I'm sorry for the title. This has nothing to do with Star Wars or "May the fourth be with you."
Today I'm going to write a little about my experience being over and (at one time) underweight as well as my journey to the middle ground. It may not be enthralling, it may not involve light sabers, but it will hopefully keep you entertained for a couple of minutes.
Turn back the clock to a time before size actually mattered.
How far back have you gone? Middle school? Elementary school? Preschool?
I'm lucky enough to say that the tail end of middle school was when my appearance actually began to have a bearing on my personal experiences and choices.
It wasn't until I was 13 that I started realizing I looked weird, old and a little bit chubby.
Turn back a little further and you arrive a few years before I even learned what fat was. I was in kindergarten, still a twiggy little thing, petite in both stature and width. At this age, my mom was still asking my doctor if I was gaining weight at the proper rate. I remember my family lamenting over the fact that I was so thin. They worried I wasn't growing properly.
Then came the french fries.
I wonder if my mom felt remorse the many times she drove me to McDonald's for breakfast and let me walk into school with a hash brown, overly greased and half-covered by a paper bag which, by the time you'd finished eating, was covered in oil stains and practically leaking onto your hands. I'd like to think she didn't recognize the mistake she made, because in other ways she was a great mother.
Needless to say, though, I became a bit of a fast food junkie. I loved having synthetic sausage patties and yellow discs of egg placed on a Styrofoam plate for my ease of consumption. But it's not my fault either, because I didn't know that my incredibly fast five-year-old metabolism would soon slow down to a snail's pace.
When I was eight, it started to show on my face. I wasn't growing at an abnormal rate, but it was clear I was no longer the svelte little kid I was before.
By nine there was no looking back.
But the strangest consideration for me is not the swift timeline on which my transition from thin to thick occurred. The real interest lies in when I actually figured out I had a problem.
I don't think I ever noticed that I was different from my classmates. Granted, I wasn't obese, but I was arriving pretty close to that level by the time I was 10.
Yet, at the time, halter tops were in style. I wore tight spaghetti straps and tube tops like they were going out of fashion. For me, they really should have gone out of fashion. To this day, I have trouble looking back at photos of me during this time because so often I would expose my waist like it was no big deal, with no awareness that I was accentuating the part of my body that was the least flattering.
The only time I remember ever thinking about my weight was once in P.E. when my classmates and I were talking about our respective weights. They all listed off relatively low quantities of pounds. "I'm 80," or "I think I'm about 78." I sat around feeling embarrassed. What would they say if they found out I was nearly 100?
Other than that single incident, I have very few recollections of questioning my size. It's made me wonder whether the phrase "ignorance is bliss" actually applies to real life. In one way, it was a gift to me to be completely unaware of my size. I lived life happily because I never considered myself abnormal compared to sizes of the kids in my classes. In another way, it was a curse that perpetuated the problem.
The issue wasn't that I was fat per se, but that I wasn't taking care of myself the way I should.
By 11, I had to pick up a lot of the slack in my own life at a time when my mom was no longer present to take care of me. I learned a lot - with the help of my dad - but one thing I never learned was how to properly take care of my health.
A few months after my mom had a stroke and became incapacitated, I was still wearing my sister's hand-me-down clothes. I had outfits at my old house, but it took a long time to transfer things over to my new living quarters and I was still living off a few select t-shirts and wrongly-sized jeans.
And I was still eating my sadness away. I continued to feast on fast food, only taking breaks when my dad or my sister cooked for me. But just a little help from them got me to transition out of the junk food and into a differentiated and healthier diet.
So step forward to 13 years old again. I'm in eighth grade and for the first time I'm experimenting with straightening my hair. I spend 30 minutes in the bathroom staring at myself in the mirror and trying to get each strand on my head to be as flat as a piece of paper.
I was still quite unfortunate looking at this point. No make-up, glasses, an uneven skin tone and braces. The image of preteen perfection. But I was lucky to no longer be overweight.
Under my own nose, I'd managed to become a healthier eater. And I had developed to look like an average-sized preteen.
Sometimes I think, though, that it would have been a greater lesson to have not been ushered into better weight control by my father and my sister. If I'd continued to live with my mom past the age of 11, if I'd persisted in my McDonald's-heavy diet, if I'd never learned that homemade meals were not just a luxury, maybe I'd have grown to develop the will power that would have me not just at an average weight, but living a truly healthy lifestyle.
I envy my friend Diana for her strength and for how well she takes care of herself. She is a vegetarian (like I am), but she also eats mainly organic and whole grain foods, plus she enjoys physical activity. I may have transitioned into a slightly healthier lifestyle when I became a vegetarian, but I never quite grew out of the fast food eating stage because I never had to.
My experiences taught me that there is a gray area between health and indulgence, and I've learned to straddle that line in such a way that I need not worry about becoming a reflection of my 9-year-old self, but that I will also never be quite the size I'd wish.
I think often about how lucky I am to reside in the coveted middle ground between too thin and too overweight. But what I strive to impress upon myself, and yet what I never learned, is that there is some level of commitment that goes hand-in-hand with becoming the best version of yourself.
