You have dabbled in playing the guitar, though. You are good enough to just barely pay your bills.
[4] It helped.
Your ability to travel in time causes more trouble than it's worth, though - anything you go back in time to change was supposed to happen anyway, thus never actually changing your reality, and the future has far too many time traveling countermeasures and is generally far too awful to even contemplate, let alone visit.
[3] On the bright side, you're guessing stable time loops are possible. In addition, the time travel authorities in the future are ineffective due to the incredulity time travel is treated with. The future is useful for visits to de-aging clinics and whatnot, you guess.
Naturally, this makes you quite dissatisfied with your invention, though the rest of the people after you seem to want it anyway despite your continued explanations of its general uselessness. You keep it mostly because the time-stopping feature makes for a great party trick.
[2-1] No, the time machine is genuinely useful when used right. Probably the most useless part is the time stop; it's too unpredictable.
Your machine takes the shape of a brass pocket watch, which has three dials on the side, one for years, one for days, and one for hour. You can't managed to get the jump accurate enough to get the minute or second down, but its good enough you figure. To activate the time stop, you just press the button at the top.
[4] Yes. It was your grandfather's. Or maybe you picked it up from a pawn shop, but if that were true you wouldn't admit it.
On the inside of the lid, which is nothing but a protective cover for the screen that shows the set coordinates, time wise, you have a picture of your family, your wife and child. You haven't seen them since you started this attempt at inventing time travel, but you think of them often. Now with people hunting you down, its too dangerous to see them again, lest they use them against you.
[3] Inside the lid, which conceals a normal watch face, is a picture of your fiancee. You haven't seen her since you invented the time machine...well, not much, and not when she knows you're there.
Getting chased constantly has made you quite paranoid, so you keep a wide variety of sharp and pointy objects on your person. You don't carry guns because running out of bullets 499 BC sucks, and they don't comfort you the way sharp and pointy objects do.
[5] You've become moderately skilled with swords and spears and always have at least one on you. That lead to an interesting scene last time you visited an airport.
Consequently you have a large knife collection, and are eager to display it to people whenever possible as you are quite proud of it.
[6] You have, hidden in Knossos, the Dhamek Stupa, Tikal, Gao, the Sydney Opera House, and the Antarctic Arcology at various times, a set of knives from all time periods. That's also where you store copies of notes you find warning you that the collection is about to be stolen. The collection is typically under guard by those chasing you; they have very nearly caught you more than once when you want to show off or take care of your knives.
Parts of your time machine run on magic.
[2] It's an engineering marvel, but involves no magic. You're proud of it.