I used to hate reading. For me, reading took too long and the words would jumble together on the page into an alphabet soup from hell. That's not to say I didn't love stories, no, I adored stories. I was a sheltered child, so stories were my escape into other lives and people and places that I would never experience otherwise. When I was young, I was homeschooled, the kind of homeschooled where my mother would order text books and have me read through them for hours a day by myself. I hated it not because concepts were difficult to understand, but because if I closed my eyes I was wasting time. I had to read if I wanted to learn, so by the end of each school day my eyes would be burning with the fire of a thousand suns. After a day like that, one could hardly blame me for not then cracking open a different book for fun. That all changed around 8th grade. I was still homeschooling, but now it was on a computer with a feature that read to you. I could close my eyes. I could go at a faster pace since I wasn't exhausting myself halfway through the day. Then I picked up Boxcar Children. It was a mystery series for children featuring four siblings and their dog. I burning through those books like a madman. Mysteries were a way to use my brain outside of class. School, for all the different subjects it offers, is mostly about memorization, but a mystery book takes brain power. One has to think about the suspects, evidence, and crime to discover the perpetrator. I'd finished the Boxcar Children books in about two months and was hungry for more, preferably something a bit more serialized than stand alone mysteries. I then dove into series after series. I read Rick Riordan, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, and hundreds of others. For me, books were an escape, but also lessons. I learned how to think through problems from multiple viewpoints, understand the depth of thought behind a person's words, and how the world itself might work under different circumstances. Most of all, however, I learned what it meant to be a person. The characters in a book, as well as the voice of an author, come through stories like an excited new friend, demonstrating new paths of thought and expression I'd never thought about before, and have life experiences that weren't possible anymore. One day I would be a young boy going through the difficulties of highschool, then I was an old woman, shielding children from bomb debris, the next day I could be a kid on a reservation savoring the KFC my dad had brought home for dinner. If stories shape the way we see the world, then I owe it to stories for giving me a thousand eyes and a hundred minds. My heart breaks for the Library of Alexandria, and all the stories lost there. Burning a book is burning a perspective, an adventure. I love books and want to protect the hard work of authors that put their love and soul into making them. I want to be a librarian, because people all over the world deserve what I had as a child, a chance to be a dozen people at once, a chance to experience anything.

To me, a dream life would be one in which I don't have to struggle to make ends meet. For me, a dream life is one where I work to help others access information and knowledge, whether for schooling or personal interest, then go home to a comfortable house, a small garden, and be able to eat a homecooked meal before seven o'clock at night. I want to be able to go to work, and still come home to a life worth having. I'll be spending my days working with people to accomplish their goals and aspirations, and then spending the evening working on my own. A librarian who writes novels in her spare time, that's what I want to be. I want to live a homely, loving life where I can plan out and take a trip to other countries or states with interesting histories. I want to see the world and help where I can. If I can. That's the dream life for me. Or at least in as far as I can reasonably expect. In a perfect world, there wouldn't be any pandemics or wars to worry about, and I'd have a secret passage in my bookshelf that led to a reading nook with the perfect reading couch. But for now, baby steps.

My favorite piece of art is Starry Night Over the Rhone, by Vincent Van Gogh. It's different from the more famous painting, Starry Night. The stars aren't giant swirls that dominate the canvas, but instead twinkling pinpricks that mirror the city lights below. The use of Van Gogh's heavy paint strokes depicts the water in such a way that it moves and flows around the canvas. It's subtle, in its dark shadows and faint city waterline. I appreciate the relaxed, lived-in quality of its lighting and characters. It's not as famous as Starry Night, as it's more practical and realistic compared to Van Gogh's other sceneries. His balance in both color and realism vs fantastical emotion is a highlight. In 2022 I went with a friend to a Van Gogh exhibit where there was a 3D art experience. There every wall and pilar was made into a projecting screen so that when the experience started, you were enveloped in Van Gogh's work. It honestly made me want to lay on the floor and drown in it. They did a rolling transition from the Starry Night Over the Rhone piece and Starry Night that I think is symbolic of something. Van Gogh painted Starry Night Over the Rhone in September of 1880, and in a letter to painter Emile Bernard, said the painting haunted him. And it is haunting, in that deep, hidden way, like a locked ornate wardrobe brimming with secrets. It fascinates me, how two paintings can be so different, yet be focused on the same ideas. To go from one to the other is to experience twilight to daybreak. Starry Night Over the Rhone is a darker painting and is placed outside the city, then one goes through the city to dawn in Starry Night. It's altogether breathtaking.

My favorite hobby is, beyond a doubt, archery. I'd first gotten into it when I was about 9, though I didn't own a bow until I was 16. I'd started out learning all the terminology and different kinds of bows, arrows, and targets, then when I was in high school, I finally had access to an archery club. They wouldn't let you use your bow, which wasn't a problem since I couldn't afford one to begin with. There I learned more about myself as an archer, I'm right-eyed to start, and I was only able to take about 25 pounds in draw weight. Nowadays I draw with a weight of about 50 pounds with my bow in my backyard. I live in the countryside, so my dad got me a target to practice in the off-season. My great uncle makes classic longbows for little kids in his garage and so helped me find a composite that worked well for me. I'm an instinct shooter, which means I don't use a sight or anything like that. It's just me and the arrow, aiming for a target that, by this point, is more hole than foam. I first loved archery because you looked and felt cool even if you missed the target, but now I love it for the power and strength I've developed by doing it. Archery offers me, someone with coordination issues and flat feet, a chance to be athletic. My friends have called me Legolas and Hawkeye in jest because I've gotten to the point where I can slide my arrow down another arrow's shaft into the same target hole. I've never robin-hooded an arrow before, but I'm getting there. The club I was a part of didn't participate in any formal contests outside of our club, and since I don't actively bow hunt, I haven't won any awards or great honors, but that's not what this hobby is for. For me, archery is for my gratification. When I shoot, I shoot for myself, against myself. It's to test my limits and grow past them, rather than have a bunch of shiny metals on my wall. I live in an area that doesn't have much in terms of archery contests or community, but that's just fine with me. All I need is my bow, and a target.

My parents spent most of my childhood crawling out of student debt and mortgages. My mom in particular was always saying that we were on a tight budget, and we couldn't afford a lot of what my sister and I wanted and sometimes needed. My parents are still crawling out of debt 21 years later, but my mom has given me some financial advice that I will carry with me forever. The most impactful of these is something she said when I was very young. If you can't afford it twice, then you can't afford it.

I grew up with Avatar: The Last Airbender, Naruto, Ao no Ekusoshisuto, Powerpuff Girls, and the like. I'll watch shows with terrible writing and voice acting simply because the animation styles look good and different from the expected. Kill la Kill in particular with its unusual way of flattening and proportionating characters in different scenes is a level of creativity not seen in western media. That is, until Spiderman; Into the Spriderverse came out. All the details in backgrounds and layering of 3D and 2D methods created a more dynamic experience than if they'd made a live action piece. That's the power of animation I think, to bring worlds and perspectives to life in a way traditional actors cannot. I prefer animated television and film over live action for one real reason. Flexibility. Characters, nature, they're all so dynamic under an artist's stylist. Animation incredible, and only getting better.