A Life (So Far) at a Glance

Vertical Timelines are Easier to Create

When I meet someone, I’m always interested in where they’re from, where they lived throughout their life, and when they lived there. As I interview (interrogate?) them, I’m making a mental map of a timeline of their life. I decided to create one of my own life (so far).

The stereotypical horizontal timeline doesn’t leave enough space on the page to add details, though, so I created a vertical timeline. Hopefully, you will make one of your own curriculum vitae (Latin for “life course”) so that if we meet, you can simply hand it to me, and I will then know which questions to further ask you (“Why did you move from Tahiti to North Dakota?” and so forth). By way of example, my vertical timeline looks like this:

So, I have lived in 8 States in my life. In chronological order they are: California, New York, Montana, Alaska, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Idaho, and Missouri. Kentucky could eventually become number 9.

Here they are listed by which are/were my favorite places to live: California, Missouri, Wisconsin (“Go, Packers!”), Montana, Idaho, Oklahoma, Alaska, and then last and definitely least (because I lived in the big wormy apple), New York.

New York (City) — meaning any of the five donkeys (or “boroughs,” as they high-falutinly call them) — is one of the three weirdest and wouldn’t-ever-want-to-live-there (again, anyway) places I’ve ever been; the other two are Butte, Montana, and Mexican Hat, Arizona.

Foreign countries I have visited: Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Mexico, Canada, Czech Republic.

---