Living in fear is no good to anyone.

I took a few big sections out of this one to make it "for public consumption". Comments are open, as is usual.

The questions overlap, so I'm going to have a sort of overlapped answer. I don't fully know what I want from life. As regards work, I hope to keep making enough money such that I don't need to worry about money too much. I'd like to do work more enjoyable/fulfilling than the programming I'm doing now. There are other jobs in the computer field that appeal more, but I'm not really qualified for them yet. What I'm doing now can be used as a stepping stone though. I'd kind of like to eventually get an SJD and become a judge somewhere, but I don't want to go back to school for any graduate degrees until I have a much larger savings base than I currently have and deciding to go to school for another 7-10 years isn't a decision I'm ready to make right now. I'd also like to be able to make convention organization a paying job somehow, but there are location issues with that (it would be much easier if I lived in a major metro area, and NM doesn't have any of those).

The immediate plan is for me to stay at PMC and save money as well I can (I need to budget better, but even with my lax budgeting, I'm saving a sizable portion of every paycheck, 15%-40%) until near Lauren's graduation. The plan then is for me to find a better job, hopefully in the western WA area, and we would move to that job after she graduates. We don't have enough information at this time to really plan more specifically. We'll see where we are in another ~year and have more things roughly figured out.

Of the parts of the country I've visited or lived, I like the Pacific north west the best. I really dislike the climate here in NM. The dryness and altitude work together to make my lungs strain with a near continuous low level amount of pain (I'm able to ignore it most of the time, except for especially dry days, but it's still annoying). I sleep waaay better in a more humid, lower altitude place. Washington appeals to me for the general prettiness in addition to the climate reasons. The Seattle area appeals to me more specifically because I already have a bunch of friends there, through PAX and other things. Depending on where political things go, I might like to leave the country on a long-term basis. I'm not really worldly enough to go anywhere but Canada in the soon, but I think I'd have time to get ready for many places if it came to that.

I have vague plans and goals, but nothing is really very long term. I want to be happy. I want my loved ones to be happy. I don't want to hurt others to do that. I deal with situations as they come and try to make them fit the goals, though I don't just stand by and wait/hope for fortune to come to me without effort.

This one is pretty edited, but the content is there. If you know who I'm talking about, please don't use full names in any comments you may write. To watch for this, comments will be screened, but then opened if they don't use names.

It makes the most sense to tell this in chronological order, so I will. I was waaay awkward back in middle and high school. I had very few friends and none of them were close. I was very intimidated by nearly all girls. I wasn't able to ask someone out until 10th grade and I didn't go on a date until 12th. My first date was with a somewhat skanky, hick, nerd girl that I met in court (I was pleading down a speeding ticket and she was another girl's alibi for a trespassing charge). We only went out once, and we kissed at the end, but it wasn't memorable (I can't even recall her name). I ended up going on one other date during high school. We went to a bunch of yard sales in the afternoon and then saw a community theatre version of Jesus Christ Superstar in the evening. We were friends before and after, and our one date was technically cheating because she didn't tell her steady boy about it, but I didn't feel guilty about it because he was a jerk.

My first weekend at college, I met a girl, B, and her annoying roommate T (that I thought was her brother at the time). We didn't see each other much the first semester. Our second semester, we had Calc II together and quickly became good friends and started dating a few weeks later. T is gone for Air Force training and B has a new roommate while he's gone. I then find out that B and T are not siblings; they are married. She says that she married him only to get in-state tuition and that she's talking to lawyers so she can divorce him. I'm young and stupid, so I believe her. T is gone for about 18 months and she and I date during most of this time. Toward the end of his being gone, she tells me she tells me that she's going to stay with T because he's going to kill himself if she leaves him. We break up. T threatens my life on multiple occasions, but never follows through with any of the threats. We generally avoid each other forever. B and I never become friends again. I later find out that nearly the whole time she was with me, she was cheating with another guy. T finds out about this other guy, but never threatens him, and becomes somewhat friendly. I don't know what went on there. I had some bad feelings for the other guy for a while, but we're cool now. I wouldn't have had bad feelings for him or B if they had been honest with me. I might not have liked it, but I think I would have dealt with it better. I can't know for sure.

About a year goes by and then I date another girl for a few months. At the end, she tells me that we were just friends the whole time and that I am now too clingy to even be her friend. She dumps me. I may have misinterpreted some things, but we were doing lots of things new couples do together, like going out on dates as often as we could and spending all of our free time together.

A few months later, I met J. We went out once just before summer break. She was going to be out of town for the summer, so nothing much happened then. When she got back for the fall semester, we spent a bunch of time together the few days before classes started. The first day of classes, we both just kind of realized that we were dating. We were pretty happy together for the first ~10 months. There was a girl in Texas I was friends with and there was potential for more. I was going to be in her part of Texas pretty soon. I asked J if it would be OK if I had sex with this other girl if it came up. She was really offended that I asked. I told her that I wasn't going to cheat on her or lie to her and that I'd always ask about things first. Since she wasn't OK with it, I said I wouldn't do anything with the girl and I didn't when I saw her a few weeks later.

