue?

Me: Not at all. Just wondering.

Dopple: All right, then. Off we go.

Stay tuned (in as much as one can tune into a blog) for Part 4 of this apparently never-ending interview in which I quiz myself about dating, writing, running and ugly feet.

When last we left me, I was promising that the second part of the interview with myself would feature “growing up in Duncan, writing, singing and UFOs.” On we go.

Note: As before, the interviewer (me) has been named Dopple for short.

Dopple: Welcome to the second part of the interview.

Me: Thanks, it’s great to be here on the internet. This new carpeting is very nice.

Dopple: Let’s start with some sports talk.

Me: If you insist.

Dopple: I do. How do you feel about none of the Canadian teams making it into the Stanley Cup Playoffs this year?

Me: I already thanked the Canucks for another year without riots. Overall I am nonplussed. I know in some way I should be at least somewhat outraged but I just don’t care that much. Players and teams themselves move around so much it makes the whole exercise of loyalty kind of silly. Last year a co-worker was pumped over the Blue Jays during their playoff run. I pointed out that only three players on the roster were Canadian citizens. He didn’t seem to like that.

Dopple: Tell me about your singing.

Me: Usually done in the shower or with the headphones on when no one else is at home. I’ve been told that I have a great voice (by a roommate coming home early and listening to me wail away before entering the apartment) and more or less been told to never open my mouth again. Realistically, my voice has a fairly limited range and if I stay within those limits, it’s acceptable. I can do a decent Elvis or Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan is actually a lot of fun to imitate. If I try to imitate someone like Billy Joel or Jeff Lynne (can you tell I’m old?) my vocal cords start aching almost immediately. Trying Geddy Lee would likely result in permanent damage to my singing and speaking abilities.

Dopple: Have you ever sung professionally?

Me: I sang in a few plays. I soloed “Down in the Valley” in grade 11 for “Dark of the Moon.” I even learned to play guitar but really I just learned where to put my fingers on the guitar in order to produce sounds reminiscent of the song “Down in the Valley.” I didn’t know a chord from a strut. I didn’t get paid for any of this, so the answer is no. My only reward were all the accolades I made up in my head.

Dopple: What was it like growing up in Duncan?

Me: The actual city limits, for reasons unclear to me, are very small, so the population has always hovered around 5,000. This makes it fairly tiny by city standards, though with the outlying area it’s actually more like 43,000 (according to Wikipedia). For growing up it was fine. I didn’t get in any fights, I had a bunch of good friends, my family got along relatively well, I did fine in school. I grew up in the 70s and early 80s so it goes without saying I had bad hair. But we all did, so it was a bonding thing. A horribly hideous bonding thing, but one all the same. I remember when our first McDonald’s opened in 1978. It was a major cultural event. If you wanted a Big Mac before then (I didn’t, I had a thing for the Filet-o-fish) you had to drive all the way to Victoria. Two years later we got our first Wendy’s. It was fast food but the way you ordered was completely different than McDonald’s. Someone would come by while you stood in line and took your order down on a pad of paper (because you could customize everything), then you worked your way to the counter to pay and collect your food. It seems very quaint now.

Dopple: That sounds very bucolic but surely there was a dark side to Duncan.

Me: It was more beige than dark. There were bad kids. A lot of people drank too much, including my dad. There were drugs and we had a weird family that lived at the end of the street for awhile and the RCMP would visit semi-regularly. A nine year old kid got run over by a cement truck on the Island Highway a block from my house, prompting the installation of the third traffic light as you pass through the city. Even today there are still only three lights when you drive through on the Island Highway. Also, I’m pretty sure I was kind of addicted to arcade games for awhile. It was mild as addictions go because I didn’t have an endless supply of cash, but I spent enough time in the three arcades (I remember The Saucy Dragon downtown but have forgotten the names of the others) that I got my first full-time job at age 19 working in an arcade. Handing out quarters was not a particularly challenging task so I helped kill the time by writing my first novel, using a pencil and six notebooks. I still have the notebooks today. The novel is bad and unfinished, but I had incredibly neat handwriting, which was actually printing.

