Being interviewed is weird. What makes it at least a little easier is when the interviewer is a friend. Yesterday, I was interviewed by a blog friend who asked me to participate in his new series of podcasts on people he knows “with interesting lives.”
“Ha!” I thought…”I think you think I’m more interesting than I actually am.”
But he persisted, and I agreed, since you know I HAVE been interviewed before, at least 3 times since I moved to Sweden, which totally makes me a professional interviewee, right? And I agreed because I trust him. I’ve been reading his blog practically since I started blogging myself back in 2003. He was a commenter on a blog called Real Live Preacher, that no longer exists, though the man behind it is still writing on Tertium Squid. The commenter’s name was Chuck Sigars and as I was interested in the things he had to say, I went to HIS blog and read all his stuff and I’ve continued to read his stuff ever since.
He lives in Seattle and has a lovely wife and 2 grown children, one of whom is married and living in Texas with her husband and little boy. Because he lives in Seattle and I live in Sweden, half the globe away, I figured there was little chance we’d ever get to meet, but at one point his daughter (pre-marriage and pre-baby) was living in Boston, and he happened to be visiting her at the same time I was in the area for work. So my mom and I went to dinner at their house and met Chuck and his daughter Beth, and her then fiancé Cameron. They were delightful. I wish I could have met his wife as well.
Chuck is more of a REAL writer than I am, a real live writer, if you will. He writes a newspaper column and has several books of his essays and works, and now the new podcast series. So I was flattered and nervous to think that he thinks I am interesting enough to be interviewed.
We had estimated it would be about 40 minutes but we ended up talking for nearly 2 hours, because after only a few minutes it wasn’t an interview any longer. It was a conversation. A conversation with a friend. I don’t know about Chuck but I could have talked longer.
I AM interesting, as it turns out! haha! So is he, so it made for a nice interlude. I’ll let you know when the finished podcast is available online and you can go listen to how interesting we are when we’re talking.