I have decided to call the following a "blurg"—that's short for blurb-blog, a.k.a. this is going to be shorter than a pygmy leprechaun. Here goes...
Has someone you don't know well ever figured prominently in one of your dreams? This doesn't usually happen to me; my dreams are pretty normal (for the most part) and usually involve the people I spend the most time with, which typically means that I know them pretty well before I dream about them.
Well, this week it did happen and I had the most bizarre sensation after I woke up: I felt closer to this person. And not in a way that went away after a few hours. I still feel close to this person, I still feel like I understand them better, I still feel like they're someone I can depend on. It's the weirdest thing, because I don't remember anything about the dream at all, just the fact that they were in it. I'm only slightly worried that this will make me act weird around this person... who wants to be the person that gets known for acting-like-they-know-you-better-than-they-do? (I've only experienced this kind of person a few times, and I think they're weird. I don't want to be one.) But at the same time, it's almost like pretending that you don't know someone that you actually do know, you know? Anyways, this was supposed to be short. I quit.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Monday, April 23, 2012
Lousy Compliments and a Defense of Singledom
I really hope that what I'm about to say isn't offensive, especially to my married amigos, whose marital situation makes them the most likely party to be offended by what I'm about to say. But none of you are particularly thin-skinned, and I don't think what I'm going to say is going to be offensive at all ... I'm just throwing this out there: if you get offended, it's not my fault—I'm only speaking truth.
Today at church I was talking with one of the ladies in my parents' ward and she said to me, "Wow! You look so grown up!"
It felt like getting slapped in the face with a wet fish, having your cheeks pinched, and then getting handed a bubble wand and asked if you're lost from mommy and daddy.
I mean, I know she meant well. I'm completely aware of this, and honestly I really like her. But every bit of me wanted to just say, "Excuse me? I am older than your married daughter and your daughters-in-law. So I'm sorry that my singleness has me stuck at the kiddie table in your eyes, but that whole growing up thing? Yeah. Did that. I'm there. So, yes, I do indeed look 'grown up,' because I am, and you shouldn't think that saying that to me is a compliment, because it's not."
Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? No. I would be if I had actually said these things to her and made a scene, but I didn't, so I consider myself in the clear here. I'm just really irritated. I suppose I should take a step back and thank my lucky stars that I didn't get the same treatment as another young man my mom heard about. He was twenty-eight at the time of this particular event and he got called as the youth speaker in his ward while the twenty-three-ish married couple got the Real Speaker slots. I would have thrown a fit. Not because I want to give the twenty-minute talk, but because being single does not make me any less mature or less qualified to do anything I want to do than people who are married.
In fact, I'd like to note the fact that I'm significantly more mature than a lot of the married people I know. Especially some of the teen/freshman brides, good grief. Getting married at a young age is not a sign of maturity, particularly (I'm speaking generally here, so don't get your bristles up) in females. It just isn't. I don't know why people think that a relationship is an indicator of maturity. Older adults seem to understand this when we're in middle and high school—that leaping into relationships bears no indication of maturity at all, and is, in fact, more likely to indicate immaturity—but by the time you're half-past twenty-one, they seem to forget what was once more obvious than an inch-wide mole looming just south of someone's right eye.
The implication that I only look grown up is beyond irritating. Like, if I just look so grown up, but I'm obviously not actually grown up, why don't you hand me that tupperware of Fruit Loops, eh? Give me that blankie, and then let's head to the bathroom and you can change my diaper. Really, folks? That's nauseating. The more I write about it, the more irritated I get. Makes me want to punch something, like maybe a real baby. Then when I have to defend myself and they tell me I'm too old for such behavior, I can be like, "What? I thought I only looked grown up. My bad. From inside, I can't tell the difference between me and that baby. We're like the same."
Maybe I am being a baby and immature for writing this all. But I'm really annoyed. And many of you won't understand because you are married, and therefore don't get treated like an infant because of your marital status. Or maybe you do... I have no idea on how older adults infantilize young married adults, if they do so at all, because (as every #%*& person in my life is quick to point out) I'm Single as a Pringle, a Dollar Bill, a slice of American cheese, and so on and so forth. I'm not freaking married and I'm not really in a hurry to change that. I'm enjoying my life the way it is, and frankly, I've dated quite the number of people this year, and you know what? Didn't really fancy a one of them for long, if at all. If not liking them is my fault, well then tie me to the radiator and grape me right in the mouth for decades and decades (click HERE for a link to the video I'm referencing if you haven't seen it, so you don't think I'm a pervert) because I'm completely unrepentant in that department.