Dopple: What do you think of UFOs? Do they exist?

Me: You don’t want to know more about Duncan? I can go on.

Dopple: Maybe later. Unless you have a Duncan UFO story.

Me: In fact, I do. My grandfather–my mom’s dad–owned a Texaco station outside town on the Island Highway (south of town, on the way to Victoria and until 1978, the McDonald’s in Victoria). He and his wife lived in a small home in a large yard behind the station. As I recall, the area around the station was mostly woods and fields of wild grass. One night they heard something outside and when my grandfather went to look he saw a UFO hovering above their house. His response was to get a shotgun and shoot at it. It flew away and as far as I know, never returned. Could you blame it? I guess my grandfather really didn’t like trespassers, regardless of what planet they came from.

Dopple: So you believe in UFOs?

Me: I don’t know what he saw but a UFO is an Unidentified Flying Object and there are thousands of reported cases. I don’t think the question is whether they exist or not–they clearly do–but what are they? Many are just a case of mistaken identity. Some may even be swamp gas. But the number of truly unknown cases is enough to confirm we don’t know everything that’s going on up in the sky. If you ask me if UFOs are extraterrestrials visiting from other galaxies, I would say I don’t know. It seems like a long way to travel to mostly just watch us.

Dopple: What about abductions, cattle mutilations and all that?

Me: Again, I don’t know. I don’t have any cattle. I’ve never been abducted, either, unless you count being made to go shopping with my mom when I really wanted to stay home and play video games.

Dopple: Moving on. Let’s talk about writing.

Me: Okay.

Dopple: You write.

Me: Yes.

Dopple: Don’t be difficult.

Me: You can’t stop me.

Dopple: I think I can.

Me: Fine. Yes, I write. I’ve written since I knew how. That sounds like stating the obvious but what I mean is I’ve written creatively since first learning how to write. My grade three teacher (one of them, actually–I had four because grade three was an experimental “open area” learning experience) read this silly stream of conscious story I wrote and the comment she put down, the only comment from a teacher I can clearly remember, was “Kid, you’re a scream!” It was truly inspiring to me.

Dopple: So you kept writing through school.

Me: Yes. In grade five a bunch of us wrote stories that would be shot with a single black and white camera as “movies”, which seemed incredibly exciting, even futuristic, at the time. The class voted for several and mine was one of the winners because I included vampires. You can never go wrong with vampires. I kept writing short stories and plays and things and that first unfinished novel when I was 19. When I moved to Vancouver I started writing more sporadically and sometimes went years without writing at all. I did keep a journal for a year or so, around 1987. It was mostly filled with sarcasm.

Dopple: Why did the writing become intermittent?

Me: Some people are born to write. Stephen King cranks out books like I crank out CO₂. James Patterson writes a new book every two seconds. These people are obsessed, compelled. They can’t stop. I am not like that. I am easily distracted. I don’t get passionate about my writing (or my reading). I read a lot but I don’t try to educate myself, particularly. I keep writing in the passive voice and have to go back and fix it all the time. I write stories that go nowhere and peter out. I put it off. I make excuses. I doubt my ability. The list goes on and on, like a roll of toilet paper that never fully unravels.

Dopple: A colorful metaphor.

Me: I’m full of ’em.

Dopple: Do you still write?

Me: Yes. I made a vow to write every day, mostly on this blog if nowhere else, and I’ve stuck to it reasonably well. It enforces discipline, which is a key thing I’ve always struggled with.

Dopple: How is it going now?

Me: Okay. It could be better but it could be much worse, too, or non-existent. I’ve got a number of projects so I try to rotate between them so I’m always working on something. But it is slow-going. I still struggle with focusing, with putting butt in chair and just doing it, Nike-style.

