10 Things You Don’t Know (but soon will) About Me

“girl covering her mouth” by Andre Guerra on Unsplash

I’ve been chosen. Twice, lol. Man, ten things people don’t know about me? How about, 10 things people don’t know about me that won’t bore the hell out of them? Alright, I’ll give it a go.

1. Japan, yeah I live here. Been here since 2003. I had almost no plan when I left though. I was 33 and had been to Hawaii, Alaska, Canada, and Mexico, but I’d never traveled east of Billings, Montana, and had never been out of the US for more than a day or two. I met my wife (to be at that time) in America in college, but after we graduated her student visa ran out and she returned to Japan. So, six months later I jumped on a plane and followed her.
2. 12 years is the longest I’ve ever lived in one place in the 48 years I’ve been alive. I’ve lived in two states, WA and CA, and two countries, America and Japan, but I moved a lot. I never really thought it was strange until I had lived in the same condo in Japan for eleven years and realized that was the longest I had lived anywhere.
3. Even though I teach English I’m really horrible at learning other languages. I studied Spanish for a year in High School and can’t speak it at all. I did a little better with Japanese, but even after nearly 16 years in Japan I don’t speak it very well and can hardly read Kanji.
4. Even though I’m a shy introvert I do stand up comedy once a month. Sometimes people even laugh at my jokes.

6. I was only a baby, but my mother tells me that I almost died twice from asthma when I was around a year old. She said I turned blue in the hospital and that my dad threatened to beat up a doctor to get someone to save me. I joined a swim team when I was ten and my asthma was gone by the time I was 13. Don’t know if it was the swimming or just hitting puberty that did it, but it was nice to be able to breathe normally.

7. I don’t do it as much as I’d like to, but fly fishing is my hobby. When my son is a little older I’m hoping he will take it up so I will have a buddy and an excuse to get out on the water more.

8. I was a full blown woo woo believing yogi/Buddhist for seven years and an unwitting member of a yoga cult. Fortunately, they were based in Australia, so I didn’t get sucked in too deep. Though I did waste a lot of money and time traveling to Australia for two meditation retreats as well as buying a shitload of the “guru’s” fucking books. Now I wish I would have gone to Australia simply as a tourist rather than as a naive idiot with his head in the clouds.

9. I’ve written four novels, one novella (that was published a year ago), and a short story collection that I self-published, but I’ve probably earned less than $500 in the last 20 years.

10. I once sat behind Bill Gates in a movie theater in WA and stared at the back of the then richest man in the world’s head for about two hours. I think the movie was Men in Black 2. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to being rich, lol.