But seriously, I love my life. In a week and two days, I'm moving to London where I'll be living for three months. That would be significantly harder to do if I were married, and I'm excited to have this amazing experience and opportunity. I'm happy with who I am. I enjoy the freedom of being the only one I have to watch out for. And frankly, while I don't hate the idea of marriage, I still hate the label of being someone's "girlfriend" and how everyone and their dog gets emotionally invested in your relationship so that you feel pressure not just to make this one person happy, but their parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, former roommates, AND that guy from their freshman year calculus class. I'm sorry, but that kind of pressure kills me. I know, because I've tried. Not tried and given up: tried repeatedly, and found that I don't want relationships (whether they've started or not) with any of the people who have tried to date me thus far.
Don't anyone dare call that immaturity—it's just a different brand of maturity. It's the kind that says, "I'm not ready for this, and so I'm not going to thrust myself into a relationship or make myself unhappy just to fold to societal pressures. I'm brave enough to say no to the things I don't want." I mean, they teach us how to say no to drugs because they aren't good for us. So, my apologies for recognizing that some things aren't good for me, that other things are better for me, and for having the gumption to stand my ground and do myself (and all parties involved) a solid by remaining unwed. My apologies for not being a big enough jerk that I bring someone else down by getting myself into something I'm not ready for. I'd twenty times rather be where I am, living the life I am living, than be where some people I know have landed themselves, even some of those who purport to be happy. My apologies for saying, "No."
That's not to say that it'll always be no. I hope to high heavens that it's not always no. Someday, it'll be yes. But it'll be on my (/the Lord's) timetable. It'll be when I'm ready. It'll be when Mr. Right (on Time) saunters into my life. And so far, none of those things have happened.
So you'll excuse me for taking offense at the claim that I "look so grown up." I'm a lot more grown up than you think, and remaining unmarried is just one evidence of that.
Today at church I was talking with one of the ladies in my parents' ward and she said to me, "Wow! You look so grown up!"
It felt like getting slapped in the face with a wet fish, having your cheeks pinched, and then getting handed a bubble wand and asked if you're lost from mommy and daddy.
I mean, I know she meant well. I'm completely aware of this, and honestly I really like her. But every bit of me wanted to just say, "Excuse me? I am older than your married daughter and your daughters-in-law. So I'm sorry that my singleness has me stuck at the kiddie table in your eyes, but that whole growing up thing? Yeah. Did that. I'm there. So, yes, I do indeed look 'grown up,' because I am, and you shouldn't think that saying that to me is a compliment, because it's not."
Am I making a mountain out of a molehill? No. I would be if I had actually said these things to her and made a scene, but I didn't, so I consider myself in the clear here. I'm just really irritated. I suppose I should take a step back and thank my lucky stars that I didn't get the same treatment as another young man my mom heard about. He was twenty-eight at the time of this particular event and he got called as the youth speaker in his ward while the twenty-three-ish married couple got the Real Speaker slots. I would have thrown a fit. Not because I want to give the twenty-minute talk, but because being single does not make me any less mature or less qualified to do anything I want to do than people who are married.
In fact, I'd like to note the fact that I'm significantly more mature than a lot of the married people I know. Especially some of the teen/freshman brides, good grief. Getting married at a young age is not a sign of maturity, particularly (I'm speaking generally here, so don't get your bristles up) in females. It just isn't. I don't know why people think that a relationship is an indicator of maturity. Older adults seem to understand this when we're in middle and high school—that leaping into relationships bears no indication of maturity at all, and is, in fact, more likely to indicate immaturity—but by the time you're half-past twenty-one, they seem to forget what was once more obvious than an inch-wide mole looming just south of someone's right eye.
The implication that I only look grown up is beyond irritating. Like, if I just look so grown up, but I'm obviously not actually grown up, why don't you hand me that tupperware of Fruit Loops, eh? Give me that blankie, and then let's head to the bathroom and you can change my diaper. Really, folks? That's nauseating. The more I write about it, the more irritated I get. Makes me want to punch something, like maybe a real baby. Then when I have to defend myself and they tell me I'm too old for such behavior, I can be like, "What? I thought I only looked grown up. My bad. From inside, I can't tell the difference between me and that baby. We're like the same."
