25 Random Things About Me

UPDATE: Someone used this post to attack my character in court. See my reply.

A friend from school (I think all the way back to elementary school) has tagged me in a 25 things about me post on Facebok. Since I try and keep everything consolidated and then propagated, I am writing this on my blog, but will “tag” people on Facebook. I have written one of these “# things about me” posts before, but I don’t think I did a particularly good job. Hopefully this one will be better. Though some of the stuff most people already know, people who I went to school with on Facebook may not know it.

Note: It may be dangerous to do this during a time of reflection and clarity.

1. I am fiercely competitive. This shows itself in odd behaviors that may not appear to be driven by competition.
2. I have been blogging at jaxn.org since 2001 (shortly after 9/11, but I didn’t mention 9/11 when I started, even though I lived in DC).
3. I first started using a laptop in 1998. I have had a laptop ever since. It has changed my life; it gave me a career.
4. I am a partner in an LLC that owns two Plato’s Closet franchises (Cool Springs and Murfreesboro).
5. My first car was a 1986 Prelude that I got when I was 20. I had always wanted a Prelude. It cost $2,000 and had paint chipping off.
6. I am currently driving a 2007 Ford F-150. I am not sure I can go back to driving something smaller. Having a truck is also very handy.
7. I also have a 1969 Volvo p1800 that my Aunt bought used in 1970. It is slowly rusting away before I have the time / money to fix it.
8. I had the opportunity to do a 16 day Outward Bound expedition. I maneuvered a canoe through class 4 rapids, climbed a cliff, hiked for days with a 50lb pack, and more. Afterward, during a one on one debrief with a counselor, she told me “you have a very low tolerance for bull shit”. I will never forget that.
9. I don’t really give a shit if my kids use foul language.
10. I think believing in God makes doing the right thing less noble.
11. I have been arrested. As a juvenile I was arrested for things like graffiti and truancy; as an adult I have been arrested for “drag racing” (it is a funny story).
12. Nobody can cook fried chicken as well as my mother. Seriously. World’s Best.
13. I changed “good” to “well” in that last sentence b/c I heard my mother correcting me in my head.
14. I correct my kids on grammar all the time. They will hear me in their heads when they take tests.
15. I love sailing and do not do it nearly enough. Hopefully my family will start to enjoy it more.
16. In 1998 or 1999 I created a partnership between Belmont University, Vanderbilt University, and the YWCA to hold Nashville’s first Take Back the Night. The partners did a phenomenal job organizing the event and as far as I know the partnership has lasted ever since.
17. Professor Bill Fletcher at Belmont University then nominated me for a “Do Good Stuff” award for my work on Take Back the Night and a Race Relations Group I ran. I was presented with the Regional Award at the 1999 C.O.O.L. National Conference in Salt Lake City, UT
18. In 1999 I read an article in Utne Reader about how we should drop out of college and start a path of “self education”.
19. I quit college and moved to New Hampshire when I was 22 to organize the 2000 C.O.O.L. National Conference. It was my first salaried job. There was strife over my keynote speaker: Billy “Upski” Wimsat who wrote Bomb the Suburbs and No More Prisons. It turns out Upski also wrote that article in Utne Reader (I didn’t know that until after the conference).
20. I met my ex-wife while I was living in New Hampshire. She was living in Florida. We met in New Orleans.
21. I have more debt than I should.
22. I miss playing music.
23. I failed out of Jazz school at Loyola in New Orleans b/c I was too self-conscious. Looking back, I think I had the chops and talent.
24. Sometimes I feel like I have left a trail of destruction throughout my life.
25. Sometimes I leave things unfinished. (when I wrote this in HTML I thought it was #24. Maybe I finish more than I know.)