July Interview Questions with The Brain is a Noodle

Egg-cited to get to know you better!

A collaborative way to know fellow writers better!

A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to respond to the June 2021 TBIN Interview Questions! Here’s a collection of the responses that have gone live:

This prompt is still open until the end of June! Feel free to hop on last-minute with the prompts here:

June Interview Questions with The Brain is a Noodle

Egg-cited to get to know you better!

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For hot, sizzling July, we’re featuring three similar sections:

5 open-ended questions
5 favourites / least favourites?
5 articles to share

These July prompts will be published under the tag #July2021TBINInterview on Twitter!

July Interview Questions

If you publish these somewhere other than TBIN, please do tag me so I can make sure I read through them! As always, would love to house them in TBIN. Also, for ease of access for others who might want to fill out this interview, feel free to include a direct link so that they can copy and paste the questions right over!

[1] If you could go back to the beginning of your writing career, however far back that is, what is one tip you would give yourself?

[2] In classic group-based ice-breakers format: “Share your name and one random fact about yourself”, how do you choose the fact to share? Do you come up with one on the spot? Does it change depending on who you’re talking to? Do you have one “go-to” answer for all of these ice-breaker situations?

[3] In what ways do you take care of your mental health?

[4] How has your culture or context shaped your beliefs about what work ethic or productivity looks like?

[5] What’s one food you like to make if you don’t want to think or plan or buy new ingredients at all?

Fave or nah?

Favourite moisturizer?
Least favourite car?
Favourite chore?
Least favourite tv show?
Favourite body part?

Articles to share

A piece that you published in your first moments of being on Medium
A piece that challenges assumptions
A piece related to food
A piece from a fellow writer you love
A piece you think deserves more love

My responses!

[1] If you could go back to the beginning of your writing career, however far back that is, what is one tip you would give yourself?

If I could go back to the beginning of my writing short, short writing career, I’d have set up a better tracking system right from the start.

At the beginning, I had a pretty good system for tracking published pieces. As a spreadsheet fanatic, I set up a colour-coded, conditionally formatted spreadsheet to track published links and where I’ve promoted the pieces.

However, I wish I’d started developing a better way of tracking drafts and ideas right from the beginning. My tactic is still evolving, but currently involves a spreadsheet tab for poetry ideas / drafts and another one for longform articles ideas / drafts.

I currently have something ridiculous like 500+ poetry prompt ideas and/or half-written drafts, and something close to 700 pages of half-written essays. Now imagine if instead of starting new pieces, I’d just finish these all and push them into the world, right?

IMAGINE.

[2] In classic group-based ice-breakers format: “Share your name and one random fact about yourself”, how do you choose the fact to share? Do you come up with one on the spot? Does it change depending on who you’re talking to? Do you have one “go-to” answer for all of these ice-breaker situations?

First of all, let me set the stage and say that I absolutely hate ice-breakers that place you on the spot for sharing something, as someone quite socially anxious. That’s why I usually try to come up with something, and try to come up with something as boring as possible, so no one remembers it.

My go-to can range from “I like to read” to “I just began embroidering”, though both of these are half-truths:

I haven’t read a book since I abandoned the last one in the middle of June, and
I embroidered half a Totoro June 2020 and I gave up. Just. Gave up.

[3] In what ways do you take care of your mental health?

I’m learning that there’s no one-size-fit-all for taking care of your own mental health, and even within the same person, different contexts means that you might need to shift and continue experimenting with what works for your mental health.

At this precise moment, it looks like journalling daily, doing yoga intermittently (though I hope to make this more regular), being conscious about what I eat because binge-eating is a sign that stress has gone way up, and tracking my mood.

[4] How has your culture or context shaped your beliefs about what work ethic or productivity looks like?

Being an immigrant and also the daughter of immigrants, we grew up in a scarcity mindset.

I know. It’s a buzzword these days to “think abundance, not scarce”, and it’s usually discussed in this manner of painting people who think in a scarcity mindset from the point of view of shaming them for being shitty people. Y’know, the stereotype that people with scarcity mindsets are stingy, non-collaborating and selfish people who only think about themselves and refuse to open up opportunities to other people. That people with a scarcity mindset did this to themselves by simply being close-minded.

Sure, maybe some folks are like that.

But I think we don’t consider enough why some people have this scarcity mindset and end up overworking 300%. We plan like the world is going to end and we think that things might not work out.

And that’s because those things were true. My parents gave up their careers and had to take on 2–3 jobs unrelated to their careers in order to put food on the table. There was food on the table but I didn’t live like other kids. We had to decline field trips that were over a certain budget regardless of how much we could spend on a “learning experience”. We could never fundraise for whatever cause by buying $30 candles because we didn’t have discretionary budget to buy expensive frivolous items in the name of charity.

Even then, I was privileged, and I knew it. I knew what it took to get me to a place where I could study and be whoever I wanted, and I studied hard for it. And I needed to. All throughout high school I spent every waking hour either building something for my CV or studying.

Yet pitted with where I am now, which is a place of considerably more privilege than back then, I’m conflicted. I talk about mental health, particularly from the lens of wanting to work a balanced life where I can do something other than work.

Yet, I did not come from that place, and actively have to counteract some long-standing beliefs about productivity and safety.

[5] What’s one food you like to make if you don’t want to think or plan or buy new ingredients at all?

In true The Brain is a Noodle fashion, I always have instant noodles around, and am constantly on the lookout for new, funky flavours of instant noodles.

Truthfully, I think the instant noodle options we have in Canada are kind of sad. For the North American market, instant noodles center on the instant factor at the absence of ever developing beyond the standard chicken, spicy chicken and beef options.

There’s honestly so much space to innovate with instant noodles and I wish we saw more flavours here!

In the meanwhile, please consider: MILK RAMEN. Yes, it sounds ODD, but trust me, it’s better than it sounds right now.

Fave or nah?

Favourite moisturizer? — nothing fancy, just the normal st. ives ones you can get for cheap.
Least favourite car? — omg I’m sorry but the back of minivans make me hella motion sick
Favourite chore? — washing the dishes. OH HOW THE TABLES HAVE TURNED
Least favourite tv show? — so this is hard because I usually just forget about tv shows if I didn’t like them, so I referred to my trusty tv show tracking list! turns out the one with the lowest rating is Flying Tiger 2, and honestly, I feel like 900% it’s because the second / remake of any classic show is always going to be disappointing.
Favourite body part? — eyebrows. I even wrote them a poem.

Articles to share

Hi I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and I can’t wait to read, publish and tweet these interview responses! ❤

Hop down the rabbit hole? 🐰🕳

Connection

a one-line poem about mayonnaise

medium.com

Insanity Of Multiple Choices

The struggle of getting through every ‘now’

medium.com

^ Pretheesh Presannan