Maybe I am being a baby and immature for writing this all. But I'm really annoyed. And many of you won't understand because you are married, and therefore don't get treated like an infant because of your marital status. Or maybe you do... I have no idea on how older adults infantilize young married adults, if they do so at all, because (as every #%*& person in my life is quick to point out) I'm Single as a Pringle, a Dollar Bill, a slice of American cheese, and so on and so forth. I'm not freaking married and I'm not really in a hurry to change that. I'm enjoying my life the way it is, and frankly, I've dated quite the number of people this year, and you know what? Didn't really fancy a one of them for long, if at all. If not liking them is my fault, well then tie me to the radiator and grape me right in the mouth for decades and decades (click HERE for a link to the video I'm referencing if you haven't seen it, so you don't think I'm a pervert) because I'm completely unrepentant in that department.
But seriously, I love my life. In a week and two days, I'm moving to London where I'll be living for three months. That would be significantly harder to do if I were married, and I'm excited to have this amazing experience and opportunity. I'm happy with who I am. I enjoy the freedom of being the only one I have to watch out for. And frankly, while I don't hate the idea of marriage, I still hate the label of being someone's "girlfriend" and how everyone and their dog gets emotionally invested in your relationship so that you feel pressure not just to make this one person happy, but their parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles, former roommates, AND that guy from their freshman year calculus class. I'm sorry, but that kind of pressure kills me. I know, because I've tried. Not tried and given up: tried repeatedly, and found that I don't want relationships (whether they've started or not) with any of the people who have tried to date me thus far.
Don't anyone dare call that immaturity—it's just a different brand of maturity. It's the kind that says, "I'm not ready for this, and so I'm not going to thrust myself into a relationship or make myself unhappy just to fold to societal pressures. I'm brave enough to say no to the things I don't want." I mean, they teach us how to say no to drugs because they aren't good for us. So, my apologies for recognizing that some things aren't good for me, that other things are better for me, and for having the gumption to stand my ground and do myself (and all parties involved) a solid by remaining unwed. My apologies for not being a big enough jerk that I bring someone else down by getting myself into something I'm not ready for. I'd twenty times rather be where I am, living the life I am living, than be where some people I know have landed themselves, even some of those who purport to be happy. My apologies for saying, "No."
That's not to say that it'll always be no. I hope to high heavens that it's not always no. Someday, it'll be yes. But it'll be on my (/the Lord's) timetable. It'll be when I'm ready. It'll be when Mr. Right (on Time) saunters into my life. And so far, none of those things have happened.
So you'll excuse me for taking offense at the claim that I "look so grown up." I'm a lot more grown up than you think, and remaining unmarried is just one evidence of that.
Sunday, April 15, 2012
Making Life Hard
Oh, the things we do to make our own lives difficult.
You know what I'm talking about: eating food that's not good for you, procrastinating studying and paper writing, staying up late for no reason at all, getting hopes up over things that can't happen ... You know, taking your head and wedging it between a rock and a hard place, then buttering your face so it slides down even further into the crack and stays there.
Why do we do these things to ourselves? We glut ourselves on these things that give such fleeting satisfaction, and typically do more damage to us and our lives than they improve them. I mean, I'm sitting here with grandma's ugliest Alaskan sweaters on my teeth, I think I've burned the tastebuds off my tongue from sheer acidity, and my jaw is cramping from chewing. But will that stop me from putting more handfuls of Skittles in my mouth? As yet, the answer is a resounding NO. I'm not even enjoying them; in fact, they're contributing significantly to my non-enjoyment of this particular moment.
Maybe the punishment isn't strong enough, you say. Perhaps the stakes are not sufficiently high to produce the resilience necessary to combat the tempting flavors happening in my mouth. But I can tell you that, all too often, the stakes are high enough and the punishment is horrifying enough that it should produce proactive and preventative behaviors. I should be able to say, "No. Get away from my mouth. You're messing me up right now."
But not so much.
For your sake, I hope you are not like me. I hope that you have the kind of fortitude that keeps you from procrastinating all your studying, paper writing, and packing so that you can enjoy the last three days and nights of this period of your life. I hope that you can force yourself to go to bed when staying up late takes so much and gives so little to you. I hope that, when you're alone with a tempting bag of Skittles Blenders, you can reach down inside of you and access that well of strength that will make you put them out of your reach. And for heaven's sake, I hope that when fantasy knocks on your door in rather shoddy disguise and asks to stay for two and a half weeks, you have the gumption to demand an inspection of intentions.
