I really love personal stories.
As you probably know, I’ve been on a medical memoir reading binge for the last few months. Memoirs in general really scratch my “personal story” itch, of course, because memoirs ARE a personal story!
But inside these medical memoirs, my favorite parts are the patient stories. I love to read about what brought a patient in, what the complications were, and what the outcome was. The more stories like this, the more I love the memoir.
I also love to know the story of a person behind a website; if I happen upon a new-to-me blog, I always hope that there is an informative About page, telling me the blogger’s story.
Along the same lines, when I sit next to a friendly stranger on an airplane, I am always interested to hear their personal story; where they live, what they do for work, if they have kids, and so on.
Sometimes, this leads me down time-wasting rabbit trails on Instagram (which is why I generally do not have the app installed). If I click on the Explore page, I often come across an account I haven’t seen before, and then I end up scrolling through tons of their posts to find out their whole back story.
This will not surprise you, but . . . food. Not in the foodie sense, but in the very practical and traditional sense. I have always been fascinated by what other people eat, how they find it, how they prepare it or preserve it. I remember when I was quite young, around 8 years old, trying to make the “ginger water” described in “The Long Winter.” (Not a success.) That was when we lived in interior Alaska and I also tried cooking the wild cranberries and eating rosehips. So yeah, all of this started early. And with no guidance from my parents, I might add, since they had no knowledge or much interest in such things. I guess I really was just born this way. 🙂
Kristin, your comment about the things you tried to cook/eat as a child cracked me up. I did the same thing! I recall trying to make food the pioneers made – my grandma showed me how to make butter in a jar, no churn, alas, but it worked. I also tried making a corn cake cooked on a hot rock by an open fire. Big fail! Another big fail was trying to make pemmican like Native Americans. But my mom & I did make some delicious beef jerky in the oven. My mom was great about letting me try the things I read about in my children’s historical novels that I loved so well. Great memories! By the way, I still love to experiment with cooking now – trying to get a sourdough starter going!
I have a whole series about sourdough baking, and one post about starting the starter, on my blog if you want to read it.
https://going-country.blogspot.com/search/label/sane%20sourdough
Kristin, your blog is exactly where I started with my sourdough! I did struggle to get my starter going at first in my air conditioned Midwest home, and my first couple attempts at bread were a huge fail. But I have my starter going really well now and will be baking bread again soon (good bread I hope). I just struggle a bit with the timing around my job.
Mine is place, and particularly geographic coincidence, and even more narrowly, geographic coincidence involving people I know or fake-know, preferably me, and preferably the Great Plains.
Sincerely in a totally non-stalker way — I love knowing that you, Kristin, are super close to my friend from college whom I text with literally every day (even when she’s not in the US), and you, Kristen, are super close to what I’ll always call Granny’s ranch, even though it’s not my granny and “super close” is not always that close in eastern New Mexico.
I also love being able to realize random things like looking at all the contrails overhead can point me directly to Denver. I can spend hours on Google maps just going places and looking at whatever’s there.
I totally got my e and i mixed up, so read what I meant, not what I typed. (I do know the difference, just got all quick-typey.) D’oh
Weird diseases. The cardiac malformation I was born with is considered an orphan disease because so few people have it that pharmaceutical companies have not been interested in developing medications to treat it. Finding this out sent me on a search for other orphan diseases, and that interest has not faded. I am fascinated by the many ways our bodies can go off the rails (and amazed that people like Thomas Jefferson and John Adams lived to be so old in an era with few medical treatments), and reading about them also makes me thankful for what is wrong with me because some of the orphan diseases are really awful so I could have it much worse.
I find it really interesting to hear what books other people are reading. Our library has a podcast that comes out every other week and though I don’t listen consistently, my favorite part is where they go around and each person shares what they’re reading. They also do a Facebook post every Friday to ask what people are reading over the weekend. There are so many books out there! It’s interesting to see what others choose.
I am interested in how other families handle end of life and estate issues when their last parent passes away. I dealt with this in 2016 with my family, and in 2019 with my husband’s family. Even with wills and trusts and people who you love and respect, the time settling an estate is full of twists and turns, high emotions, and strong feelings. We had two very different situations and some very changed relationships. I am determined to take all I learned to make things go more smoothly when my husband and I pass. I wish I had known then what I know now. Stories from others about how their family goes through this process always interest me.
I’m always interested in seeing people’s homes, and deeper than that, how they got where they are now. For instance, I’ve always loved those “Christmas walk-throughs” where certain homes are on display and you can buy tickets to walk through the homes to see the decorations. While I loved the Christmas decorations, I was more interested in the home itself and the furnishings. I am fascinated with home decor and layouts of homes. All of my life, I’ve loved it when I take a walk at night and can peek into someone’s window from the sidewalk (if they have a light on and the curtains open). It feels kind of Norman Rockwell-like to have that peek into a moment in time where a family may be around a dining room table playing a game or eating a meal. I also love it when bloggers give me a peek into their homes. One set of bloggers does a “Where Bloggers Live” feature each month that I like to read. I also enjoy it when you, Kristen, share your frugal stories about the how’s and why’s of when you went from a townhouse to the home you’re currently in (and the accompanying pictures) or when you share home updates (for instance, adding windows to your dining room – – I’m a natural light fanatic, too!). When I was a child, I didn’t play with dolls much but I remember having a dollhouse for a while. I was always so intrigued by the layout of the home and moving all the furnishings around. As an adult, I’ve owned a couple big, beautiful homes but, interestingly, I now RV full time (I was a reader interview on your other blog) and, while I still love looking at or walking through homes, I have no interest in ever having a traditional home again. I don’t want that kind of maintenance anymore or to own the amount of things that can fit into a home. Tiny spaces are where I want to live now (RVs or tiny homes) and I can get my big home fascination filled in other ways. As a side note, I’ll add that when I was younger (30s and 40s) SOMETIMES this fascination would lead to feeling bad about my own life…kind of like what happens when you peek into other’s lives on social media and only see the good, staged, and sometimes downright fake things. But I’m so happy and confident with my own life now and, of course, old enough and wise enough to put those feelings into perspective on the rare occasion that they crop up at all.
Such a good one! I am the same. In fact, I love walking my dogs as it’s getting dark, because then I can see inside people’s houses more easily. I know that sounds creepy, but I am just nosy and love seeing how other people live and organize their lives.
1. Anything related to books and reading in general.
2. What people are willing to spend money on and where they don’t mind cutting corners. For example: The person who won’t spend more than $20 on a pair of shoes, but who doesn’t mind throwing thousands of dollars at one handbag. Or the person who cuts their own hair because they don’t want to pay for someone else to do it, but then gets their nails done every two weeks. No judgement for either person or anyone’s choices in general, but I definitely find the differences in people’s priorities fascinating.