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Q. You mentioned that you have moved around a lot. Can you explain?
A. Well, I have been highly nomadic in the last 8 years. I have moved 19 times (I count a move as moving all, or almost all, of my belongings, including within a given city) in the last 8 years. By the time I return to DC, I will have moved 24 times in my life. I’m quite a pro at it at this point. I haven’t lived in one place for even a year in the last 8 years, and I am really, really hoping that when I get back to the states, that I will stay in one place for at least one year.
Q. What languages do you speak?
A. I speak halfway decent French, and I understand it well enough to follow a movie in it without subtitles, and my reading is very good – I can read novels and whatnot in French, but I am very shy when it comes to communicating in it. I speak a little German, but again, my reading is much better. I have never formally studied it, but due to the fact that my mother taught me a bit when I was young, I have a propensity for it and after a month in Switzerland, I could get the gist of newspaper articles. My accent in German is also way better than my accent in French, for the same reason. I can remember a few words of Japanese, and I can say a decent number of things in Korean, but I still can’t read it at all.
Q. How much did your parents/family influence your life? In what way?
A. Well, they certainly influenced my choice of profession. I think that watching my mother take photos for my entire life gave me the eye that I think it takes to be a good photographer. They also have generally encouraged me to pursue my dreams, which I have. Also, in sort of a more negative tone, my father spent much of my life telling me “You’re not trying hard enough!” regarding many things, which I think is part of the reasons I am often so determined and contrary.
Q. What are your weaknesses?
A. Reenacting gear and men in uniforms or period clothes. Boy that answer was geeky as hell. Also, gummi-candy.
Q. What was your first job?
A. Unpaid: 3 years volunteering for a wildlife rescue. Paid: eSiteful, a web design firm, where I was a photoshop monkey. I have also worked at Whole Foods as a cashier. I have worked for a major Middle Eastern oil company as a project manager, overseeing 7 other workers. I’ve worked as a video editor for an organization that helped groups of middle school girls make films. I’ve worked in various capacities for a public access TV station. Right now I work as an English teacher in South Korea. When I get back to the states I’m hoping that I can do more photojournalism work, though that may take a couple years.
Q. Do you have any bad habits?
A. I chew my nails horribly. I also talk WAY too much. One of the things that I have been trying to work on (without much success, since talking is now a major part of my job) is talking less and listening more. I share both these habits with my father.
Q. Do you have any particular skills?
A. I’m a master networker. I’m an only child and I spent much of my childhood accompanying my parents along to events that are usually just adults; art openings, international parties, and I even attended the opera at least 8 times a year from age 9 to 17 or so. This has meant that from a very early age I learned how to behave around people, and as a teenager I tended to hold small groups of adults in rapt attention. While in my personal life I tend to be a bit silly, outside of my associations with friends and said personal life I tend to be very professional. On a less serious note, I know how to weld with an oxy-acetylene torch, I used to be a professional sailor and am probably still competent at it, I can identify about 200 dog breeds on sight and tell you at least one fact about them, and I know an awful lot about English etymology.
Q. Do you think you might ever move back to Houston because you love Texas that much? [sarcasm]
A. I have vowed never to live in Texas again. Pretty much the only thing that would get me to live there would be if I won the lottery and living there was a requirement to keep the money. And even then, I think I’d spend as much time living *somewhere else* as possible. Parts of Texas are nice (Austin and the Texas Hill Country/German area), but I just can’t deal with the people and the politics. Plus, as much as I love my parents, they drive me insane, and I them. It’s best that our associations are limited. I could probably be convinced to move to Louisiana though, with a good enough reason. It holds a fond spot in my heart.
