There Once was a Girl...
All right then, let’s attempt to do this whole personal background thing.
Name: Jenn (With two Ns. Yes, it’s important. When you have a name as common as mine, the little things that help you distinguish yourself are important.)
Nickname: Nerdifer, or Nerds for short. My father wonders why I let my friends call me a nerd. It’s a term of endearment, I tell him. And really, it is. It came from a friend I met in Japan. And when I was in Japan, I really was the nerdiest of the bunch, by a long shot. The group of ex-pats I surrounded myself with were a strange combination of diplomats’ kids, gai-jin superstars, and societal drop-outs who’d found their degrees on Khao San Road. Not an engineer in the bunch. Just me. When the nickname was bestowed upon me it felt perfect. I was just at the point where I was ready, at long last, to embrace my inner-nerd and let it shine and let that be me. When I came home to Canada I tried to encourage old friends from university to call me by my new nickname. (“No, really, it’s okay! I like it!") They protested, claiming that I was no nerdier than the rest of them. True. But after two and a half years back home, it’s starting to catch on.
A Brief History: In my last year of high school, my English teacher gave us a quick, unofficial test that was meant to determine which side of the brain we favoured. Left=analytical. Right=holistic. Everyone in the class showed a clear dominance, except me. I was the only kid who was split evenly right down the middle between scientific and artistic. And that pretty much sums me up. It’s been my good fortune a lot of the times, but it’s also caused a lot of confusion because I will often try to dive into one side of my brain and ignore the other side. After a while the neglected side rears its ugly head, throws a nasty temper tantrum, claims that I have been paying it no attention and that this one-sided nonsense behaviour has got to stop immediately. The problem is finding the balance.
In university, I spent four years entirely on the left side of my brain and earned a degree in Chemical Engineering. I left music behind. I left reading for pleasure behind. I left writing behind. As I neared graduation, the right side of my brain kicked up a fuss and sparked a crisis of identity. The right side of my brain told me I didn’t like engineering and that what I really wanted in life was to be a writer. Problematic. But I listened to it. After a short year working full-time as an engineer, I cut the left side of my brain off and ran away to Japan to rediscover the other half of my brain.
In Japan I worked as an English teacher and wrote. A lot. Reams. Volumes. Epics. Teaching paid the bills without requiring any of my conscious attention. And the foreign environment gave me experience aplenty upon which I could expound. Most of the writing I was either unsatisfied with, being a perfectionist, or frightened about what people would think if I actually put my voice out there. So I kept the volumes to myself. And then I cut off my time in Japan without a real plan as to the rest of my life and when I tried to re-integrate myself back into normal Canadian society, I, well, I choked.
The next year and a half of my life involved a lot of unemployment, heartache, and dependence on the goodwill of patient parents. There was a doomed attempt at a life in Calgary, but I mostly found that I didn’t fit in there. Couldn’t find any friends. Couldn’t find a job. Couldn’t understand people’s points of view in Canada’s very own red state. And, of course, there was a boy. (Isn’t there always?) And that didn’t work out either. Eventually, I realized it was time to come home to Ontario and my Dad, thankfully, came out to rescue me and bring me home and my Mom, thankfully, housed me while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up.
When it appeared my choices were rapidly diminishing to either a) get a salaried job or b) declare bankruptcy, I chose option a). Option a) now has me living and working at my day job in the financial industry in Toronto. It’s a far cry from engineering, and it’s a far cry from being a writer but overall my life is starting to strike that balance between right and left that I have been searching for. I’m happy in Toronto. I like the urban life. I like the fact that I can see any movie in wide or limited release. I’m happy that I can find a yoga studio where the people know what they’re doing and are friendly. I have great friends here and it feels like more are arriving and developing every day. And the job doesn’t define me but gives me the independence to start to define myself.
Don’t Touch the Feet: The site is really the first time I’ve made my musings publicly available. Feel free to comment on it. I get a little gleeful with each hit and am very impatient to get some real comments on my stuff. The name comes from my own foot aversion. My older brother, A_____, used to lovingly beat up on me when I was little and if I didn’t squirm away he would grab my second toe and push down on a pressure point in it. It was all in the name of sibling rough-housing, and sure I invited it because I was a little brat and liked the attention from my older brother. And it has made me very sensitive to my feet, to the point where I don’t even like people looking at them because then I get all self-conscious and I can feel them. Plus, feet are just not attractive, certainly not mine. So it’s kind of a masochistic name, but there you have it. It kind of captures the feeling of baring my words out on the internet. This is me, squirming a little at the thought of being conscious of my self in a public forum. Just don’t touch the feet.