We generally aggravated each other often. I was losing interest and she felt stronger for me than I did for her. These things came together along with a particularly bad fight to cause us to break up after ~21 months. I was in Alaska doing an internship at UAF the summer after we broke up. We talked on the phone often and reformed our friendship. She dated another guy that summer, but the relationship was falling apart by the time I got back in the fall. As a friend, I comforted her during the last throes of her relationship and for a while after. Since she was at my house often, it had sparked the interest of one of my friends. He asked me if I thought she might be interested in him. I said I didn't know if she would be, but that he would be really good for her. They started dating a few days later and have been happily together for about 2 years now.

While I was comforting J after her break, I was hitting on a girl I knew from the Anime club. We spent a good amount of time together when we could. We both had very busy schedules that didn't overlap much, so this wasn't a large amount of time. She didn't realise I was interested in her in a more than friends way and I didn't realize she was a closet lesbian. At the end of that semester, we had a very blunt conversation and realized where we were with things. We stayed friends but didn't see each other nearly as much as before. By the following spring break (2005), she was online-dating a girl and the girl was going to come and visit during her spring break, a different week than ours. M (the visiting girlfriend) and I met and became fast friends.

Also in that fall I met Lauren, but only barely. I was sort of friends with Pi, but didn't know him well. I met A through LJ. She was going to be transferring from somewhere in MA to NMT in January and was trying to meet some people before she got here. Coincidence shown on things, and she was to be Lauren's dorm roommate that spring. I went over the day she was moving in to help her move her stuff. I ended up spending the day with Lauren and Pi before A got there. A ended up upgrading her room a few days later and Lauren was roommate free for the semester. Nothing ever developed with A and I, but that's a good thing because after getting to know her some, I found out that we aren't very compatible. Lauren and I became very close friends, and after some discussion with Pi, started dating, on very restricted terms, at the end of the semester. That semester, I also renewed my friendships with the Casa Imbri crowd, after being distant for a few years prior. Only after entering into our vee did we learn the word polyamory and that there were many poly people we already knew in the area that would be supportive. Lauren and I became closer during the summer and the restrictions slowly fell away as both Pi and Lauren became more comfortable with being poly. I got a blood clot behind my left knee in August, and I needed Lauren's comfort to get through my trying time. I needed someone to stay with me constantly in case the clot broke free and I needed to be rushed to the ER, so Lauren was allowed to sleep over. Things were calm after the first few days and the chance of an embolism was significantly lower. I hope to never again be in a position where having an embolism has a high likelihood. If I ever end up in some sort of similar situation, I hope I have similarly supportive people. Pretty much all of the restrictions fell away shortly after. Lauren, Pi and I still have our vee and things are generally working.

That September, I saw M at an anime convention in Denver, but nothing more than friends happened because I hadn't yet told her that I was crushing on her.

In December, I moved out of my old house, Pi and Lauren moved out of the dorm and we all moved into our current house. I met S shortly before then. S and I grated on each other very much. We later became friends and, for a while, lovers. We just stopped having sex and seeing each other often at some point. I'm not sure where our relationship is now, because we give each other mixed signals constantly and I don't really know what I want and I have even less of an idea of what she wants. She and I need to talk about it at some point.

In March, I emailed M (she lives far away), explaining my attraction. She said she was interested in me too and whenever next we saw each other in person, "It would be quite interesting and I'd be up for it ^_^". We used to talk online often, but then she disappeared for a while. She had a bunch of issues crash on her and needed to retreat from most of her friends for a while. She's getting better and we've been talking some of late, so things are looking up. She's hopefully going to come out to NM sometime in the coming winter or spring.

You know the next relationship history part because it's you. We have fun, and we'll see where it goes.

The above is not 100% complete because there are a few times when I went out with someone once or similar not-yet-a-relationship things that have been left out. They aren't terribly important to this narrative, so I didn't write about them.

Another answer is below. I've only answered three questions so far, but I might have another one done tomorrow.