I hope that you have the power to resist the things that make life so beautifully difficult. I hope you can look past the appeal on the surface——the having fun, the tasty sugar, the writing silly and metaphorical and cryptic and self-centered and patronizing blog posts in the wee hours of the morning, the illusion of happiness——and keep your life in control.
I hope you can tell the difference between what is just going to make life difficult... and what is worth it.
Because I sure as heck can't.
You know what I'm talking about: eating food that's not good for you, procrastinating studying and paper writing, staying up late for no reason at all, getting hopes up over things that can't happen ... You know, taking your head and wedging it between a rock and a hard place, then buttering your face so it slides down even further into the crack and stays there.
Why do we do these things to ourselves? We glut ourselves on these things that give such fleeting satisfaction, and typically do more damage to us and our lives than they improve them. I mean, I'm sitting here with grandma's ugliest Alaskan sweaters on my teeth, I think I've burned the tastebuds off my tongue from sheer acidity, and my jaw is cramping from chewing. But will that stop me from putting more handfuls of Skittles in my mouth? As yet, the answer is a resounding NO. I'm not even enjoying them; in fact, they're contributing significantly to my non-enjoyment of this particular moment.
Maybe the punishment isn't strong enough, you say. Perhaps the stakes are not sufficiently high to produce the resilience necessary to combat the tempting flavors happening in my mouth. But I can tell you that, all too often, the stakes are high enough and the punishment is horrifying enough that it should produce proactive and preventative behaviors. I should be able to say, "No. Get away from my mouth. You're messing me up right now."
But not so much.
For your sake, I hope you are not like me. I hope that you have the kind of fortitude that keeps you from procrastinating all your studying, paper writing, and packing so that you can enjoy the last three days and nights of this period of your life. I hope that you can force yourself to go to bed when staying up late takes so much and gives so little to you. I hope that, when you're alone with a tempting bag of Skittles Blenders, you can reach down inside of you and access that well of strength that will make you put them out of your reach. And for heaven's sake, I hope that when fantasy knocks on your door in rather shoddy disguise and asks to stay for two and a half weeks, you have the gumption to demand an inspection of intentions.
I hope that you have the power to resist the things that make life so beautifully difficult. I hope you can look past the appeal on the surface——the having fun, the tasty sugar, the writing silly and metaphorical and cryptic and self-centered and patronizing blog posts in the wee hours of the morning, the illusion of happiness——and keep your life in control.
I hope you can tell the difference between what is just going to make life difficult... and what is worth it.
Because I sure as heck can't.
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
Graduate?
[Just ignore the fact that I haven't blogged in two months. Because I have been blogging ... it's just been boring posts on my field study blog. That's all. Blech!]
After finding out two days ago that I'm going to be able to graduate next April, I can't get my eyes off the future. That's the terrible thing about being me: I'm going to be spending three of the next four months in England, but I'm already thinking way past that. Partially because the whole Field Studies system is kind of a pain in the tushie and making this whole thing turn into a lot more work than it should be, and partially because I'm fur-eaking out about the finances of it all. Yes, it's all going to be fine, but I want it to be as cheap as possible, and that's proving difficult (thanks to The Man, a.k.a. BYU, a.N.k.a. dear old uncle Brigham, but more like the registration office/field studies stupid set up). Anyways, I'm digressing from the actual point which is that I'm going to graduate and then I'm going to go to graduate school.
I've been shopping programs all day and let me tell you, it's quite a lot of fun. There are so many places I could go, so many different things I could focus on, so many different things I can do with the degrees I'm going to get. Muahahahahaha. Rhetoric? Composition? Lifewriting? Early Modern Texts? Provo? Virginia? Florida? England? Brussels? Masters? Master of Fine Arts? BA-to-PhD program? So many options!!! (And how legit would I be if I got my doctorate by 25? Answer: amazingly legit. That's what.)
I know this isn't an exciting blog post for all y'all, but I've got a relatively dull life, and everything else I could possibly talk about is either depressing, judgmental, overly personal, or not worth the effort of writing it up. Plus I've already written a monster blog post today for my field study blog, so I'm kind of burned out with words right now. Hopefully I'll get back into the habit before I head off across the pond... but I'll probably be busy and even more burned out there than I am here because I'll be writing like a bajillion hours a day. Whatever. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm sorry this is boring... but whatever. This is me not really caring because REAL LIFE IS SO MUCH MORE FUN TO THINK ABOUT! :)
Monday, January 30, 2012
Oh La La London ... &ct.
