Anna Kirstin
“Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.”
- Erich Fromm
I can be an incredibly shy person. Add to that my finding it really hard to explain my own personality. I’m kind of biased. Where do you start when you need to explain about yourself? From the beginning as David Copperfield did? By going backwards through time? I choose to stay in the present.
My name is Anna Kirstin. I am an Alabama native and have an authentic “Southern accent” to prove it - though some people say I occasionally sound more like I’m from Texas.
Spending my whole life in the backwoods of Alabama, I am very comfortable with nature and the woods. I like to go hiking through trails in the early fall when the leaves start to change. My only fear is snakes. I have a hard time telling if they’re poisonous or not unless I’m close enough to get bitten and you will not find me getting that close. My dogs (and sometimes my cat) always go with me when ever I go hiking on the trails behind my house.
I don’t hunt. I know - shocking. There is a stereotype that Southerners (especially from Alabama) always hunt, drink beer, and have huntin’ dogs named “Bear.” The men in my family are big on hunting deer, but I could never get into it. I went once with my Grandfather when I was little. I found them too pretty to shoot. While I have never shot an animal (with the exception of a rabid raccoon), I love to blow off steam by shooting at cans with an air-gun. I’ve even managed to get quite good at it.
When it comes to more lady-like pursuits, I am, without a doubt, hopelessly ineffective. I can’t cook to save my life. Whether this is because I normally dislike to cook or because I’m really not good at it remains to be seen. I can’t sew. I broke the sewing machine trying. ^^;
What I can do is study (as boring as that sounds). I want to become a nurse and I am a slave and a perfectionist when it comes to that. Even though I can’t pay attention in class for more than 30 minutes (usually a four - five hour class), I pour myself over the text-books when I get home. It’s probably this reason my notes are highly coveted by my classmates (I normally share them.) I’m highly competitive with my grades. If I can’t have the highest grade, I want to at least be in the top ten percent. This usually means a “B”.
When I concentrate on one thing so hard, everything else seems to become disorganized. I have a hard time keeping everything straight at once. It leads to a great deal of stress. I relieve this stress by reading. I do so love to read - if there is a book in this house that I have not yet read, I will steal it and read it. It goes without saying, I enjoy the library.
As you can probably tell, I am a very quiet, almost boring little person.