The Proust Questionnaire

Via Tiffany B., who said something very kind about me in her post.

The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlour game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature. Here is the basic Proust Questionnaire.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Is there really such a thing? I strive for peace and contentment. To be truly content, I would never want for money or friendship, and I would have confidence in myself.

2. What is your greatest fear?
Dying alone. Heck, being alone, period.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
The crippling melancholy that doesn’t ever seem to leave me.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Boundless optimism. GET OFF MY LAWN.

5. Which living person do you most admire?
Right now, it’s Rev. Joseph Lowery of the SCLC.

6. What is your greatest extravagance?
I’m not extravagant, not usually. Probably the greatest extravagance would be the three years that I spent goo-gobs of money flying back and forth between Vancouver and the Bay Area.

7. What is your current state of mind?
Confused. Angry. Apprehensive. Afraid.

8. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Patience!

9. On what occasion do you lie?
Usually in social situations where I feel I have nothing to offer to the conversation. I don’t do this when I’m around my real friends, but I’ve been known to make stuff up around people I don’t know well, just to keep the conversation moving. I don’t think I’ve ever been caught, and I don’t do it nearly as much now as I used to when I was younger. I’m trying to drop this habit.

10. What do you most dislike about your appearance?
I’m a fat woman in Vancouver. That alone should speak volumes.

11. Which living person do you most despise?
GHK, Jr.

12. What is the quality you most like in a man?
Emotional honesty.

13. What is the quality you most like in a woman?
Self-awareness.

14. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“Dude”, or “For real?”

15. What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Is? Don’t have one at present. If we were talking about the past, see #11.

16. When and where were you happiest?
March 3, 2006, at the Seattle Airport.

17. Which talent would you most like to have?
I’d love to be able to sing. I don’t want to be a classical singer, or to sing gospel or anything like that, I want to be able to rock out Pat Benatar style.

18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
My tendency to ego trip. Few know this about me because I usually keep it on the hush-hush, but having people constantly tell me “you’re so smart” when I was a kid really did a number on me.

19. What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Leaving Atlanta and everything I’ve ever known behind to move to Vancouver.

20. If you were to die and come back as a person or a thing, what would it be?
What would I want to come back as, or what do I think I deserve to come back as? I would like to come back as a chocolate lab, or maybe a lion. I will probably come back as a gnat, or something equally insignificant.

21. Where would you most like to live?
On a ranch in Montana or Alberta. Give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above… don’t fence me in.

22. What is your most treasured possession?
My Nikon D300.

23. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
If I’m thinking of myself, I’d have to say anything related to #11 above. If I’m talking about on a global scale, I’d probably have to say being a child soldier in Darfur, or being this 8 year old girl.

24. What is your favourite occupation?
Being a librarian. I know, I’m surprised too.

25. What is your most marked characteristic?
Depends on where I am. In Vancouver, it’s my skin colour. Most everywhere else, it’s the size of my tuchis.

26. What do you most value in your friends?
Loyalty. Honesty, even when brutal. Loving me when I can’t see my way toward loving myself.

27. Who are your favourite writers?
Anne Rivers Siddons (shut up), Octavia Butler, Paul Beatty, John Green, Neil Gaiman

28. Who is your hero of fiction?
Gunnar Kauffman in Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle.

29. Which historical figure do you most identify with?
Ida B. Wells-Barnett. She fought battles other people wouldn’t fight, and kept on fighting even when she was villified.

30. Who are your heroes in real life?
I don’t have any.