Q. Do you think you’ll ever have kids?
A. No. I like kids, but don’t really care to have any myself. I have bipolar disorder, which has approximately a 70% pass-on rate, and I feel that it would be selfish to risk having a child that would have potentially tremendous difficulty in life, just because I wanted a kid. If I do have a kid, it will be just one. I think the fact that I was an only child meant that my parents were able to give me the attention and personal time that I needed to become who I am today. For instance, if I had had a sibling, there was no way they could have afforded the sailing, had time to drive me to reenactments, etc. Plus, at this point, I feel that I could better use the $0.5 million that experts currently estimate it costs to raise a child for my own life. Sure, it sounds selfish, but with that money, I (and my hypothetical husband) could travel, have more money to put toward reenacting, potentially buy a small plane like my dad’s, etc. Plus, my hobbies are not generally very child-compatible, and I’m not sure I’d want to give them up for the 12 years or so it would take for the kid to be able to participate. I think I’d rather just be some friend’s kid’s “cool aunt”.
Q. When did you realize you had more than friendship in mind with girls?
A. I think I was about 14. I had no interest in boys outside of being playmates, and I remember being frustrated that they would no longer play with me. I also found women much prettier than men, and had a crush on my best friend. I sort of put it out of my mind, because while my parents are fine with it, being bisexual in Texas is a straight ticket to getting the shit kicked out of you, so I just kept quiet. When I got to college, I was in a town with two womens colleges, and thus a high proportion of lesbians and bi women. So, I finally started admitting to people when I found some other girl attractive. I rarely did anything about it, but I did loosen up a *lot*, which is what is important. On the “Kinsey Scale”, I’m about a 1.5, so about 70/30 hetero/homo. I think, honestly, one thing that keeps me from being more involved with women (and I have been, with two) is the fact that generally….I dislike women. I much prefer the company of men, both as friends and as lovers, and a glance at my social circle reflects this. I do like women, but they often rub me the wrong way, for some reason. I’ve been told before that while I myself am definitely feminine, that I tend to view/look at/think of women in a very similar way to the way that men do. So, maybe that’s why.
Q. What additional lens would you love to have?
A. I would love to own that f2.8 800mm Canon, but it’s also a bit ridiculous in size and weighs like 20lbs, not to mention it being around $8,000. My next lens is Canon’s f1.4 50mm.
Q. Why did you choose photojournalism to be your dream career?
A. I like documenting the world, both for myself and others, to almost a compulsive degree. I also like the challenge of trying to tell a story visually. Plus, my mother, grandfather, and great grandfather were all photographers of some sort or another, professionally. To say it’s in my blood is an understatement.
Q. Since you said women annoy you, what is it about women that annoy you?
A. I generally find them petty, obsessed with things that I couldn’t care less about, far less empathetic than our culture claims they are (most women only seem to understand other women. true empathy would be for both sexes). Many of my female friends (most, even) are not typical women, so I don’t find them annoying. However, with most women, when they start talking, I sort of tune them out, and I hear the “blah blah blah” voice from Peanuts in my head. I’m sure that some people do the same thing with me when I talk about reenacting/etc, so we’re even.
Q. When did you start smoking? How often do you do it? Is it something you wish to stop?
A. I *generally* only smoke at reenactments. I occasionally smoke outside of events, but not more than once a month, usually. Twice at most. Plus, I never smoke normal cigarettes. Only my pipe, and on rare occasion, cloves. I started smoking at reenactments when I was 17 or so. I smoked a couple times a year until I left for college, then stopped. I started again when I picked up reenacting again after graduating. I don’t really smoke enough for it to be much of a health hazard, so it’s not something I really feel I need to stop. I don’t even smoke enough to qualify for “social smoker” studies, so that says something about how rare it is.
Q. Other than Korean, which obviously has practical uses to you right now, which language would you most like to learn next?
A. I’d like to perfect my French more than anything, really. Being around Marc and his family really makes me wish I could chat with them at anything near the speed they’re speaking. I can read essentially fluently, and my writing is pretty good, but my speaking isn’t that great, and I hate my accent. Other than that, I’d like to learn German/Swiss German. My mother spoke a lot of German around me when I was little, and due to that, despite a complete lack of formal instruction in the language, I can actually understand quite a bit of it. By the time I left Switzerland last summer after 5 weeks, I was able to read, or at least get the gist of, most newspaper articles, etc. Even now, I can generally understand at a basic level when someone is speaking to me, or when I’m reading it. I love the way German sounds (and French as well, but they’re obviously different), and so I’d like to learn it. As for something that I’ve *never* learned before, I’d have to say Russian. It sounds so interesting, and I could use it for reenacting.