In the wake of destruction caused by my approaching field study in the grandmotherland, my poor blog here has been neglected. Blame it on the fact that I'm blogging thrice-plus a week for my field study prep class—I feel like I'm on here all the time, and so it can't possibly have been that long since I last blogged. Anyways, you can check out the fun link over there to see how my project and whatnot is progressing. Right now it's pretty boring because I have to be constantly reflecting on readings and whatnot, but I hope that it'll get more interesting once I actually, you know, leave the country.
Moving right along ... I've nothing really wonderfully interesting to tell anyone about or talk about right now, so I'll give you a couple of blurbs about what's been happening to me since school started:
Moving right along ... I've nothing really wonderfully interesting to tell anyone about or talk about right now, so I'll give you a couple of blurbs about what's been happening to me since school started:
- Three consecutive class periods delivering 15-20 minute presentations in English 620. That being said, graduate classes are AWESOME, and so much more interesting than regular classes. Also, easier.
- A Saturday in Park City for the Sundance Film Festival. Awesome to keep the tradition going, but all in all that was probably one of the worst days of the semester. A quick summary of the awfulness: bad weather, frozen feet, a hour long nauseous bus ride, and then a 3-hours-in-horrific-terrifying-dangerous-weather-whilst-being-simultaneously-super-nauseous-and-in-pain-à-la-the-flu-car-ride followed by four hours being miserable alone in bed, and topping the night off with offering up pineapple-and-Canadian-bacon oblations at the altar of the porcelain god.
- A super rad 3-day weekend in Vegas spent enjoying a time at the Hoover Dam (so many dam jokes...) and on the strip (love me some Bellagio fountains ... seriously though, they're inspiring), and bouldering in Red Rock Canyon with new dinner groupies that I absolutely adore. Also, having a full-on picnic in a Wendy's, defying gravity, being an awesome Kinect volleyball player, calling Colorado home, and it was just awesome, okay? Here's some photos I stole from Caitlin because I accidentally left my camera at home:
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| Hoover Dam :) |
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| At the top :) |
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| I'm somewhere in this photo. |
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| Wonderful, wonderful fountains. |
But enough about how much my life is such the best all the time. :)
I was lucky enough to stumble upon (and not StumbleUpon) a pretty awesome website this weekend. It's called ThoughtCatalog.com. It's kind of like a group blog/non-fiction-journalism-musing-awesome-ness that I really love. I highly recommend the following post: You Should Date an Illiterate Girl
Didn't tempt you? Here's an excerpt:
Don’t date a girl who reads because girls who read are the storytellers. You with the Joyce, you with the Nabokov, you with the Woolf. You there in the library, on the platform of the metro, you in the corner of the café, you in the window of your room. You, who make my life soSeriously. Go read it. It's stupendous. And I'm sorry about the expletives. But it's really so, so, so good.expletivesdifficult. The girl who reads has spun out the account of her life and it is bursting with meaning. She insists that her narratives are rich, her supporting cast colorful, and her typeface bold. You, the girl who reads, make me want to be everything that I am not. But I am weak and I will fail you, because you have dreamed, properly, of someone who is better than I am. You will not accept the life that I told of at the beginning of this piece. You will accept nothing less than passion, and perfection, and a life worthy of being storied.
Friday, January 6, 2012
A Rant: Greeting People
I hate greeting people.
I didn't really realize this until this week because I have had an unusually high number of awkward passings-by since my return to Provo. I offer one quick example:
I was wandering down the sidewalk enjoying the evening air, not looking at any of the people coming towards me, when, as you might expect, an unexpected person saw me and decided to make their presence known. I hear my name said with a really odd interrogative tone—I say odd because the fact that the tone was interrogative suggested an uncertainty about whether or not I was the person he was addressing, and yet his volume was such that there was no way someone could have ignored it if they weren't actually me. Maybe I'm just the weird shy one here, but if I'm not sure that I'm addressing the person I think I'm addressing, I do not use the 300-yard shout within the cloistered 3 feet of usable space on the sidewalk.
