Month: December 2019

1. What is your current state of mind?  Restless.
2. What is your favorite journey? A 3-week mission trip to Tanzania in 2007. My favorite Journey song however is Wheel in the Sky.
3. What is your idea of perfect happiness? On the back porch with a book, a glass of bourbon, a cigar and a dog or two at my feet
4. What is your greatest fear?  Something happening to our daughters and now granddaughter.
5. What is your most marked characteristic?  Being comfortable in a room full of strangers.
6. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Speaking before thinking
7. What is the trait you most deplore in others? Not following up after promising to do so.
8. What is your greatest extravagance? Fountain pens.
9. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? Tolerance. Relativism is helping destroy our society.
10. On what occasion do you lie?  I have gotten better at telling the truth as I get older since I don’t get in trouble as much.
11. Dislike most about your appearance? My three chins and four waists.
12. Which living person do you most despise? I don’t hate/despise anyone, but would like to have a word or two in private with a few representatives from California.
13. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?  I polled my family and was advised: “Drive Gently”, “Swell”, “Roger that”.
14. What is your greatest regret? At times, being selfish in my marriage.
15. What or who is the greatest love of your life? My wife and daughters, but I think our granddaughter is positioning to take over.
16. When and where were you happiest? Vacations at the beach.
17. Which talent would you most like to have? To be able to sing in addition to playing the guitar. Played in a band for years, but can’t sing a note.
18. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? See #6 above.
19. If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be? To go back in time and get a do-over at being a better husband/father.
20. What do you consider your greatest achievement? Helping raise three daughters into productive adulthood without getting pregnant or needing to be bailed out of jail.
21. What is your most treasured possession? A photograph, taken on Memorial Day, 1976 of three men who had a profound impact on my understanding of life and real friendship. Background can be found here: A Difficult Task Indeed.
22. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? Feeling worthless and unloved
23. Where would you like to live? The beach. Any beach.
24. What is your favorite occupation? As crazy as it may sound, I loved being a funeral director for the 30+ years I worked in that world.
25. What is the quality you most like in a man? My, isn’t that a bit personal?
26. What is the quality you most like in a woman? I’ll defer to my wife of 33 years.
27. What do you most value in your friends?  Rigorous Honesty. . . absence of any intent to deceive.
28. Who are your favorite writers?  Michael D. O’Brien and NYTs Best Selling Author, Andra Watkins
29. Who is your favorite hero of fiction? John Galt
30. What is it that you most dislike? People who pretend to like you, but sabotage you at every opportunity.
31. Who are your heroes in real life? Don’t have any
32. How would you like to die? In my sleep, after a great dinner out.
33. If you were to die and come back, what do you think it would be? A dog living with one of our daughters.
34. What is your motto? Life is short, dead is for a very long time.
35. Bonus Question: How did you find my blog? I’m not sure how I found DK’s blog, but my WordPress stats page indicates that I began following it on April 22, 2012. 
36. Bonus Question: Why do you keep coming back to this Blog? Dk’s blog is like a box of chocolates. You never know what to expect each morning (when I read blogs) and you are never disappointed.

Notes:

• Photo of Ray Visotski and his beautiful Grandaughter Adeline Louise.
• Ray is a virtual friend and faithful follower (as I am of his blog) and he kindly agreed to share his responses to the Proust Questionnaire.  Ray’s Blog can be found at Mitigating Chaos.
• See prior Proust Questionnaires.
• The Proust Questionnaire has its origins in a parlor game popularized (though not devised) by Marcel Proust, the French essayist and novelist, who believed that, in answering these questions, an individual reveals his or her true nature.  (Source: Vanity Fair)