Some Apparent Change in Flavor: Sunshine Award

There was a time during my undergrad where I slept through the daylight and was active exclusively at night. I imagine people would have suspected I was a vampire, but I really like garlic-stuffed olives, so that kind of ruins my chances of being perceived as a sexy pale blood-fiend. The point here is that I’m not a vampire, have sucked the blood from basically zero people, and despite all that, I am largely unfamiliar with sunshine.

That all being said, MattWilliamsonlive–which I want him to know I pronounce Matt William, son, live!–nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award. This is a super nice, and totally unexpected little gesture, and I feel like I’m not without evidence as to why this is surprising.

The Sunshine Blogger Award is apparently given to bloggers who “are creative, positive, and inspiring, while spreading sunshine to the blogging community.” This calls into question everything I believed about myself. The fact that someone could see me as a kind, positive, sunny person has driven me to reconsider whether or not I’m really holding true to my cantankerous persona. Am I still bitter, or have I changed? Am I… sunny?

Come to think of it, what have I done recently to match with the bitter, lightly smoldering person I’ve always imagined myself as? Sure, I silently criticize people while I’m at the grocery store, but I now I don’t try to make intense eye contact to let them psychically get a sense of my extreme disapproval. It’s been a long time since I laughed at a student who asked for extra credit. I told my students I actually like them today. If I’m not bitter anymore, then what flavor have I become? Maybe I’ve grown up, matured, am suited to a more subtle taste. Maybe I’m not bitter because I’ve softened and become just a little sour.

Anyway, thanks for the intense moment of introspection, MattWilliamsonlive. Now I’m going to do the other stuff these awards ask us to do.

First, I have to post the rules so it is possible to perpetuate the award until long after the internet has been moved to chips implanted in our foreheads. Here they are, shamelessly copied and pasted from the post nominating me:

 

“The rules of this award are,

Thank the blogger who nominated you in the blog post and link back to their blog.
Answer the 11 questions the blogger asked you.
Nominate 11 new blogs to receive the award and write them 11 new questions.
List the rules and display the sunshine blogger award logo in your post/or on your blog.”

Being a good, mostly law-abiding individual, I’m going to do the next thing the rules command me to.

So here are the questions posed to 

1. Which season do you prefer?
Winter is definitely my favorite. I love the cold and wrapping myself under a pile of blankets. In some fantasy book I read a while back, there was this image of a tent that had the entire floor covered in furs and blankets, and I spent a lot of time imagining how comfortable I’d be in a room that is entirely suffocated in coziness.

2. What gets you out of bed every morning?
I have a lot of answers to this one: I love my job, and getting to teach and talk about writing as a career is pretty rad. I love my partner, and I always make them coffee in the morning because there are few things more pleasant to wake up to than the smell of a caffeinated beverage you didn’t have to make. I also get up because I’ve got shit to do; I love my long showers and my slow, drowsy time staring into the void while sitting on the edge of my bathtub–this is also when many of my posts get written. All of these things are true, but if I’m being completely honest, the thing that gets me out of bed the quickest is the fact that my cat thinks she’s dying every day at approximately dawn and sits on my face while yelling and slapping me.

3. What are you currently listening to?
“Blindness” by Metric.

4. What’s a song you always skip but can’t quite see yourself deleting from your playlist?
Oh geez, I don’t know why I get so attached to songs I don’t really listen to anymore, but I can’t help it. But it’s not just songs that I get weirdly attached to, it’s basically anything on my phone. And the thing that comes to mind is not a song, it’s the entirety of John Mulaney’s Netflix special, but just the audio because who has time to look at things. I have listened to this recording once because I downloaded it because I was going to be grading for a really long time and wanted something to play in the background. I can’t bring myself to delete it because I always forget it’s there. I’ll be listening to some pleasant music, riding along on my way to work, when the music stops, and it takes me as long to realize what is happening as it takes for John Mulaney’s strangely cherubic voice to launch into a routine I’ve now heard the first 4 seconds of more times than I’ve heard any song.

5. Harmonica or saxophones?
I have no strong opinion here, but now I’ve got an image in my head of a bandroom divided between the harmonica players and the saxophone players, and the only thing holding them back from a discordant melee is a single triangle player sitting in the middle of the room, totally oblivious.

6. One random thing about you would be…
I have fake front teeth because I have been hit in the face with a stick on several occasions.

7. How’d you rather spend a vacation?
Getting lost somewhere new and interesting punctuated by intense bouts of napping and day drinking.

8. Would you rather have unlimited food (something you like to eat) or unlimited sleep hours?
Food, because that’s where most of my money goes, and I like the idea of being able to swim in a pool of pungent, salty olive brine.

9. Who would you rather invaded the planet?
An invasive species of ultra-adorable super kittens. Don’t question it. This is my dream.

10. Your dream prom dress?
Dark green and with room in the back for me to hide a sword to stab anyone who doesn’t tell me I’m beautiful.

11. If tonight was your last night on earth…
I’d spend it how I’ve spent the last few weeks. I’d stay up with my partner playing video games and making weird cocktails and watching silly videos on the internet and communicating entirely in bad Russian accents.

Wowzers, 11 questions suddenly feels like a lot when you have to actually answer them instead of just skimming them to see if you want to do a post. That was fun though.

Now, I think I’m supposed to say who I want to nominate for this thing. I don’t want to scroll up to make sure that’s what I have to do right now, so I’m just going to roll with it. Golly, 11 people is a lot. I might just nominate 4 or 5 people because I’m sleepy.

1. https://strangegoingsonintheshed.wordpress.com/
2. https://thereluctantgirlscout.com/
3. https://theorangutanlibrarian.wordpress.com/
4. https://jaysbrainstorms.wordpress.com

Ok, my questions for those writers are down below. I struggled with these questions because this award seems to focus on being happy or inspiring, and I am definitely not a paragon of joy or inspiration.

1. What something nice you did that you think about when you’re trying to feel like a good person?
2. What’s a random thing about you that you would tell someone you’d just met at a party?
3. What is something weird you’ve slept through? I’ve missed at least 2 earthquakes.
4. How would you convince a small cat with no history of granting favors to bring you a bottle of berry-flavored sparkling water because you don’t want to leave bed? Asking for a friend.
5. What is something that helps you write?
6. What is something you want to write about but haven’t yet?
7. How would you describe your the theme song to a show that was made about your life?
8. What do you think people remember about you when you’re not around? For me, I think it would be my puns and the fact that I obviously never make eye contact and instead use my eyes to bore a hole straight into their forehead.
9. Do you have a favorite curse word?
10. Would you show your blog to people you barely know?
11. I don’t know, this award is supposed to be all happy and that is really not my forte. What is a wholesome fact about you?

Alright, that’s it then. Thank you again to MattWilliamsonlive, and I’m going to go stop re-evaluating myself and start staring at food at the fridge until it arranges itself into breakfast without my intervention.

– Nes