naked in the office

no, i wasn't drinking! we have this thing in our office called naked lunch where, several times each year, three people get chosen to give a 20-minute presentation about themselves and essentially "bare all". if there's anything scarier than standing in front of your co-workers preparing to tell your life story, i don't know what it is (except maybe teaching English to very excited adolescents OR paragliding, but i digress :-).

i was one of the lucky few this year who got picked to go naked, and i've spent the last few weeks plotting, scheming, and stressing about what to say. who am i, really? how did i get here? it turned out that some of my story was quite easy to tell and some of it was actually unbeknownst to me until i started putting this thing together:



(Current and/or ex-members of the good ship Klamath will recognise the format!)

essentially this 9-up = brand Jennifer and even though it is not the prettiest thing, it felt like an accurate representation of ME. what is all this stuff? from left to right, starting with the top row:

top left
the big fish in a small bowl stands for who i thought i was in cincinnati, loving my job and my life but knowing i wasn't being challenged enough. the little fish was who i aspired to be, even though she is smaller, she has a bigger bowl to swim around in.

top middle
the fab deca logo. andy rodgers got me into this and it was the one extracurricular that taught me how to write a speech, give presentations to thousands of people, and got me on the right path. i know you were all thinking it was my part time job with the Colonel that got me where i am today, but i really think it was deca that acted as the springboard.

top right
the track stands for how much i love running, even though i am STILL burned out from the flying pig marathon and not sure if i ever want to do 26.2 again. running is something i enjoy with my dad, something that gives me a sense of place no matter where i am, and something that keeps my crazies in tact. the smell of that track in the late afternoon sunshine takes me right back to 7th grade and the milford eagles racing crew...

middle left
my passport = a girl's guide to freedom. i have to thank my parents on this one for letting me go to spain when i was 17. that travel bug bit me right in the ass at a young age and has never let go!

middle middle
i love reading, writing, and everything in between. i adore bill bryson and secretly (or not) long to be a travel writer.

middle right
this wall in cusco is red, just like the little piece of my heart that will always remain in the amazing sacred valley of peru. the trip that changed my way of looking at the world...

bottom left
if i was going to be a muppet, it would totally be beaker. i love to make stuff, which is always an experiment and makes me feel like a mad scientist sometimes (especially in the kitchen). coupled with the fact that i get really high-pitched sometimes, well, can't you just see the correlation? meep, meep!

bottom middle
my eternal mental age. i had the wisdom of my twenties (parents stop laughing at me) but the ENERGY of a twenty-something. it's orange because i have synesthesia...

bottom right
EC1...the postcode...stands for being that little fish in the big bowl now, traveling to random places for £24.99 on easyJet, drinking random beers just because i can, and most importantly, where i met my Ads.

so there you have it. if you ever needed written explanation of my nuttiness, look no further.