Dopple: I’d like to know more but it’s getting late. Can we continue this later?

Me: You mean do a Part 3 of 2?

Dopple: Yes, exactly.

Me: It’s a date. But no kissing on the first date.

Dopple: Liar. Like, super liar.

Me: Quiet, you.

Tune in next time in which we find out if I do kiss on first dates, more about writing and other creative pursuits and who knows what else. Probably something dumb.

I find myself sitting at the computer. I am relaxed and at ease after a nice walk out on an early spring afternoon. I’m also a bit stinky because I walk like a hurricane and my deodorant apparently can’t keep up. My interview doppelganger will be called Dopple for short.

Dopple: Introduce yourself to the audience.

Me: I’m Creole Ned, just like it says in the title of this blog.

Dopple: That’s not your real name, though, is it?

Me: No. It’s all explained here.

Dopple: Can you provide a brief summary for people averse to clicking links?

Me: It’s a random name I made up for a gaming lobby back in the early-ish days of the Internet. I don’t have a particular love for creole food, it just seemed like a funny title to go with a nerdy-sounding name like Ned. The combination is also pretty rare. There aren’t a lot of Creole Neds out there.

Dopple: Does that make you feel special?

Me: Not really.

Dopple: Tell me a little about this blog.

Me: I started this blog back in February 2005 because it seemed like an interesting way to collect my thoughts into a journal that could be read by anyone with an Internet connection. In retrospect I’m not sure it was a good idea but fortunately very few people actually read it.

Dopple: Does it bother you that you don’t get many hits or views or whatever they call it when someone looks at your site?

Me: Sometimes it bugs me a little, but the blog has no real focus, so there’s no “hook” to lure people back, like funny pictures, a serialized story or high-quality porn. I mean, 462 posts are about jogging. Jogging is not interesting to read about (though I try to spice things up by swallowing bugs and injuring myself when I run). Do you know how many hits the site got on March 19th? None! There are about five hundred billion people on the Internet and no one came to this site on March 19th, not even by accident. Sometimes it gets a little depressing but the blog gives me a place to write lists, so there’s that.

Dopple: Tell me about lists.

Me: I love lists. I bought all those Book of Lists books when I was a kid. I used to devour the Guinness Book of World Records, which was really just a giant set of lists. Lists are easy and fun, two of my favorite things. However, lists don’t make for good discussion, which is why I don’t like lists on forums.

Dopple: Go on.

Me: Someone starts a thread, “Name your ten favorite movies featuring blimps” and every post is just a list like this:

• Black Sunday
• Hindenburg
• The Island at the Top of the World
• Around the World in 80 Days

There’s no actual discussion, it’s all just lists. You might get someone disputing Around the World in 80 Days because they used balloons, not blimps, but that’s about it. By the way, The Island at the Top of the World is one of those bonkers early 70s movies that came out of Disney when they didn’t know what the hell they were doing. It’s great. Or at least that’s the way my nine-year old self remembers it.

Dopple: Let’s talk about some of your other favorite things. What’s your favorite color?

Me: I used to say red but I’m partial to pink now, which is really just a lighter version of red. My favorite shade is probably deep pink, which has a solid sturdiness to it.

Dopple: Gay.

Me: Complete coincidence! Besides, assigning colors to gender or sexual orientation is dumb, so I’m doing my bit to help change that.

Dopple: That’s very progressive of you. What’s your favorite food?

Me: Anything with melted cheese on it.

Dopple: So liver with melted cheese?

Me: Yuck, no.

Dopple: So anything you like with melted cheese on it?

Me: Yes please.

Dopple: Who is your favorite author and why?

Me: This sounds lazy because he’s sold a trillion books, but Stephen King. Why? Because he writes so effortlessly. Even his bad stuff just rolls along. He doesn’t put up barriers, he invites the reader along for a ride. It may be a trip in a sedan along a quiet country road, it may be on a roller coaster that threatens to fly off the tracks on every corner. His characters breathe and feel real. He’s even managed a few good endings. I’ve almost forgiven him for It. Almost. But I also like a certain level of absurdity because in many ways I think life is absurd, and for that I find Douglas Adams scratched that itch. Then he died. David Wong (Jason Pargin) is pretty good at capturing an Americanized take on that absurdity, though.

