“If only I had the energy of a full moon, I could do something important, something creative, something different.”

Of course, the moon has nothing to do with the way I act, no matter how often I try to convince myself I’m a werewolf. I used to believe otherwise, but my friend Bill was quick to send several well-researched articles to disprove me when I shared my belief of the old wives’ tale. It wasn’t long before I came up with a serious lack of evidence and had to admit he was correct.

Thinking of that conversation, typed furiously into a Gchat window, I remember the joy of being proven wrong.

It isn’t that I enjoy having the wrong information, and it’s not that I choose to be wrong on purpose, but I have a basic need to challenge everything. And then, after I’ve challenged it, I often find myself admitting I was wrong and changing my position. For me, it is an occasion to be cherished. It’s the best way to gather new information and to engage in a conversation with a purpose. And being a journalist has made me more suspicious of every claim than I used to be.

A lot of people don’t like that approach. They’d rather I took them at their word on everything they say. Or worse, they try to shame me for a position I took long after I’ve admitted I was wrong.

When I looked at the moon, I realized I hadn’t engaged in that kind of conversation for weeks. I was feeling unproductive because I wasn’t challenging myself, I wasn’t learning. I’ve made myself become more engaged since then, and it’s amazing how much better I feel.

And it’s true the moon doesn’t have the special powers I liked to imagine, but thanks to Bill, when I caught sight of it, it gave me the energy I wanted it to have.

The problem with having one day designated for pranks is that we’re all paranoid in expectation of them and when they do happen, they don’t always have the desired effect. Physical pranks especially seem to fall flat.

Fake stories can be done very well, but in the age of Facebook, they can also be done very poorly. So. Incredibly. Poorly. Still, it has always been the fake stories that I’m most likely to fall for on April Fools’ Day, especially from Jean.

The first, and still best, time she tricked me was our freshman year of high school when we’d only been dating for 6 months. Jean walked up to me (fake) teary-eyed in the hall at school and told me she was going to have to transfer out of our Catholic school into the public school closer to her home.

At 14, I would never accuse her of fabricating that sort of teenage drama. Because that would make me the bad guy when it turned out to be true. Also, I can never remember what the date is and April 1 is no exception. After a moment or two of my consoling her and Jean avoiding every question I asked, she broke out laughing, said “April Fools!” to me, and then walked off to her first class.

And she’s managed to get me with one story every year. But this year was different.

As soon as I woke up, I started brainstorming the best story I could. After trying for hours, I had nothing. Much later, the perfect idea arrived through what I must call divine intervention. I sent Jean a text message:

“At the hospital. Turns out I have a stomach parasite. Easily treatable, might be Twinkie related.”

Still unanswered an hour later, I followed up:

“Released. Feeling Much better. Have to take it easy for a couple days.”

This story was everything. Just serious enough to not give away the fact that it was joke while also not being life threatening. Unusual enough to not be expected. And based in truth considering I just wrapped up The Twinkie Experiment, a project to see how long it takes a Twinkie to go bad (about 50 days, in my quasi-scientific estimation).

When she finally called me, she immediately inquired about my medical experience and said I would certainly have to record a follow-up episode to explain the new developments. And then I got to use the phrase I’ve never gotten to use on my fiance before: “April Fools!”

James 1, Jean 9. It’s a start.

I wonder how many of these people will follow instructions when they really matter. I watched them board in the wrong zone and glare in disgust when their oversized bag was gate checked.

“This bag has never had to be gate checked before!” Liar.

Flying out of bit cities is awful. At least in Gainesville, there are few enough of us that even TSA treats you nicely because the line is all of 10 people long. Big cities are different — the Walmarts of the sky.

On a good day, I’d bet half could manage to follow emergency instructions. And since I’m flying to see Jean, it’s a good day. When I’m flying back on Monday, I’ll guess about 10 percent.

I wrote a poem about airplane peanuts and long-distance relationships about six months ago. It’s some of my best work, and I still have trouble reading it without crying sometimes. Ever since I wrote it, I’ve saved every peanut bag the airlines have given me. Sometimes, I ask my seatmates if I can have theirs but fail to give an explanation. It never makes much sense when I say it out loud.