Q. If you could go back in time and grow up someplace other than Texas, would you? And where would it be?
A. If I could still have the same parents? Totally. I wish I’d grown up somewhere more liberal like Oregon or Washington, or anywhere on the east coast Virginia or northward. I’d say Massachusetts, but I think I would’ve ended up a much different person. I don’t much care for most Massachusetts people who are under 18, never have. Maybe Vermont? Yes, I think Vermont is my answer. Within Texas, I wish my parents had stayed in Austin, where we lived until I was 4. I am SO much more an Austin person than a Houston person.
Q. How large is your extended family? (Like, aunts, uncles, cousins…) How close are you to them? Tell me something interesting about one or more of them.
A. Pretty small, actually. I have one cousin on my mom’s side, and one aunt. On my dad’s side, I have an aunt and an uncle, and two cousins. That’s it. My mom’s sister is a relatively famous chef (5 cookbooks now, former friend of Julia Child), and my dad’s brother is on the board of directors of the National Science Foundation, after having been Dean of Students at Georgia Tech for like 20 years. My two paternal cousins are both phenomenally smart. One of them made a perfect score on his SAT when he was 15. I’m not very close to any of my non-immediate family. They all live spread out around the country.
Q. Of the things you had to get rid of in your recent Stuff Purge, what was the toughest?
A. Stuff that was given to me. My family and friends tend to send me a lot of letters/cards/etc, and I also tend to get various presents from people from time to time as well, even outside of celebrations such as Christmas or my birthday. I have an extremely hard time getting rid of things that people have given me, no matter how ugly or useless they may be. It’s not that I’m worried about offending them, no, it feels to me like I’m *betraying* them. They gave me that item as an expression of love/friendship/whatever, and by getting rid of it, I feel like I am saying that those expressions mean nothing to me. It doesn’t matter that in my concious, logical self, I know that isn’t true, and it doesn’t matter that the gift-givers would know that wasn’t the case, either. For some reason, I just can’t shake the feeling that I’m saying that they mean nothing to me, if I get rid of the things they have given me. I suspect my OCD comes into play heavily on this one, since that’s textbook hoarding behavior.
After that? Some of my clothes. I had a lot of clothes, and I had to evaluate them all based on how much I felt I’d use them in Korea and when I get back. Honestly, my clothes tend to gravitate towards the khaki shorts/t-shirts variety, and they do so because that’s what fits my lifestyle best. As I went through my clothes, I was confronted with the fact that in all likelihood, I would not have as much of a need for such clothes when I got back, because I’m entering a more “real” stage of adulthood upon return. Going through that sort of existential crisis while sitting on the cold floor of a cement storage building was not one of my more pleasant experiences, to say the least.
Q. Is there a specific direction you’d like to go professionally? To put it another way, where would you like to be (job-wise) in five years?
A. Well, unlike many people these days it seems, I do intend to go into what I studied, which, as I mentioned above, was photojournalism. Photography runs strongly in my family (multiple generations of professionals), and there’s a bit of a history with journalism as well, and I have definitely felt those cries pretty strongly throughout my life. I was expecting to have a hard time breaking into the field, but I seem to have a good combination of great luck and an ability to find great contacts, and that has resulted in a few things that make me feel a little bit more confident in my ability to find a job in the field.
In 5 years, I’ll be almost 30. By that time, I’d like to have a photography job that pays enough for me to live comfortably and keep up with reenacting (sometimes I think being a crack addict would be easier on my wallet), and that isn’t soul-sucking. I fantasize about having a job shooting for, say, National Geographic or Time Magazine, etc, but I tend to be relatively grounded in reality. It’s not impossible, and I tend to be a very determined person, but for now I’m sticking to more achievable goals.
That said, while I’m over in Korea, I intend to do a bit of traveling (including Mongolia or Tibet, afterwards) and am planning on using that travel to really expand my portfolio into arenas that I would one day like to be perhaps paid professionally to shoot. The best way to get a job you want in photography is to show that you can do it, and one of the reasons that photojournalism and travel photography are so hard to break into is that you have to have a portfolio in those genres before anyone will consider you, and getting those photos is often difficult and expensive. So, I’m taking advantage of my situations as much as possible.