So after being clobbered in close-quarters with this unsettling and brash uncertainty, I recognize the perpetrator—someone whom I quickly found to be socially-awkwardly-creepy about seven years ago and subsequently tried to avoid, I dunno, all the time. In resting my eyes upon this individual, I saw that the bizarre interrogative tone was accompanied by a strange interrogative posture. Kind of like this:
Okay, sans crazy eyes. But you get the idea. It was like he was trying to make up for the 300-yard shout with this super interrogative posture. Instead, it just made the run-in creepier because it was like he was shocked by my very presence, despite the fact that we had an awkward run-in during finals week. He knows I live here! Anyways, this is just super detailed background for how the actual conversation went. Which was like this:
This scenario brings up a few problems with the way we greet each other. As I see it, greeting people that you don't spend a lot of time with is a lot like holding the door open for someone, so I'm going to use the following illustration as a jump-off point for this whole greeting-people problem.
Let's say you see someone you know coming towards you. If they're far enough away that they're in the awkward zone, STOP. DO NOT BEGIN CONVERSATION. Why? Because of all the little people you're going to trap awkwardly in the air space between your conversation! It's not a fun place for them to be. (Believe me, I know this from personal experience.) Furthermore, you're going to run into another problem which I like to call "Too Much Space, Too Little Conversation" or, conversely, "Too Little Space, Too Much Conversation." It can really go either way, depending on how bold you are in continuing the conversation after the necessary pleasantries are completed.
If, on the one hand, you are very bold, you end up starting a conversation that you don't have time to finish without stopping. (And we're going to assume that you aren't able to stop, because if we didn't, I'd have too many possible scenarios bouncing around in my head.) On the other hand, if you aren't very bold, but you stop the conversation too early, you've got all this extra time where you both know you've got nothing more to say to each other. Awkie.
Once safely within the courtesy zone, we have to deal with this awful societal beast I call the Necessary Pleasantries. For some reason, we've got this idea that in order to be polite, we need to act interested in the other person's life. The best way to do this, as far as we've figured out, is to ask simple questions. "What's up? How's it going? How are you?"
Unfortunately for us, we picked simple questions that don't have simple answers. And apparently we weren't quick enough on the draw to stop this horrendous misstep in creating social conventions, and so we went with Plan B which was to make up basic, meaningless answers to each of these questions. "Not much. Good. Fine." Congrats, humanity. Now we have the psychological repercussions of feeling like we should feel good about interacting with each other while simultaneously recognizing that our interaction was completely meaningless, and therefore being unable to actually feel good about it. Well done. (snarksnarksnark). The good side of these answers is that a conversation made in passing can happen very quickly and easily. We can happily acknowledge each other, fake a little interest with meaningless prattle, and go on our merry way without disturbing our forward momentum.
This, apparently, was not good enough for us though. Over the course of time, we've tried to make these Necessary Pleasantries a little more interesting by shaking up our answers. "Great. Lovely. Doing wonderfully, thanks."
EEEEEEEEEKKKKKKK. Time to put on the brakes everyone! This is a BAD IDEA. Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons:
I didn't really realize this until this week because I have had an unusually high number of awkward passings-by since my return to Provo. I offer one quick example:
I was wandering down the sidewalk enjoying the evening air, not looking at any of the people coming towards me, when, as you might expect, an unexpected person saw me and decided to make their presence known. I hear my name said with a really odd interrogative tone—I say odd because the fact that the tone was interrogative suggested an uncertainty about whether or not I was the person he was addressing, and yet his volume was such that there was no way someone could have ignored it if they weren't actually me. Maybe I'm just the weird shy one here, but if I'm not sure that I'm addressing the person I think I'm addressing, I do not use the 300-yard shout within the cloistered 3 feet of usable space on the sidewalk.
So after being clobbered in close-quarters with this unsettling and brash uncertainty, I recognize the perpetrator—someone whom I quickly found to be socially-awkwardly-creepy about seven years ago and subsequently tried to avoid, I dunno, all the time. In resting my eyes upon this individual, I saw that the bizarre interrogative tone was accompanied by a strange interrogative posture. Kind of like this:
Him: Kayla!????!!??!??!?!???!???!!!! (Click to see my post Pet Peeve: Guess What for a little on why I hate "?!" so much)Me: Oh! Hi! [Shocked and dismayed at seeing this person because of aforementioned socially-awkward-creepiness.]How embarrassing. Not that I care in the slightest about his opinion of me, but I do so hate to loose my composure like that. Who knew all my coolness could be derailed so easily? (Or maybe I'm not as cool as I think ... [entirely possible and extremely likely].)
Him: What's up? [Or some similar question posed to indicate interest in the other person's life without really expecting or desiring an answer to the question.]
Me: [So shocked, dismayed, and disoriented by the weirdness of the conversation that can't form words and compute what question was actually asked. Result: turned other way and had verbal vomit in form of mumbling something like...] Good .... ? [Note weird interrogative tone because recognized that "Good" might have been wrong answer to question.]