They didn’t serve peanuts on this flight, though.

Will fly for peanuts
by James Patrick Schmidt

The Monday morning flight isn’t full
and I’m one of the lucky few sitting
alone, which reminds me that I’m
lonely. And lucky. In this economy,
I’m one of the few lucky journalists
who managed to get a job. So lucky
that I live halfway across the country
from my wife. She cried when we
parted at the airport, but like always,
I didn’t cry until one of us boarded
a plane. And now, the tears drying
on my T-shirt sleeve, the steward
gives me two bags of salted peanuts
as if an extra 17 to snack on will
make my plight more bearable.
The airline is still making a big
deal about giving away free snacks
again since business got better.
I want to write one of the happy,
beautiful poems she’s been filling
my mind with all week but I’ve
been too busy to write. Instead,
I scribble a calendar on paper
to figure out how long it will be
until I see her again. That number
can’t be right. That number isn’t
right, but it’s the number I’ll count
down from starting now. Thank God
I have these peanuts to remind me
how bad it used to be.

I stole the idea from my friend Campbell, who used a similar method to keep track of drinks on her 21st birthday. In her original plan, she was going to put small lines on her arm. She made the mistake of putting me in charge of the marker and her small lines became full rings. Like Campbell, I eventually lost control of my experiment in documentation.

First, there was the cheating. Not all beer is created equal. And sometimes, the beer they serve green is disgusting. When that happened, I started ordering my usual drink, gin and tonic. That beverage is clear, but the garnish is a lime. So I put a circle around my arm. Then there was whiskey. Just as stereotypical to the holiday as green beer, so I drew a circle. And then I had some cider because I like it better than beer and added a circle just because I could.

Next, there was the marker. The best way to put a ring all the way around my arm was to get help from a friend. It wasn’t long before there were liberties being taken with my stripes and they were made crooked and squiggly. And then my friends added pictures onto my arms and onto each other, too. By the end of the night, I had 13 stripes, my initials, and a Wu-Tang Clan logo. I’m not even a Wu-Tang Clan fan.

My arm the morning after St. Patrick's Day.

After a while, people started asking me why I had stripes on my arm. To the first few people, I told the truth. But that got boring. Soon, I was making up a different story for every stranger that asked me. One for every heart I’ve broken today. One for every arm wrestling match I’ve won today. I’m practicing to live with a pride of tigers in the wild.

Whenever I make up stories to strangers like that, I never consider it lying. I’ve been known to stretch the truth to the person sitting next to me on an airplane or waiting in line with me at the DMV, but only in situations where I know I’ll never see that person again. And only a little bit. Telling a story about my cousin and calling her my sister or claiming to have spent more time in a city I’ve only driven through. I’ve never considered it lying. Instead, I think of it as storytelling.

Because I’m a journalist, so much of my life is devoted to factual information that isn’t exaggerated or made up. And whenever I deal with my family and friends, I treat it the same way. But there’s something about these strangers I encounter that gives me the opportunity and the desire to stretch just a little bit because it sounds better and helps us connect a little bit more. When it comes to single serving friends, maybe that is the truth.

Our lives have changed since then. Jobs dominate the time that doubt once reigned. Sleep patterns have grown far too regular. Booze intake has fallen out of the alcoholic range.

Our lives have become more boring, and our lack of writing is proof of that. But we need to fight it. The focus of #Life has been the passive telling of stories that happened to us. But that ignores what a story really is. A story is an experience we prepare for and choose to go through not because of our daily grind, but in spite of it.

Moving forward, #Life will have the same kinds of stories we’ve told before, and we will find new ways to tell the stories we’re going to search out. The cast of characters might change. The website is going to look different. And we’re going to try and build a community. If you have a story you’d like to share, get in touch and we’ll talk about putting it up. We can be reached by e-mail at stories@hashtaglife.com, on Facebook at facebook.com/hashtaglife, or on Twitter @hashtaglife.