Q. You’ve clearly got strong wanderlust. Has that always been the case? Any idea why?
A. It runs in the family, on both sides. My maternal grandmother used to drive half-way across the country just for a weekend with her boyfriend or family. My paternal grandfather had visited all but 8 or so countries (as they existed at the time, at least) in the world when he died, and all 50 states, as well as all of the Canadian provinces.
I tend to be the type that needs a lot of personal time to think. Traveling puts me constantly into new positions and situations, which tends to provoke a lot of introspection. I also have always just had this urge to *go*, whether that meant walking a few blocks away to play in the bayou (I’m not white trash, I swear!) or getting on a plane and flying to Switzerland for a month to go do some solitary hiking in the alps. I walk, generally, for at least an hour a day, if I can help it. Sometimes it’s more along the lines of 2 or 3, depending on how much space I have to walk in, and how much I need to let my imagination have some time to itself. If I don’t walk for a few days, I get a sensation similar to cabin fever, even if I’ve gone out and done other things. Sometimes I feel like there’s this non-specific voice calling to me, saying “come see what’s over here!”, and it’s hard to resist. I also could be a little emo and say that sometimes I am most definitely going *away* from things, rather than towards them. The easiest way to forget about something is to remove yourself from its presence (or the situation, or whatever), and the easiest way to do that is to travel. While travel is nowhere near being primarily a method for me to run away from my problems, it certainly does fit the bill quite well when I feel the need to.
Q. Do you ever think that you might have some long lost twin out there?
A. God, I hope not! I think the last thing the world needs is another of me!
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Q. Who is this Marc fellow?
A. Marc is my boyfriend/ lover/ significant other/ whatever term you prefer. He is a dual citizen of the US/France and has lived all over the world. He was born in France, and lived there as a child, but due to being the child of a diplomat, he has also lived in what used to be Yugoslavia (before it broke up), Botswana, Benin, Nigeria, and various other places. He is bilingual and quite proud of his French origins, though he has lived in the US for 10 years now and is now in fact slightly more comfortable with English than with French these days. He is a graduate student finishing up his masters in criminal justice, focusing on domestic terrorism and hate group organizations. He is an avid reenactor (like myself) with a habit of collecting many impressions, and is a history buff of the very purest kind. We both also enjoy bad movies, gin and tonics, and folk music. Not all at once though. 
Q. Marc, your Frenchman, do you two speak French when you’re together?
A. Only when we don’t want strangers to be eavesdropping on our conversation. In everyday life, sometimes I try to speak with him (or rather, he tries to get me to speak with him), but I am intensely shy with my French, even though it’s not bad. He, however, is a different story. He tends to speak it when he’s trying to be cute and/or charming. It reduces me to a giggling puddle and he knows it. He also speaks French when he talks in his sleep.
Q. Does he have a cute accent?
A. When speaking English, he doesn’t have a French accent, but sometimes his English just doesn’t sound quite *right*, if you’re attuned to that sort of thing. His “first” language is French, but he started learning English from age 2 or so, so he’s fluent in it. But, he did not live in America until he was 15, and so his accent in English was not really “American”, but a mix of things. Sometimes he went to French schools, sometimes he went to British schools (there are more British schools overseas than American), sometimes he went to American schools. When he was growing up, after they left France, they were in a mix of eastern Europe (where he spoke English, French, and a tiny bit of Serbo-Croatian), west Africa (where he spoke French), and southern Africa (where he spoke English). So, those accents all combined to give him an accent that is difficult to place. Plus, his last 6 or 7 years have been spent in Virginia, so a bit of a southern accent has been added to that over the years. Depending on how attuned to accents you are, he either sounds southern or “unidentifiably foreign”.
