CURRENT MISSION

Find a balance between enjoying and improving the world.

ABOUT ME

I am an optimistic realist, excited about life, but I'm not afraid to confront and acknowledge the world's ugliness; I don't think cynicism is cool and I think snobbery is bullshit, though I've been told, on enough occasions to warrant mentioning it, that I can come off as both cynical and snobby, which always bothers me to hear.

I try to stay humble, keep an open mind about everything, and remember that I'm probably wrong about a lot of things.

I'm a big fan of love and compassion and skepticism and open-mindedness and critical thinking and liberal politics and feminism and anti-racism and and LGBTQ equality and emotional authenticity and purposefully constructed run-on sentences.

I am an absolute junkie for movies, theatre, books, bicycles, learning, hanging out at libraries, and doing things that I didn't expect to be doing a year ago, a month ago, a week ago, a day ago, or this morning.

I'm into studying and learning, writing, trying to live in the moment to the best of my ability, writing plays, working for social justice (though, admittedly, a lot less than I'd like), traveling the country on a bare-bones budget whenever possible, buying stock in sincerity before the irony bubble bursts, and forming awesome human connections.

PHILOSOPHY

Love, honesty, respect, adventure.

"If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day."
—E.B. White

Interests

Writing, theatre, movies, social justice, politics, learning, sexuality, feminism, gender issues, race issues, video games, sociology, cooking, baking, etc.

• writing
• books
• womens rights
• cooking
• baking
• running
• politics
• movies
• video games
• traveling
• sociology

Music, Movies, and Books

MOVIES: The Back to the Future trilogy, Do the Right Thing, Boogie Nights, Cinema Paradiso, Amadeus, A Serious Man, Love Actually, Brief Encounter, movies written/directed by the Coen Brothers, movies written/directed Woody Allen, movies written by Aaron Sorkin, Disney animated movies, Pixar movies, horror movies (the classy kind, with artistic merit), horror movies (the trashy kind, with dubious artistic merit), and a whole lot more that, in the interest of restraint, I'm not including here, but which you should totally ask me about.

MUSIC: Kanye West, Pink Floyd, Patti Smith, Eastern European romantic composers, Alan Menken, Ennio Morricone, jazz, bluegrass, and a shit-ton of stupid, manufactured pop, for my love of which I will not apologize.

BOOKS: The Liars' Club, The Brothers Karamazov, the Harry Potter series, Revolutionary Road and Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, Running in the Family, Kindred, A Theory of Justice, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming, Bird by Bird, Why We Make Mistakes.

PLAYS: Glengarry Glen Ross, The Children's Hour, A Doll's House (and most everything else by Henrik Ibsen), Little Shop of Horrors, Fiddler on the Roof, Frost/Nixon, How I Learned to Drive, M. Butterfly, Red, Equus, Amadeus, all Shakespearian tragedies* all good Shakespearian tragedies (i.e. Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Romeo & Juliet, Julius Caesar).

TV: Arrested Development, Community, The West Wing, South Park, Star Trek, Parks & Recreation, nature documentaries, The Twilight Zone, The Colbert Report, and sometimes Glee (ask me about my love/hate relationship!).

Teach, Learn, Share

Oh man, I can talk about a lot of things, but I don't feel super comfortable putting anything down as like, an "area of knowledge". That said, I enjoy talking about time travel, my white, male, heterosexual, cisgender privilege, Disney movies, the sociopolitical content of Disney movies (and of other stuff, too!), thrifty living, American politics, kyriarchy, story structure, and the parts of the Harry Potter universe not shown in the books. And other stuff! Lots of other stuff! I'm a fantastic conversationalist. Try me!