Starting this week, I’ll put up the first of our new stories. Starting today, I’m going to adhere to the new motto of #Life:

A story worth telling is a life worth living.

“Would you be interested in supporting the Boy Scouts?” he asked.

I said I would and let him make his pitch to sell me popcorn. It’s been years since I’ve sold any myself, but I remember giving the same pitch to all my neighbors and family friends each fall while I was growing up. And I can remember my mother telling us how important it was to practice our whole pitch on people we were selling to. Something about good life skills learned from approaching people and talking to them. I just wanted the cool prizes.

My mother had this habit whenever neighborhood kids or family friends would sell her anything that she would make them give her the entire pitch. She already knew what she wanted, but she loved to help teach the children how to interact with adults. While speaking to this young scout, I found myself doing the same. I knew what I wanted — and had taken out an exact amount of cash from the ATM to pay him with — but I made sure to ask all the right questions to hear every part of his sale.

“What kind of popcorn are you selling?” “How much does it cost?” “What is the money you’re raising going to be used for?” He answered each in turn and then gave me my popcorn (the caramel corn with nuts, my favorite).

After our transaction, I started to act like my father, who never does anything the easy way. I offered him my left hand, which is a Boy Scout handshake, and told him “Keep up the good work, Tenderfoot.” I started to walk away, but saw his eyes open wide in recognition. Behind me, I heard him say to his older sister who was supervising him, “He knew what a Tenderfoot was!” And then his sister replied, “He was wearing Boy Scout shorts.”

The research concept is outstanding.  My focal species is the Golden eagle, and this fact alone gets me psyched.  As mentioned in previous posts, this is the bird that got me started in this circus act that I’m calling my career.  Back to the research concept: I’m being charged with developing a new computer model to map and predict eagle movements in the eastern U.S. during biannual migration events.  In addition to that, they want me to discover a new method to estimate the current population size in the region–a difficult task alone, in of itself.  Highly mobile, elusive populations are the most difficult to quantify.  These two research goals are indeed intriguing to a person like me, who’d like to make a good first impression in the field of raptor research.

Aspiring wildlife biologists, beware.  This stuff isn’t as simple as it sounds.  I’ve known this for quite awhile now, but only over the past month have the intellectual challenges really set in.  For me, this project is getting very technical and way too fast I might add.  Should I blame myself for not being more prepared?  Should I criticize the inconsistencies in my undergraduate program?  I’ll avoid doing either for now, but one thing still ways heavy on my mind–something that a past professor had wrote concerning my graduate pursuits.

During the second go around (of applying to graduate schools), I became a bit more conservative surprisingly.  Always thinking strategically, I gathered reference letters in clusters way before individual program applications were due.  I felt that this would be the most convenient for my recommenders (have them write all of their letters, collect the load, and prepare to send them in one group after application submissions).  After applying to the programs that I wanted to, I had a few groups of letters still left over.  Of the three recommenders, I was given explicit permission to read only one.  This professor was a real friend to me in undergraduate school, and with this special permission I felt that he showed his respect for me.

The other two professors, when compared to each other, were different polarities.  One was a simple mannered man, who was always cordial with me, so I never worried about his reference.  The other was a bit of an intimidator.  This professor liked to discourage me, often without intention I assumed–perhaps it is just his nature to come off like an elitist.  During my last two years at SIU, he assisted me with a small research project that really did not interest him; that much was obvious nearly every time we met.  Considering our proximity to working together, I asked him to write me a reference.

Now this is where things come together…

We recall that I had a few groups of recommendation letters left over that I hadn’t distributed to a few select programs (programs which disinterested me in the end).  I read the recommendation letter of the first “friend” professor long before this–it was simple, straightforward.  The letter of the “simple mannered, cordial” fellow was the first to be inspected–breaking that assumed student-mentor “rule” of letter confidentiality.  His letter was also what was to be expected; it was quite flattering really and quite the gesture from someone who had interacted with me rarely outside of the classroom.

