What are you passionate about?

Music. (And language.)

What personal belongings do you hold most dear?

A few assorted items…

• A spoon from my late Babcia’s house
• A copy of A Psalm for the Wild-Built given to me by one of my best friends
• A signed Ozzy Newsome jersey and mini helmet (another gift from a close friend)
• A pair of Paiste 404 hi-hats (my first big-boy hats) my parents got me for Christmas one year

What is your favorite type of weather?

To be in? Warm but not hot, sunny, not windy, low humidity.

Aesthetically? Gray and about to rain.

Which animal would you compare yourself to and why?

A penguin. One of my very first stuffed animals was Opus from Bloom County and it greatly shaped young me. My affinity for bow ties comes from Opus. I’ve always just…kind of identified with them.

Do you believe in fate/destiny?

Yes. We make choices and don’t know the outcome but God exists outside space and time…indeed, He created them. There was this TV show when I was in high school, NUMB3RS, where the main character was played by David Krumholz (the guy from Oppenheimer with the orange). He was a mathematician who helped the FBI solve crime. He used a metaphor once: Lifeguards at a public pool sit on a tower because they can see the whole pool at once; someone chaperoning inside the pool only has a limited perception of what’s going on. That’s what’s going on here: God sees everything, we don’t.

Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.

When longtime friends block me. This has happened no fewer than twice (four if you count AM and JL from high school).

I am autism [sic] and I have no idea why they felt that step was needed. I am savvy of Normal People enough to know that incessant barrages of messages are annoying. I’d check in at intervals of a few weeks to a few months, typically in response to some news they had shared.

One of these was TG, whom I’d known since 1996. She, I remember specifically, was elated that I did not have to end up changing high schools back in the day—it seemed I would have to, but her grandfather was the then-superintendent of my school and was able to intervene on my behalf, and thus I didn’t have to leave. The other, EL, was on the drumline (albeit when I was in high school and she in junior high), and if you know anything about drumlines you’d understand why I felt this as a major shock.

It is not mine to ask them why. It is mine to accept it and move on. But I’ll be a liar if I said it didn’t affect me.