This scenario brings up a few problems with the way we greet each other. As I see it, greeting people that you don't spend a lot of time with is a lot like holding the door open for someone, so I'm going to use the following illustration as a jump-off point for this whole greeting-people problem.
Let's say you see someone you know coming towards you. If they're far enough away that they're in the awkward zone, STOP. DO NOT BEGIN CONVERSATION. Why? Because of all the little people you're going to trap awkwardly in the air space between your conversation! It's not a fun place for them to be. (Believe me, I know this from personal experience.) Furthermore, you're going to run into another problem which I like to call "Too Much Space, Too Little Conversation" or, conversely, "Too Little Space, Too Much Conversation." It can really go either way, depending on how bold you are in continuing the conversation after the necessary pleasantries are completed.
If, on the one hand, you are very bold, you end up starting a conversation that you don't have time to finish without stopping. (And we're going to assume that you aren't able to stop, because if we didn't, I'd have too many possible scenarios bouncing around in my head.) On the other hand, if you aren't very bold, but you stop the conversation too early, you've got all this extra time where you both know you've got nothing more to say to each other. Awkie.
Once safely within the courtesy zone, we have to deal with this awful societal beast I call the Necessary Pleasantries. For some reason, we've got this idea that in order to be polite, we need to act interested in the other person's life. The best way to do this, as far as we've figured out, is to ask simple questions. "What's up? How's it going? How are you?"
Unfortunately for us, we picked simple questions that don't have simple answers. And apparently we weren't quick enough on the draw to stop this horrendous misstep in creating social conventions, and so we went with Plan B which was to make up basic, meaningless answers to each of these questions. "Not much. Good. Fine." Congrats, humanity. Now we have the psychological repercussions of feeling like we should feel good about interacting with each other while simultaneously recognizing that our interaction was completely meaningless, and therefore being unable to actually feel good about it. Well done. (snarksnarksnark). The good side of these answers is that a conversation made in passing can happen very quickly and easily. We can happily acknowledge each other, fake a little interest with meaningless prattle, and go on our merry way without disturbing our forward momentum.
This, apparently, was not good enough for us though. Over the course of time, we've tried to make these Necessary Pleasantries a little more interesting by shaking up our answers. "Great. Lovely. Doing wonderfully, thanks."
EEEEEEEEEKKKKKKK. Time to put on the brakes everyone! This is a BAD IDEA. Why? Well, there are a couple of reasons:
- The more you shake things up, the more likely you are to overrun your allotted time for passing conversation, which then leads to this whole problem of trying to finish the conversation and having to twist your neck to maintain the eye contact, turn around and start walking backwards (super dangerous), or feel super weird answering the question while you're no longer facing the person. Way too many problems happening here to even be dealt with.
- If you start throwing in a bunch of other possible answers to these usual questions, it can get really confusing for people who are trying to answer your question...
... like when you run into them unexpectedly and throw off their groove so that they, in their victimized state of disorientation, find it completely impossible to narrow down the list of possible answers to ones which are question-appropriate, and ultimately pick the wrong one causing loads of undue stress and embarrassment.
Thanks a lot, society.
snarksnarksnarksnarksnark.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Hello 2012
I feel like a complete nincompoop for staying up late enough to write this, but I just have a lot of feelings right now and I feel like I should be typing this up and posting it, or I'll never actually say it. And I feel like it maybe has the potential to be something worth saying. We'll just have to wait and see.
2011 was a life-changing year for me. I experienced very real miracles. I learned so much about so many things, including myself. In so many ways, I became a better version of myself. My life truly did change, and it changed for the better. That being said, 2011 was not easy. I struggled with so many frustrations and fears. I was stretched in ways that I had never been stretched before, which was, not surprisingly, uncomfortable. I made so many ridiculous and stupid mistakes; I learned almost as much about how to do things wrong as I did about how to do things right.
If there's anything I've learned from 2011, it's that taking action is the only way to make life worth living. I've found that there's absolutely no pleasure to be found in being stagnant, in meandering across life's plateaus. Sure, sometimes when we climb, we fall. But we have to climb. We learn something every time we fall, if we're paying attention, and there are some things in life that you can't learn by observation—you have to be in there getting your hands and feet and face dirty, getting your knees banged up, scratched and bruised. Standing still isn't an option. It's kind of like my good buddy Garth Brooks says: "Life is not tried, it is merely survived if you're standing outside the fire." (Look it up on YouTube. That song is amazing.)