Finally, the moment I had been waiting for had come.  I was about to have my chance at reading what the “discouraging” professor had to really say about me.  He obviously assumed that I would never read the letter (cf. the confidentiality convention).  His approach was acceptable, in my opinion (half of the letter highlights my strengths, the latter half touches on weaknesses).  That’s fine.  A well rounded discussion is welcomed, encouraged.  What made my jaw drop was what resided at the conclusion of the letter.

Concerning one of my weaknesses, he writes: “…this issue should disappear once he has to buckle down in a graduate program where real results become the currency of one’s merit.”

This single comment has been on my mind the most, recently.  In the pursuit of “real results,” I am feeling the stress from the intellectual demands of the science itself, the underlying statistical analyses, the anticipation of computational demands to come, and the descriptions of past works which form the supporting evidences for this research.  Due to the technicality involved with these past works (i.e. other scientific studies in the journals), they often seem written in a foreign language to me.  Am I really this dense?  Am I not intellectually strong enough to understand these methods, their results, and the implications of their findings?  The words of that professor just continue to plague my mind all the while.

I don’t know yet how I am going to meet these new challenges.  I just feel blindsided here.  “Oh, and by the way Andrew, your project proposal is due at the end of this semester, so you had better catch up quickly,” says that little voice of disillusionment in my head.  What a frustrating start this is proving to be.  I feel like my mind may explode at some point.  This could get messy…

But something told me it was a good idea to try. I haven’t slept in a tent since before I moved down here, and that makes me extremely sad. When I checked the weather, it told me there was a high of 93, so I risked it. I drove to Jacksonville and got set up in my campsite at Hanna Park. I was going to give myself a little writing/reading retreat in the woods.

I walked down to the beach to hang out and write for a while. While I was at the beach, I realized it was probably hotter than 93 degrees and checked my phone. It was 99. I’d been punk’d by the meteorologists, but I decided to stick it out anyway.

About 6 p.m., I decided to build a fire and cook my dinner. Just after I got the fire lit, I realized I wasn’t actually hungry. And I certainly didn’t want to stand over the fire and cook anything. So I put out my fire and when I did get hungry, I had cereal for dinner instead.

I climbed into my tent by 8 p.m. It was still hot, but I figured I’d entertain myself with my papers until it got cooler and I could go to sleep. I even managed to have a phone conversation with Jean (cell phone reception being one of the key advantages of going to a campground located in a city).

After I got off the phone with Jean, about 11, I put my phone down and tried to go to sleep. It wasn’t much cooler, but I was exhausted, and figured I’d suffer through the heat. As I was laying there, I began to hear some local wildlife walking nearby. I didn’t pay it too much attention until the creatures were walking in my campsite.

I figured the critters would pick up whatever scraps of food I’d left outside and then move along, but that wasn’t the case. After what must have been ten minutes of these animals walking around my campsite, one of them seemed to lay down beside my tent and started making this deep, guttural growling noise. I’m very familiar with the sounds raccoons make, so I guessed this must be an armadillo or something else we don’t have in the Midwest.

At this point, I decided it was time to clear the critters out. I sat up in my tent, it my arms against the walls so they’d puff out, and yelled “Git!” a few times. Normally, that’s enough to run off any critters unless there’s a lot of food they’re trying to get into. I’d locked all my food in the car a little bit away, so I knew they hadn’t found anything significant near my tent, but the animals didn’t move. They stopped walking for a moment, but resumed a few seconds after I stopped shouting.

I tried again, this time making even more noise and hitting the tent a lot more. And the animals stayed put. Which is freaky. The old adage that the animal is more scared of you than you are of it is always true. Except these animals were obviously not scared of me. The worst-case scenarios played out in my mind. Half-domesticated coyotes, fearless raccoons, or even an alligator. In my campsite and refusing to leave. I’ll admit I was at least a little bit scared. Or maybe a lot a bit. I’ve run off a lot of animals before, and I’d never found any so bold.

