Someone once asked me in a job interview that question: “What are you most proud of?” It was surprisingly one of the most difficult questions anyone’s ever asked me. Not because I don’t have things in my life to be proud of, but because of how few I actually remember.
I imagine it’s somehow related to my having epilepsy. The most likely cause—my own theory and what I usually tell other people—is that I did a lot of medication-hopping during the early 2000’s. My body was becoming acclimated to dilantin, which I started taking in 1991, and I’d been having minor seizures for a few years that escalated to blackouts that would last a couple minutes.
We needed to find a replacement since the older stuff wasn’t working well enough anymore, so we tried a variety of different drugs and different combinations. At one point, the doctor increased the dosage of one medication (I think it was Trileptal) to toxic levels, but thought it would be okay since I was “a big guy.” Nothing worked. I was still having seizures every two months or so.
After having a bunch of wires glued to my head for a week and a half in the epilepsy ward at United Hospital in St. Paul, the doctors found the area in my brain that was the source of the overactivity (flare-ups of overactivity that spread to other areas of the brain is what was causing the seizures) and found a pair of medications at dosages that have kept me seizure-free for almost 12 years.
But the point of this story isn’t “Yay, no more seizures!” It’s “I don’t remember a lot of stuff before medication-hopping!”
I was chatting with someone online about this once and she had no idea how frustrating it gets. I tried to explain that I don’t remember a lot from high school and college. People will tell me stories about things we did together and I’d have to smile and nod because it’s a complete blank. I kept a journal for a while when I was younger and reading it is like reading someone else’s autobiography.
She insisted that a lot of people forget things from when they were younger, but it’s not the same. Most people would remember standing on top of a mountain and looking off into the distance when you’ve been hiking in New Mexico for ten days. Three times. (I vaguely remember part of the second trek because there were dark clouds passing below us and one adult in our group was talking on his cell phone.)
I’ve been scuba diving in the Florida Keys for a week or so and remember that our guide gave me the nickname “Indy” (I was standing next to a kid wearing an Indiana Jones t-shirt) and he had one of those safari-style hats with a strap under his chin so he could wear it while we were underwater. That’s pretty much it. My dad was my diving buddy and has plenty of stories to share about what we did. I smile and nod. That’s all I can do.
When the interviewer asked me what I’m most proud of, I told her it was earning my Eagle award in Boy Scouts. It’s an easy default answer, but I don’t remember it. I don’t remember my high school graduation or getting my degree from Kenyon. I vaguely remember the graduation ceremony from law school, but that could be in part because the featured speaker was putting people to sleep. Literally. People were falling asleep while he was talking about “justice” and “rule of law”. That’s all I remember, but that’s one thing I don’t blame my brain for—a majority of the audience was completely zoned out.
There are plenty of things I can recall since then, but I’m not sure whether they fill me up with a sense of pride. That’s not to say they haven’t been significant:
- Being on TV.
- Throwing up on TV.
- Various encounters with people who recognized me from TV.
- Auditioning at the local community theater for the first time and getting the lead role.
- Celebrating after scoring my first goal in an adult soccer league. I played defense, so it took me two years. (I don’t remember the goal itself, just celebrating.)
- Screwing a video camera down onto a tripod, finding out it wouldn’t sit flat and I didn’t have time to adjust it, so I filmed my older brother’s wedding at a slight angle.
- My graduation ceremony from Augsburg, even though I wasn’t actually done for another few months. (My final MBA course ended in December, but graduation ceremonies were only in the summer.)
So the question remains: What am I most proud of? Or rather, what can I remember that I should be most proud of? Unfortunately, my answer is still that I’m just not sure. But who knows? Maybe someone will read this, think of a good story about my past, tell me about it and I can start using that as my default answer instead.