Dopple: Do you read a lot?

Me: I’m not a fast reader but with my longish commute I manage around 32-36 books a year. I mostly read trash.

Dopple: Why do you read trash?

Me: Because I want, above all else, to be entertained. I’m not averse to learning about the human condition, man’s inhumanity to man and all that, but wrap it up in something that’s enjoyable to plow through. Plus I have always had a fondness for things like Bigfoot, UFOs, conspiracy theories and so on.

Dopple: Do you believe in all that nutty stuff?

Me: No. The conspiracy theory stuff, in particular, fascinates me because it shows how otherwise sane people can be led to believe ridiculous things. Look up “chemtrails” or “jet fuel doesn’t melt steel beams.” I’ll wait here.

Dopple: I’ll look them up later. What about Bigfoot?

Me: I think Bigfoot or something like it could be real. Woods are scary. And then there’s the ocean. We hardly know what’s going on way down there at points that are deeper than Mt. Everest is high. Sure, maybe it’s just a bunch of blind glow-in-the-dark shrimp, but it could also be The Great Old Ones biding their time before wiping us out, for all we know.

Dopple: Let’s shift gears a bit. Tell me about your hobbies.

Me: I like to draw. Well, I used to.

Dopple: Why did you stop?

Me: I’m not very good at it.

Dopple: Practice makes perfect!

Me: Lazy.

Dopple: I know you have a Wacom tablet…

Me: It’s gathering dust. I mean that literally. I found it the other day while looking for something. Caked with dust. This place is very dusty.

Dopple: You used to draw a lot as a kid.

Me: Yes, I did a lot of drawing through my teens and twenties. I made comics like The Ever Continuing Saga of the Round Balls, Bablee Duck, Angry Carrot and so on. I started scrawling with pencil crayons and ballpoint pens (tip: not the best tool for drawing), then moved to a Koalapad on a Commodore 64 and eventually a Wacom Bamboo tablet on PC. The tablets always felt awkward, like I was drawing by remote control. I can see why tablets with built-in screens like the Cintiq are popular with artists, even if most artists can’t actually afford them.

Dopple: You see the iPad Pro and it tempts you, doesn’t it?

Me: Maybe. Yes. Yes, it does. But I’m looking at something like $1500 to doodle for half an hour and then give up forever. It’s not a good investment. And I already have a Surface Pro 3 with pen. I’ve tried doodling on that and it didn’t take.

Dopple: But the iPad Pro is so much sexier…

Me: I’m not listening! This interview is over!

Dopple: Aw, come on, just a few more questions. We haven’t even talked about your writing or sexual preferences.

Me: Ho ho.

Dopple: So tell me about–

Me: Two more questions. Then I have to do something important, like check my garrison in World of Warcraft.

Dopple: That doesn’t sound important.

Me: Don’t judge me.

Dopple: Can we continue this interview later, then?

Me: I will permit that, yes.

Dopple: Very generous of you.

Me: I’m a generous guy, as you know.

Dopple: What’s the most private thing you’re willing to admit?

Me: Isn’t that a profile question from OK Cupid?

Dopple: Yes.

Me: It’s a dumb question.

Dopple: Indulge me.

Me: I wear socks when having sex.

Dopple: Ew.

Me: You asked.

Dopple: All the time?

Me: Is that the second question?

Dopple: No. How about this: Is the Apple Watch worth it?

Me: Not really. But I would hate to forget to put it on.

Dopple: How seemingly contradictory!

Me: That’s my motto.

That’s all we have time for today. Check out the second part of the interview where we learn more about growing up in Duncan, writing, singing and UFOs.