When speaking French, his accent is distinctively influenced by African French, but he can fit in just fine in France. It’s different enough that even I notice it, as a non-native speaker. For instance, he says the “eu” or “eux” syllable as “ur” or “eur”. For instance, “peu” becomes “peur”, and “deux” becomes “durr”. When he says “je t’aime” to me, it sounds like “zhur t’aime”, to give you an idea. His parents, who both speak traditional, “metropolitan” French, sometimes jokingly call his French “Marc-ese”. When we were in Quebec, his French was so different that everywhere we went, people (waiters, shopkeepers, etc) asked him where he was from.
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Q. Why in the hell did you go to Korea?
A. Short answer? Money and experience.
Long answer? I decided to get my ESL teaching certificate while I was in college as insurance against living in a cardboard box, since I was a photojournalism major. As I neared the end of my schooling, I had nothing really tying me to the US, so I decided to teach abroad, and Korea was one of the easiest countries to get a job in, and was simultaneously one of the highest-paying, so that seemed like a good bet. However, due to issues with finishing school, I had to put off my plans until the following fall, and then until the spring. In between I had been essentially nomadic, and had burned through my savings in doing so (that’s what happens when you live without working, for a year!), and so by the time spring came around, I basically *needed* to go to Korea, if only to earn enough money to come back and get an apartment. Sadly, by that point, I had gone from having no ties to the US to many strong ties to the US. But, the ball was already rolling in a pretty set path, and so I had to go. I am here to get the requisite “year of experience” that most ESL jobs require, and to save up money so that Marc and I will be more comfortable when I return to the US. I plan on eventually getting a photojournalism job, and I am optimistic about it, but I want a bit of a security net first. Korea is for building that.
Q. What’s the one thing you would have freaked out if you got to Korea and found out you left at home, and then spared no expense in getting shipped your direction?
A. Other than important things like my documents and medication? My camera. My computer. But, the liklihood of either of those being left behind is slim, because they both live in the same bag when I travel, and it’s my primary carry-on bag.
Q. Is the Korea experience living up to your expectations? When your friend dropped out of it last year, did that make you reconsider it at all?
A. Korea is being exactly what I was warned it would be. I was hoping that since I spent a year preparing, that I would have a slightly better/easier time than most, but it seems that things are largely luck of the draw, and I drew the short stick. When my friend dropped out I didn’t really reconsider. However, I did reconsider when things became serious between Marc and I. I think if we had become involved earlier, say in September or October, I would likely have stayed in the states.
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Q. Where have you traveled?
A. Oh boy. Got a minute?
International: Switzerland, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, England, Scotland, Spain, Mexico, Canada, South Korea. By the time I return home in July, I will have added Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Poland, the Ukraine, Austria, Slovakia, and possibly Slovenia and Hungary to that list.
Domestic: Every US state but Hawaii, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Also, in Canada: Nova Scotia, Quebec, New Brunswick, Ontario, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, and the Northwest Territories.
Yeah, I get around.
Q. Why are you fascinated by Switzerland?
A. I have no idea. Well, some idea. I like many of the laws in Switzerland, for one thing. When I find out about most Swiss laws, they’re typically things I have wished that the US would institute, though I doubt we ever would. Plus, the people are generally reserved, but friendly once you get to know them, which is somewhat how I am. Plus, it’s a beautiful country.
Q. What country is next on your list of places you have to see?
A. From here: Probably Japan. I studied the damn place for a year and a half, and I’m a one hour plane ride away. To not visit would just be stupid. However, for my winter break (I get all of Feb. off), I will just be going back to the US. I was originally going to go to New Zealand or Cambodia, but by the time I start my vacation, it will have been almost 8 months since I last saw Marc, which is a long time to be away. After I finish working, the plan is still to take the Trans-Siberian from Vladivostok to Moscow, with some stops in Mongolia and Kazakhstan along the way. After Moscow, if I can arrange things the way I think I can and if Marc is able, I’m hoping to be able to spend a month or so in southern France with him, so we can have a little break time before starting “real life” and so I can work on my French and potentially meet his family in Lyon.
Not from here: Morocco, Croatia, or Nepal. Also, since Marc spent most of his childhood living in various parts of Africa and knows the cultures well, it could be interesting to visit South Africa or Kenya.
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