5 Things About Shannon

I finally sat down to participate in the 5 things meme - mainly because I am dying to talk about something else, I finally have a few moments to breath, and I was tagged 3 times by women that I respect very much: Heather, Astha, and Rosie. (Funny how we seem to all stay to our side of the Mechitzah in the Recruitosphere ;-)). Anyway - I have procrastinated a bit about this one as I have been wavering back and forth between, “I am boring as hell - what would be interesting enough to write about?” and “I CAN’T write about THAT - thats TMI!” This would be more fun for me if Julian was tasked with writing 5 things about me and vice-versa…’cause I’ve got PLENTY to tell you about him. Maybe in the next meme.  So here we go:

1. I wanted to be an Art Therapist right up until I graduated from school and feel head over heals for the web. My degree is in Neuropsychology and Art. Art Therapists use different art forms to help people understand and work through their problems through the creative process. I was going to focus specifically on Dance therapy as I took ballet up through high school and wanted to incorporate that into my life.
2. I have a problem with organized religion. My dad’s side of the family is Catholic and my mom’s side - well…not so much. I grew up as the oldest of five children and my mom tried to expose me to various religions so that I could make my own decision one day. I went to a variety of churches every Sunday (with my friends - not my family) and learned about various denominations. When I was about 8 - I was officially baptized at the Wilton Manors Baptist Church in Fort Lauderdale. They do the full dunking there. While there wasn’t one organization that stuck with me - a deep intellectual fascination with religion did. I took so many religion classed at Colgate that I could have double majored. Julian likes to say that I haven’t had something happen to me yet in life to turn it from an intellectual pursuit to a matter of the heart - maybe - I am open to that. I do know that Harry’s second item in his 5 things meme resonated deeply with me.
3. Julian and I met almost exactly 6 years ago in Phoenix, AZ at a Knight Ridder Digital National Sales Conference. It was a messy time in both of our lives to meet. I was just getting out of a really hard break-up and he was just getting out of his first marriage. I am not very sappy, but to this day I can describe it no other way than love at first sight, soul mate, ability to overcome everything type of love (not mean that overcoming everything was easy). Most people don’t know that Jules and I didn’t marry until 3 years ago when we were having our second child. I come from a family full of divorce and a common refrain for me was “I can’t guarantee that I won’t get divorced unless I don’t get married”. Since Julian had a hard time getting a ring on my finger - for my 26th birthday, we got matching tattoos in the shape of an infinity. On my 27th birthday, he bought me an infinity ring from Tiffany.
4. The obsession with the number 8 in our blog names comes from item number 3 above. Turn the 8 sideways, and you have the infinity. Forever.
5. I love to cross-stitch. Seriously. My last project took me 4 years to complete.

So - how did I do? TMI? sorry.