I'm just sick of letting things happen to me instead of making them happen for me. I don't want to miss anything because I'm too scared or too lazy or too worried about what other people might prefer that I do.
This is part of the reason that (dun-dun-dunDUN!) ...
OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:
I'm going to be spending the summer in London.
Yes, my dear darling friends. If you haven't already heard, I'm going to be living across the pond from May to August. (And yes, that means I will be in London for the Summer Olympics. Bow-chicka-wow-wow.) I will be doing a field study, pursuing a research project of my own creation (currently moving in the direction of Renaissance cosmology and religion, and involving lots of churches, artwork, hymns, libraries, galleries, museums, etc.). Am I excited out of my mind? Yes. Am I slightly terrified that the plane will go down and that my body will lie with all those nasty fish that I don't want to eat in the bitter blackness of the very bottom of the Atlantic? Also yes, but somewhat less than the first yes.
London is only one of the Action Items (there's some MO DSS [Missouri Department of Social Services] jargon sneaking into my vernacular) that I'm including in the upcoming year. In fact, some of them have already been accomplished, and with (pardon the toot-toot of my horn here) rather magnificent success.
And so, with that little announcement out in the open....
Hello 2012!
I'll be taking charge of my own life from here on out, mmmk?
This is just a random side note, but I thought you guys should become acquainted with a small fact about what blogging is like for me. It's a lot like the following picture:
2011 was a life-changing year for me. I experienced very real miracles. I learned so much about so many things, including myself. In so many ways, I became a better version of myself. My life truly did change, and it changed for the better. That being said, 2011 was not easy. I struggled with so many frustrations and fears. I was stretched in ways that I had never been stretched before, which was, not surprisingly, uncomfortable. I made so many ridiculous and stupid mistakes; I learned almost as much about how to do things wrong as I did about how to do things right.
If there's anything I've learned from 2011, it's that taking action is the only way to make life worth living. I've found that there's absolutely no pleasure to be found in being stagnant, in meandering across life's plateaus. Sure, sometimes when we climb, we fall. But we have to climb. We learn something every time we fall, if we're paying attention, and there are some things in life that you can't learn by observation—you have to be in there getting your hands and feet and face dirty, getting your knees banged up, scratched and bruised. Standing still isn't an option. It's kind of like my good buddy Garth Brooks says: "Life is not tried, it is merely survived if you're standing outside the fire." (Look it up on YouTube. That song is amazing.)
I'm just sick of letting things happen to me instead of making them happen for me. I don't want to miss anything because I'm too scared or too lazy or too worried about what other people might prefer that I do.
This is part of the reason that (dun-dun-dunDUN!) ...
OFFICIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:
I'm going to be spending the summer in London.
Yes, my dear darling friends. If you haven't already heard, I'm going to be living across the pond from May to August. (And yes, that means I will be in London for the Summer Olympics. Bow-chicka-wow-wow.) I will be doing a field study, pursuing a research project of my own creation (currently moving in the direction of Renaissance cosmology and religion, and involving lots of churches, artwork, hymns, libraries, galleries, museums, etc.). Am I excited out of my mind? Yes. Am I slightly terrified that the plane will go down and that my body will lie with all those nasty fish that I don't want to eat in the bitter blackness of the very bottom of the Atlantic? Also yes, but somewhat less than the first yes.
London is only one of the Action Items (there's some MO DSS [Missouri Department of Social Services] jargon sneaking into my vernacular) that I'm including in the upcoming year. In fact, some of them have already been accomplished, and with (pardon the toot-toot of my horn here) rather magnificent success.
And so, with that little announcement out in the open....
Hello 2012!
I'll be taking charge of my own life from here on out, mmmk?
This is just a random side note, but I thought you guys should become acquainted with a small fact about what blogging is like for me. It's a lot like the following picture:
So .... that's why there are about a million parenthetical comments laced through these things.
And read this Tumblr*. It's a riot, and where the nice photo/diagram came from.
*Please be aware that the website has rather a significant collection of profane words that it likes to share with readers**.
**So don't look if you're going to be offended by that. Which, of course, you will be, since the nature of profanity is its offensiveness. But blahblahblah we all know this ia a don't-you-ever-say-I-didn't-warn-you blurb. In short: YOU'VE BEEN WARNED, so don't get your panties in a twist after clicking on that link.
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