elanya

1. I'm secretive in general, it's just easier to be so online. I have definitely become less secretive over time, partly out of necessity, partly just because I have mellowed in my life. I've known you online since 95-96, after all. :) That's lots of time to change.

2. Hm. Christmas, I guess, because it's the only holiday that I (until this year) can guarantee I'll spend some time with my family, complete with huge meals and presents.

3. Geez. I don't fucking know! :o There's many realizations to choose from, you know. I suppose it would be the understanding that this life is what I get, and the best life to have is a happy one. Being happy means (a) understanding, admitting, and satisfying one's own desires and beliefs, and just as importantly, (b) helping those around you to be happy as well. Our ability to be happy in this world depends on all of what people before us have done and built, and what people around us do everyday. So we need to make the same contributions to the world around us to ensure happiness in our own lives, and as a sort of karmic payment.

4. I wish I could be an academic my whole life, but I don't have discipline to make myself do enough work. Although if you *don't* mean to ask about what I've learned about my academic career, then I've learned the essential value of critical, rational thought. Which is a learned and practiced skill.

5. I don't really know yet. I want to make a difference in a broad way. I'm not so well suited at helping people on the individual level as I am at being concerned about and tackling larger, comprehensive issues. So I hope to effect changes to larger systems in my career, even if those changes are small so long as they're significant. The lawyerly profession is directed at assisting people on the individual level, so this is hard, but not impossible, to do in my line of work. But then, I may not always be a lawyer.