The Friday Five is now defunct. I’m so disappointed because I was just getting used to having something fun to write about each week without having to ponder or think too hard. “Thinking hurts my head,” says Talking Barbie.

I don’t care. I’m still going to do the Friday Five and I’m still going to call them the Friday Five. If they are going to abandon the project, I’m just going to keep it going all by myself. I have a huge list of journal prompts that I have collected over the years that I’m going to use. Some of them are lame and some of them are cool, so I’m just going to pick and choose among them.

1. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

I would be seventeen years old, I think. I know that I know more than a seventeen-year-old girl, but I perpetually feel so much younger than my age. I still like glittery lip gloss. I still like to listen to music in my car with the volume too loud. I still like pop music. I was so responsible at seventeen that it doesn’t feel strange to be a thirty-five-year-old teenager.

2. What would your seventeen-year-old self tell your present self?

I think she might be a little disappointed in my situation right now. I’m not a published author yet and thirty-five is way old enough to be published by now. What is taking so long? Of course, she couldn’t have possibly understood the Internet. I guess I could just tell her that I am a published author every single day. Right now, I’m writing non-fiction, but if I wanted to publish my fiction on the Internet, I could do it any time I wanted. I guess that’s my next project. Get my fiction on the Internet. Self-publishing is still publishing. Maybe she wouldn’t be all that disappointed in me.

I live in Sugarhouse, which is where she always wanted to live. She would have preferred a little closer to <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = “urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags” />Westminster College, but it’s so much more efficient to be close to the grocery store and the restaurants than the college now. I’m done with that college stuff. Yeah, I guess, she’d be ok with my life right now. Hell, I drive the coolest car in the world. My new lime-green Beetle eats her old Baja Beetle for breakfast.   3. Did you fulfill your promise, developing the talent you were born with?

Yes, I am developing the talent that I was born with, but I don’t really feel like I’ve fulfilled my promise yet. I feel like I have so much more out there for the world to see. I don’t know why I keep it hiding in drawers and on my hard drive instead of exposing it all to the light of the world. I guess if I start a story online, you guys will expect me to finish it. That’s the big deal. I have yet to really finish a story. I’ve written one book from start to finish, but all the rest are works in progress and even the finished book doesn’t feel finished to me. Does it ever? Maybe not. Maybe I just have to release it to the world at some point and decide that it’s finished. Yeah, that’s my next big project: putting The Falstaff online so that you guys can read it.

4. What call did you answer?

I was called to do so many things that it has been really hard for me to concentrate on writing. I paint oil paintings. I can do the Bob Ross thing. I can do the abstract art thing. I can do it all if I just work hard enough at it. I just don’t paint that often. I’ll paint in spurts, doing many paintings over a short amount of time and then I’ll put my paints and easel away for months. I really wouldn’t consider that answering my calling.

I am also a really good singer. I have a really strong voice and I can instinctively know how to sing. I can’t sight read music, however, but that’s not a big deal if I’m only singing for the church choir. I wouldn’t really consider what I do with my voice to be answering my calling, though.

I write every single day, though. Not a day goes by that I don’t write something somewhere. It might just be writing for myself in my journal, but every day, I am a writer. This is the only instance that I feel like I am actually answering my calling. I am actively working on being a better writer every single day.

5. What day would you like to relive, over and over?

I don’t think I’ve lived it yet. This concept was just introduced to me last month by Margaret Cho. She talked about what her one perfect day would be and her encounter with David Bowie was it. Her perfect day doesn’t cut it for me. There is no person on this planet that I so adore that just meeting him or her would be enough for my perfect day. I don’t think I’ve had my special day that I would like to relive over and over.

If I died right now and had to choose, I would be stuck in Limbo for a long time just trying to decide. Would it be the time that my mom took us to Lagoon? Would it be my first trip to Disneyland? Would it be my first date? I went to the Sadie Hawkins dance with Troy Schied. We had burgers and shakes at a malt shop that has been knocked down and replace with yet another Walgreen’s drugstore. A lady came up to us and said we were a cute couple. Our student body president came to the dance in crutches because he had been hurt in a football game. No, that day wasn’t worth living over and over.

No matter which special day I think of, I can vividly remember the unpleasantness that also happened on that day. Maybe only people with bad memories can choose their one perfect day.