Brandishing my flashlight, I unzipped my tent door a little and shined into the campsite. It was cats. Feral cats like I’d seen wandering around the campground earlier that day. These cats are not somebody’s pet, but they also aren’t afraid of people. They stay at a healthy distance of 20 paces at all times. If you walk toward them, they walk an equal amount away. If you walk away, they follow you. It was an awful lot like an Alred Hitchcock movie.

And now they were in my campsite, frolicking around as if it was play time. Content that I wasn’t going to be eaten by an alligator, I tried to go back to sleep. But the cats kept frolicking. In the dry leaves. And didn’t stop. For almost an hour. Wasn’t it too hot to frolic?

Finally, I gave up. I broke camp and put my camping gear in the back seat. I was rolling out at about 12:15 for the drive home. The air conditioning in my car felt wonderful. Just before leaving camp, I check the weather on my phone one last time. It was 96 degrees, three higher than today’s predicted high. Meteorologists are dumb.

These are a few stories of soldiers and sailors who have served since 9/11. The stories are honest and touching, and they highlight people who have contributed more than their fair share.

Ryan talked about how news organizations are treating this anniversary, and I’ve been living through those complex decisions. I work for The New York Times company and design under The New York Times banner, but our office is located in Gainesville, Fla., and my work is published internationally. It’s interesting because all of the articles and photos we are using come from people who lived and still are living the effects of the attacks in the most obvious way possible — people whose city came under attack.

I don’t know what that’s like, but I’ve been doing my best to empathize and communicate that feeling all week. It’s pieces like this, that I cry in the middle of reading, when I really understand the gravity of the post 9/11 world and how lucky I’ve been. None of my friends have been killed in Afghanistan or Iraq, but some of them are still there or will be going back. When I manage to utter prayers, they are always at the top of the list.

My brother, who is 20, has never had a friend go to war. He knew a lot of my friends who have gone, but he’s never had the same connection. He never had to face the idea that one of his friends would be killed in action. That changed this summer when one of his friends joined the Navy. That friend has since graduated basic and is in school at the base in Pensacola, Fla. My brother doesn’t like to talk about it, and I can tell from his uncharacteristic silence whenever I bring up the topic that it scares the shit out of him.

And honestly, it scares me a little, too. I’ve always known the the men and women who go to war are kids — young, inexperienced, and not consulted by the people who put them in danger — but it’s different now that there’s at least one sailor who I will always picture in a Cub Scout neckerchief, bouncing off the walls and playing video games with my brother.

September 11 will be a strange day for me. It won’t be especially difficult, as I didn’t experience the loss of loved ones and I wasn’t directly affected by the actual attacks. Yet the day will be unique simply because I was coming of age just as the attacks happened and changed the world forever. I changed as the world did.

I was 14 at the time. I remember hopping out of the shower and rushing to my bedroom to gather my belongings for school, then stopping to see my mother glued to the TV in the living room. She was speechless. Images of an airplane flying into a World Trade Center tower were repeatedly playing on the television. Someone had called her only a few moments before I walked into the room to tell her about what happened.

We didn’t have any lessons during classes on that day. We all watched the news in every class; teachers and students alike. For some classes, we didn’t have any lesson plans for the week.

But lesson plans changed in other classes. For my geography class, we focused on a special section devoted to Middle Eastern conflicts, and the root of the formation of the Mujahideen and Al-Qaeda. These were topics never addressed in a Goreville High School classroom prior to the September 11 attacks.

The day also set the national dialogue for the next decade. The United States entered three wars with claims of improving national security. Presidents were elected or not elected because of those wars. Trillions of dollars have been spent to kill thousands (some estimates note hundreds of thousands) of people in the Middle East. The real aftermath of 9/11 continues to be defined and redefined each day the U.S. military operates in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.

I also credit that day as the one that pushed me to become a journalist. My curiosity about the root of the attacks, and my desire to learn more, pushed me to pursue a career that let me constantly seek knowledge for a living. As I matured, my care for the political atmosphere grew. And the contrast, and my comprehension, of the real differences between life and death was amplified. 9/11 truly changed my life.

I wonder if other twentysomethings have similar stories to mine. How did 9/11 shape your life?