Introvert Social Hour, An Introduction

tl;dr: Check the bold print.

 

Hi! Thanks for coming by to read my contribution to the Introvert Social Hour. You're probably wondering why I'm not making videos like the others. Unfortunately, I don't own a video camera and don't foresee getting one any time soon. But I enjoy the channel a lot and wanted to join in on the conversation, so Jill, Kristina, Frieda, and Amy were kind enough to let me try this unconventional "collab" method. We'll see how it goes!

Not only am I going to be participating in the channel, but I also wanted to go back and put in my two cents on all of the topics that have been discussed from the very beginning. So for now I'm going to be doing an old topic every Wednesday and the current topic every Saturday until I catch up. At that time, I'll continue doing the Saturday blogs and drop the Wednesday ones. That means that today's topic is the very first one that the group discussed at the beginning of the project: Introductions. This will be long because I want to give a well-rounded picture of who I am, but I'll try to keep it moving so it's not too boring.

So here we go!

 

My name is Edi and I live in a town of about 2000 people in the West Texas desert. The area where I live looks very much like something you would see in an old western movie: cactus, tumbleweed, sand, rattlesnakes, buzzards, cattle, oil wells, pickup trucks, and even bona fide cowboys in boots, hats, and giant belt buckles. My town's population actually hovered around 1500 for several years but the oil business is doing very well right now – we call that a "boom", or say that oil is "booming" – so lots of people are moving into the area to take advantage of the prosperous conditions and the town has grown by about 30% just in the past year or two.

I'm married but don't have any kids or pets. I live a pretty quiet life and am a very, very quiet person. I'm also very shy and it takes me quite a while to warm up to new people and situations. Once I know a person well and feel comfortable, I loosen up considerably, but even then I'm rarely what you'd normally call "talkative".

 I do talk all day at work, though, because I don't have a choice about it. I'm a high school science teacher. At the moment I'm only teaching chemistry and physics, but that's because we're switching chemistry from 11^th grade to 10^th, so I have all of both years, which doesn't leave much room in the schedule to teach anything else. I've taught both of those classes for many years, and I normally have others as well. Over the years I've taught biology, human anatomy and physiology, AP chemistry, an enrichment class for gifted students, and a science remediation class. I expect at minimum to have chemistry, AP chemistry, and physics from next year and on into the foreseeable future, and possibly some other stuff as well.

Like most good nerds, I'm very much into reading. I stick mostly with literary fiction and a little young adult fiction but I also get pretty strong doses of sci-fi/fantasy and nonfiction along the way, too. I also write a lot, and editing is the love of my life. There's a fair bit of my work on this blog, plus I have three books in the works (but not ready any time soon, so don't get too excited!), I stay busy with contracted freelance projects, and I'm also a writer/editor for the Crash Course channel on YouTube.

Speaking of YouTube, I'm a proud Nerdfighter since mid-2007 and my badge of honor is that John Green once called me a "hardcore Nerdfighter". Sadly, I was far too shy to interact with the community until early 2008 so I watched a lot of the early fun from the sidelines rather than getting involved, but since I finally opened up and started getting to know people it's been an even richer experience. The community has changed drastically in the past six years, and I'm unhappy about a lot of things that I see happening, but I still believe that the core ideas are good and right and I want to spend my life decreasing worldsuck and not forgetting to be awesome.

I love movies but because the nearest theatre or rental outlet of any kind is about 60 miles from me, and I don't have Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, or any other such service, I don't see nearly as many as I'd like. (To be honest, I don't really have time to watch many movies, which is why I don't have Netflix, etc. I don't want to pay for something I won't use, and if I use it as much as I'd like I'd never get any work done.) I mostly love comedies and romantic comedies, but there are a lot of great dramas too. I don't like westerns or military/government/spy kind of stuff very much as a general rule, but other than that I'm not overly picky. I just like movies.

I rarely watch tv but I do watch AMC on most Sunday nights at 9 pm Central US time because that's when Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead are on and I love love love those shows. The only other thing that I would watch if I could is Doctor Who, but I don't get BBC America so I have to watch that online. (Sorry, BBC. I'd pay for it if I could but I'm not gonna skip it just because I have no way to access it legally!) If I happen to turn on the tv at any other time, it'll almost always be for a movie or a comedy of some kind.

Music, oh man. I love music. I'm a rocker at heart but I love many styles of music, depending on my mood. You name it, I probably listen to it at one time or another, and the harder the beat the more likely I am to enjoy it most days. Just about the only style that I don't ever like much is modern country. I love country music from the 1920s through about the 1960s or so, including bluegrass, and even a little bit in the '70s and '80s was still good. But most of what's come out after the early '70s isn't even country, in my opinion. I always say it's just pop music with a steel guitar and a twangy voice thrown in, and these days I don't think they even bother with the steel guitar most of the time. It's not bad music; more power to you if you like it! It's just not my personal cup of tea.

I'm not an exercise-y kind of person at all, unfortunately. I hate to sweat and my philosophy is that if outside were really so great human society wouldn't have spent thousands of years perfecting inside. I love my air conditioner and I won't give it up without a fight! I do, however, LOVE to swim. That's the one place that I'll exercise until I'm exhausted and won't mind it a bit. I love everything about water -- drinking it, rain, swimming, boating, the sound and smell of the ocean, even showering -- you name it, if there's water involved, I'm in. And fortunately there's a very nice indoor pool at the (beautiful, grant-funded) Wellness Center in my town, so I spend a lot of time there.

I'm not an overly creative type but I do enjoy photography and drawing, and I flatter myself to think that I'm pretty good at both. I'm often told that I have a good eye for interior design and decoration, but I think that's all just a matter of taste. My style is "the sort of thing you'll like if you like that sort of thing".

I think that covers all the main bases about me for now. You'll obviously get to know me better as I write about more of the weekly topics, but if you have questions or comments please feel free to leave them below. I'd love to hear from you! And if you're interested in such things you can also find me on Twitter.

Thanks again for reading! If you've somehow landed here from some other source and haven't seen the videos that go along with this post, they can be found at:

Jill                    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4vCmgWP1h8

Kristina          http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xKFp8O1Ksw

Cat, who's no longer on the channel       http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8HXk6g8q5w
And Frieda     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8HXk6g8q5w

And that's it from me on this Wednesday. Best wishes! <3