Get to Know Me in Ten

I’m not the diary type. I am fervently opposed to keeping a diary. As an aspiring writer, I have received umpteen blank journals as gifts, which I’ve promptly re-gifted, along with all the bookmarks I never use. (I am one of those horrible people that fold the corner of the page I’m on, though I would never, ever do this to a library book. Promise.)

Recently, at a residency for my MFA program, the students were asked to keep a journal of our experience abroad in Barcelona. I had the best of intentions. I bought the Barcelona edition of the Moleskine journals, sat on my scratchy hotel bedspread, cracked the spine, and watched my pen float over the paper. No words flowed. Stumped, I wrote a banal entry about my flight from LAX to Europe that included the idiotic line, “How must the sardines feel!” [Insert mockery here.]

Something about the permanence of ink on paper stumps me and turns me into a fourteen-year-old gushing about my crush on that boy we saw at the mall – you know, the one with the square jaw and dreamy blue eyes? I hope for my sake – and that of any readers – that I manage to avoid this prepubescent trap as I embark on this blog, recording my foray into becoming a writer. Below are the top ten things you should know about me.

1. My Guilty Pleasure – celebrity gossip delivered in any format. Sad to say, I have an RSS feed for People.com headlines.
2. My Favorite Pastimes – watching people and spinning unbelievable, outlandish tales about them. My sister is my favorite partner-in-crime.
3. Where I Write – Starbuck’s. I know, I know. Total cliché, right? I can’t help it. I work better without the distraction of my TV or the internet since I refuse to pay the internet access fees.
4. Major Pet Peeve – my name is pronounced Cor-reen, not Cuhr-een or Cor-in or any of the other massacred versions I’ve been called in my life.
5. Strangest Idiosyncrasy – At work, I am a neat freak. I organize and label and color code every spreadsheet. But at home…Whoa, Nelly! I am a slob of epic proportions. I believe it is possible to use up one side of your personality in the workplace so that there’s nothing left at home.
6. Ridiculous Fact – I’ve been to 9 colleges in the last fifteen years.  My college transcripts are a nightmare to decipher and the Admissions Office of anywhere I apply are mystified. What can I say? I love to learn.
7. What People Say When They Learn About My Family – “You’re surprisingly normal.” This is because my mother has been married/divorced five times and my father is on his fourth marriage. I have eight full/half siblings, plus an assortment of steps. The net result? I am a self-proclaimed expert observer of human nature with Grand Canyon-sized trust issues and an inherited romantic streak – if my parents weren’t romantics, why would they have kept trying?
8. Favorite first line of a novel – “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” From Pride & Prejudice. Jane Austen is my hero.
9. Favorite Obsessive Behavior – searching for new apps for my iphone. Seriously, it’s like getting lost on Google for hours when you look up wine tasting and an hour later you’re somehow reading about the indigenous behavior of aardvarks in Texas. When I find a great app, I tell everyone about it like I’m Christopher Columbus discovering new lands.
10. What My Closest Friends Tease Me About – it’s a tie between my love for sci-fi and my penchant for watching kid’s programming. I watch more Disney and Nickelodeon than friends with kids. Truly embarrassing and something I hang my head in shame for.

Have questions? Feel free to ask.