I don't consider myself to be very spiritual. Until I was 4 or 5 years old (I'm the oldest of three: me 1980; brother Adam, 1982; sister Danielle, 1987) my family was Easter and Christmas only Polish Catholic. My parents (I believe due to urging of my slightly more religious relatives, but I don't know) then decided that we should go to church every Sunday. We went every Sunday for a bunch of years. I made my First Communion when I was in 2nd grade (I was 8). My brother did his 3 years later. We kept going to church every Sunday, but I never liked it. The Christian mythos always felt somehow wrong to me and I hated waking up early on Sunday. When I was ~13 I started refusing to go some Sundays. My parents were somewhat annoyed at first, but they started becoming more lenient over time because they weren't getting much benefit from church either. At about this time, the priest and my peers at church started pressuring me to get confirmed. My family kept going regularly for another 2 years, through my sister's First Communion. By then I had come to realize that I wasn't sure if I believed if there were spirits or gods at all, but that I definitely didn't believe in the Abrahamic God. At my sister's communion, when an aunt asked me why I hadn't gotten my confirmation yet, I told her I wasn't going to because I didn't believe in God. She was offended and I've felt strain on my relationship with her since. My family's churchgoing slowed after Danielle's communion until it completely ceased. My family members are now all in the agnostic-atheist gradient somewhere.

Over the next ~8 years I created and tore down many systems of belief of my own invention with little outside research. For a while I believed in various afterlives and methods of reincarnation. Spirituality was of little importance to me during that time (and still). I eventually decided that the human mind (and life in general) is a powerful yet intangible thing, but there is no spirit world or gods I believe in. I came to believe that people should generally be nice to each other for the common good and that being laid back, calm, and silly lead to a
happier self and tend to make those around you happier. Also I believe that people can do whatever they want, but should strive to not force or coerce anyone into doing things.

In my later college years (I was in college from 1998-2005), I took nearly all of the philosophy courses offered at NMT. I read the Tao Te Ching and realized that I was a Taoist (roughly) and had been for a while. I studied other Taoist works after that. I also read and was effected by John Stuart Mill and Bishop Berkeley and parts of their philosophies.

Bringing it all together, I'm a sort of a non-religious Taoist with utilitarian tendencies that usually doesn't trust other people's experiences above my own. From Chuang Tzu especially I learned the value of being silly for personal enjoyment and enriching the lives of those around me. I tend to simply "go with the flow" with lots of things.

I don't terribly like that last paragraph, but I don't know how to rewrite it and still respond in a reasonable amount of time.

Another answer:

This is a really hard question for me. I've never been much of a pet person. I find badgers and porcupines to be especially interesting, but I haven't ever spent much time around/with them. I've kept tropical fish as pets, but never really felt any closeness with them. Most animals don't interest me.

I've tried my hand at gardening in the past, but never really had any success until my current tomato endeavour. I treat plants only for their utility though (this includes the utility of beauty or smell in the case of many plants).

The various other kingdoms interest me less than plants and animals. I have some interest in viruses, but they're only considered life by some, though this make them interesting.

I do have a large amount of interest in one organism not listed above. I've studied and continue to study many elements of their behavior. One of my greatest joys is to enable certain of their behaviors. My favorite organism is humans. I love creating fun environments for people to play in. I enjoy learning about and discussing their behaviors such as politics, philosophy and love.

I may have taken what can be considered a "cop-out" choice but I do honestly find humans as the most interesting organism I have ever studied.

I'm in the process of doing a back and forth "question game" with two people that I want to know better. In the game, one person asks any question and the other has to answer it honestly. Once answered, they get to ask a question back. I'm going to post my answers (but not the questions) as they happen. The answers might be slightly edited for posting. I've already answered a few questions, so there will be some in quick succession and then they will be posted at a slower pace.

In 10th grade (~1996) I read the first 6 books of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (there were only 6 at the time; now there are 11 or 12 and the series should be complete at 13 of 14 books; I haven't read the most recent one yet). The books got me interested in fantasy novels for the first time in my life and I could strongly identify with parts of some of the characters (something that rarely happens for me with novels and other stories). I most closely identified with the character Mat Cauthon had become after his trip to Rhuidean. He became a more capable leader while retaining much of his childish behavior and general irresponsibility. I don't like the irresponsible part, but being a capable leader while able to act childish appeals to me. You can read more about Mat by going to the wikipedia page on him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mat_Cauthon), but to really understand the character, you'd have to read the novels. (I should go back and do that; there's lots I've forgotten.)

The series puts an icon at the beginning of each chapter. The dice icon appears at the beginning of chapters focusing on Mat. It was about 2000 or 2001 when I thought it would be cool to get a tattoo of the dice. I scanned in the icon and blew it up. At my mother's urging, I modified the dice somewhat so more sides were showing while still keeping the sixes up. I like the variation that resulted. I knew lots of people with tattoos in NJ, but no one in NM that had gotten one here. My best friend in NJ (D'Arcey, togglehead) has a bunch, so I asked him to set up an appointment with someone he trusted during one of my visits to NJ. Scheduling an appointment during one of my visits was tough so I didn't get an appointment until August 2003. I had gotten sunburned snorkeling in St. Thomas (part of a cruise I went on with my family) a few days before my appointment. The skin peeled before the appointment, so the tattooist thought the tattoo would be fine. D'Arcey was the only person there with me when it was done.