Name: Jenn (With two Ns. Yes, it’s important. When you have a name as common as mine, the little things that help you distinguish yourself are important.)
Nickname: Nerdifer, or Nerds for short. My father wonders why I let my friends call me a nerd. It’s a term of endearment, I tell him. And really, it is. It came from a friend I met in Japan. And when I was in Japan, I really was the nerdiest of the bunch, by a long shot. The group of ex-pats I surrounded myself with were a strange combination of diplomats’ kids, gai-jin superstars, and societal drop-outs who’d found their degrees on Khao San Road. Not an engineer in the bunch. Just me. When the nickname was bestowed upon me it felt perfect. I was just at the point where I was ready, at long last, to embrace my inner-nerd and let it shine and let that be me. When I came home to Canada I tried to encourage old friends from university to call me by my new nickname. (“No, really, it’s okay! I like it!") They protested, claiming that I was no nerdier than the rest of them. True. But after two and a half years back home, it’s starting to catch on.
A Brief History: In my last year of high school, my English teacher gave us a quick, unofficial test that was meant to determine which side of the brain we favoured. Left=analytical. Right=holistic. Everyone in the class showed a clear dominance, except me. I was the only kid who was split evenly right down the middle between scientific and artistic. And that pretty much sums me up. It’s been my good fortune a lot of the times, but it’s also caused a lot of confusion because I will often try to dive into one side of my brain and ignore the other side. After a while the neglected side rears its ugly head, throws a nasty temper tantrum, claims that I have been paying it no attention and that this one-sided nonsense behaviour has got to stop immediately. The problem is finding the balance.
In university, I spent four years entirely on the left side of my brain and earned a degree in Chemical Engineering. I left music behind. I left reading for pleasure behind. I left writing behind. As I neared graduation, the right side of my brain kicked up a fuss and sparked a crisis of identity. The right side of my brain told me I didn’t like engineering and that what I really wanted in life was to be a writer. Problematic. But I listened to it. After a short year working full-time as an engineer, I cut the left side of my brain off and ran away to Japan to rediscover the other half of my brain.
In Japan I worked as an English teacher and wrote. A lot. Reams. Volumes. Epics. Teaching paid the bills without requiring any of my conscious attention. And the foreign environment gave me experience aplenty upon which I could expound. Most of the writing I was either unsatisfied with, being a perfectionist, or frightened about what people would think if I actually put my voice out there. So I kept the volumes to myself. And then I cut off my time in Japan without a real plan as to the rest of my life and when I tried to re-integrate myself back into normal Canadian society, I, well, I choked.
The next year and a half of my life involved a lot of unemployment, heartache, and dependence on the goodwill of patient parents. There was a doomed attempt at a life in Calgary, but I mostly found that I didn’t fit in there. Couldn’t find any friends. Couldn’t find a job. Couldn’t understand people’s points of view in Canada’s very own red state. And, of course, there was a boy. (Isn’t there always?) And that didn’t work out either. Eventually, I realized it was time to come home to Ontario and my Dad, thankfully, came out to rescue me and bring me home and my Mom, thankfully, housed me while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do when I grew up.
When it appeared my choices were rapidly diminishing to either a) get a salaried job or b) declare bankruptcy, I chose option a). Option a) now has me living and working at my day job in the financial industry in Toronto. It’s a far cry from engineering, and it’s a far cry from being a writer but overall my life is starting to strike that balance between right and left that I have been searching for. I’m happy in Toronto. I like the urban life. I like the fact that I can see any movie in wide or limited release. I’m happy that I can find a yoga studio where the people know what they’re doing and are friendly. I have great friends here and it feels like more are arriving and developing every day. And the job doesn’t define me but gives me the independence to start to define myself.
Don’t Touch the Feet: The site is really the first time I’ve made my musings publicly available. Feel free to comment on it. I get a little gleeful with each hit and am very impatient to get some real comments on my stuff. The name comes from my own foot aversion. My older brother, A_____, used to lovingly beat up on me when I was little and if I didn’t squirm away he would grab my second toe and push down on a pressure point in it. It was all in the name of sibling rough-housing, and sure I invited it because I was a little brat and liked the attention from my older brother. And it has made me very sensitive to my feet, to the point where I don’t even like people looking at them because then I get all self-conscious and I can feel them. Plus, feet are just not attractive, certainly not mine. So it’s kind of a masochistic name, but there you have it. It kind of captures the feeling of baring my words out on the internet. This is me, squirming a little at the thought of being conscious of my self in a public forum. Just don’t touch the feet.
posted by nerdifer at 2:00 p.m.
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