Author: Em Perdue

Hi, I’m Emilee Bryce Perdue. I am a daughter, a writer, and a friend. Like any sane person, I love dogs and the show Friends and coffee. I prefer sunrises over sunset and I use too many exclamation points in my emails. I can’t decide whether I can live without ketchup or peanut butter, so please don’t force me to make that decision. Little Women is both my favorite book and movie (it goes unsaid that I am referencing the 2019 Greta Gerwig adaption). I am earning two bachelor’s degrees not because I am overly studious, but because I am overly indecisive.

One of my favorite things to do is ask my friends (and sometimes strangers) very random, very specific questions. I find it helps me get a good idea of who they are. To properly introduce myself to you, I am going to ask myself eight very random, very specific questions.

1. What is the best place you have ever visited? I believe that each destination I travel to makes its mark on me in some way. I hold each of my travels dear to my heart, but I think the best place I have visited (so far) is Exuma, Bahamas. I went to the island during a spring break trip in high school and I fell in love with it. Exuma had the prettiest waters and the kindest people. Exuma isn’t a tourist resort style island; it is a lush and authentic tropical fairytale. A close second to Exuma would be Chinatown in New York City. Very different but thrilling just the same! I mean, I watched a man light a fake Louis Vuitton bag on fire – and it didn’t burn. I can’t tell you why. I still think about it. Where else can I get this quality of entertainment?
2. Who is your favorite person? My mom! Annie P is the best person on this planet. She’s my best friend. I tell her anything and everything. She is the most supportive, honest, and caring person I know. She exudes strength and showers me with love every day. Not to say we don’t have our fights, like every mother and daughter, but we always laugh it off and make up within the hour. People have told us we remind them of Lorelai and Rory from Gilmore Girls.
3. If you could witness one moment in history, what would it be? When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown into the fiery furnace for standing up for their beliefs. I would give anything to see them not burn, much to everyone else’s disbelief. And to see God in the fire with them? That is such a testament to Christianity! This was my favorite story while I was growing up in church. Even when I read it now, as an adult, I still get chills.
4. What is your favorite thing about you? I like my nose. I can balance pencils on it.
5. What is your go-to movie theater snack? When I was twelve years old, my dad taught me how to achieve the perfect movie-theater snack: order Milk Duds and heavily buttered popcorn, place a handful of popcorn and a Milk Dud in your mouth, and voila! The Milk Dud melts and all you taste is chocolate-y, caramel-y, butter-y goodness. Good for the soul, maybe not so much for the body.
6. If you could only go to one more concert for the rest of your life, who would you see? Kenny Chesney! I have an incredibly odd obsession with the country singer. It’s okay, I can admit that it is a weird and unhealthy obsession. I have seen him in concert twice now and his energy never gets old. “When the Sun Goes Down” was the first song I ever knew by heart. During the hardest time of my life, the only music I had with me was Kenny Chesney’s CD Greatest Hits II. Kenny and I really bonded.
7. What was your best birthday? It’s a tie between my tenth birthday and my twenty-first birthday. Very different birthdays. For my eighth birthday, my mom hosted a pool party with all of my friends. We had water guns and a cannon-ball contest and a slip-n-slide. It was eight-year-old heaven. Some close family friends bought me my first diving tank (hot pink, of course) and my mom made a life-sized beach ball cake. It was amazing. For my twenty-first, we threw three separate parties (or at least it felt like it!). On the night of my birthday my best friends threw me a surprise picnic at Cascades Park, in Tallahassee, Florida. It was straight from Pinterest. They even blindfolded me on the drive over (now that wasn’t especially enjoyable, but the selfie we took was worth the confusion.). I had never experienced so many people wanting to truly celebrate me and show their love for me. I’m so grateful for them.  
8. What is the last life-changing book you read? Ah, life-changing? For an avid reader like me, it’s hard to pin down the last life-changing book I read. Some novels that have stuck around my subconscious lately are Daisy Jones and the Six (Taylor Jenkins Reid), People We Meet on Vacation (Emily Henry), Circe (Madeline Miller), Normal People (Sally Rooney), Everything I Never Told You (Celeste Ng), and Where the Crawdads Sing (Delia Owens). But if I had to choose one, I would say The Anthropocene Reviewed by John Green has refreshed my outlook on life. Green writes several essays – or reviews – on humanity. He starts with random, pointless facts that will rattle in my brain forever and turns them into poetic and heartfelt lessons, all in a way only Green could manage. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who feels like the world has turned into a dark and ugly place, especially in the past two years. This book doesn’t change that, but it does make the good things shine a little brighter.

I understand that this “Introduction to Me” article might have been one of the most chaotic things you have ever read.  If you liked it despite the chaos, good. If you didn’t, even better. I think these little facts about people give a better look at the bigger picture of who they are, as if these seemingly meaningless questions are little pieces in the mosaic that is me.

And the best thing is this: if you ask me these same questions in a couple of months, in a year, in a decade, the answers will most likely change. People are constantly changing, constantly reacting to their lives, and constantly shaping themselves to match what they have learned. It’s beautiful. It’s multifaceted, it’s freeing, and it’s beautiful.

I’m writing this as a somewhat fresh twenty-one-year-old. I have more freckles this summer than I did the last. I have read more books and spent more hours scrolling on Tik-Tok. I’ve lost friends in the past year but I have also gained some of the highest caliber. I have sipped the most delicious coffee and seen the most beautiful rainbows. I’ve laughed more than I ever have, and I have cried more, too.

I feel more myself today than I ever have.

And I hope that when I revisit this article, I can say the same.

I can’t wait to share my adventures, both big and small, with you all. Thank you for taking a chance on Adventures With Em. Let’s go see more of the world, together!