I've been lucky to know that I haven't been judged by my size all my life. I've also been lucky that by the time I might have concerned myself with others' judgments, I was no longer in a place where I could be ridiculed. But I also question the effects of my experiences and actions. Maybe remaining unhealthy would have taught me a better lesson - instead of accepting health, I'd pursue it.
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Friday, May 4, 2012
Behind the objects
Look around you for a second and take in all the stuff on your shelves, floor, bed, wherever. All the doo-dads and whats-its, the baubles and thing-a-majigs that you generally overlook. Even when they're part of your daily routine, you probably forget they're there when you're not using them.
I can be really shallow sometimes. Most of my life I've spent gathering up useless ephemera and purchasing items that end up becoming artifacts of my childhood and my teenagehood. I associate them with memories and experiences, with people I know and love, with ideas that they spawned or helped to facilitate. But when do I ever think about where they came from?
Never.
Well, not never. But not much. And certainly not as often as I should.
Then I had a really deep and philosophical moment. Either that, or a really ditzy and stupid one. It's up to you to decide.
I was sitting at a dining hall table eating breakfast, when I looked at a salt and pepper shaker and said something like "I never think about who makes these."
Think about it. While so many of us aspire to become novelists, rollercoaster engineers or marine biologists, it's someone's job to figure out the details of constructing a salt or pepper shaker. "What would someone's title be if they made salt and pepper shakers?" I asked, still in a dazed stupor after getting up only 15 minutes earlier. But the question was legitimate.
My grandma used to work in the Honeywell factory in Torrance, California. Though I've never asked her for details of the job, I'm quite sure she worked on some assembly line.
It hit me pretty soon after the slightly eccentric conversation about salt and pepper shakers, that the people behind these every day objects are just as important as they are overlooked for the objects they make that contribute to the daily functioning of our lives.
I put a lot of weight in the presence of certain belongings in my life. I love my clothes and my shoes. I can't walk anywhere without at least one earbud of my iPod in. If I don't have a case for my contact lenses, I go crazy.
All of these things are just a quick walk away from my dorm. There's an Urban Outfitters less than a 15 minute walk from me. A CVS is only 10. The student center where I can buy a new iPod and earbuds is probably 5.
But the places where the things I so covet are made are miles and miles away from me, by people I've never met. And I guess it takes having a grandparent be an assembly line employee to remind you that sometimes those people do deserve credit.
My grandma is one of the most amazing, strong and admirable women I know. She raised a daughter virtually on her own after her husband left her, juggling jobs from newspaper writing to cooking sukiyaki at a local restaurant to working at the Honeywell factory. She saved and she had success, and through the toils of her efforts she managed to create a wonderful retirement for herself.
And the people behind the assembly lines, behind the computers where the 3D models for the salt and pepper shakers are made, they all have their own stories too.
It's weird to think that even those little things that we associate with ourselves have histories way beyond their presence in our lives.
Just today, I was working in the Archives at my school flipping through some papers to try and "accession" them, as the process is called. I set to work with a pad of paper, a pen and two huge boxes filled with books and paper materials.
As I fumbled through all the boxes' contents - among them books from publishers worldwide spanning various eras, magazine clippings, etc. - I realized that after I've taken all the junk in these boxes and put them into separate boxes with labels, after I've input all the information into a computer catalog so that people can later find these materials, after I've stashed them away in some remote corner of the library storage facility...no one will know.
For all intents and purposes, the middleman need not have existed. My name will in no way be attached to the boxes. No one will associate me with all the effort I put into their correct attribution and labeling. For all anyone knows, I never existed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not much of an existential nihilist. I don't assume that everything I do in my daily life has no meaning.
But it's those moments, when you're working your butt off to try and get a task done, that you realize that once the task is done, it's behind you - not only because you've finished it, but because you're not present in it in any way.
And that's how a lot of the "stuff" we have is for the people who made it.
We look at a lamp, a sweater, a purse, a cell phone, an umbrella and we don't see anything but the object itself. But it took people, probably from different parts of the globe - and definitely from different ethnic backgrounds, different walks of life and different ages - much of their time and effort to make that silly little object we toss into the corner of our room.
If someone's lucky, they get to put their symbol on their work somehow. But for the factory workers like my grandma was, and even the higher-ups who maybe don't own a company but contribute to the methods of production, the only remembrance is what resides in the mind.
It would be dumb to suggest that everyone should pay every object in their life a second glance to consider its life before it arrived in their hands. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, though.
Every once in a while, just for a second, I like to think about how things came to be. In a restaurant, I consider the people in the kitchen making my food, in the dining hall I consider the people in the washroom power cleaning all the dishes, in a hotel I think about the person who is tidying up my room in the mornings. But it's even more nebulous than that.
There are people that do tasks related to what we own that we are wholly unaware of. People like my grandma who started the days of their middle ages assembling who-knows-what on an assembly line for Honeywell, came home only to go back and repeat the task. The only people who know about these people are those who love them. But everyone deserves to be appreciated for what they do - these are people who contribute to society, regardless of whether or not their name is associated with what they create.
To those who have done tedious and unrewarding work - like sorting through papers or putting together an appliance on an assembly line - I'd like to pay some respect. My thoughts, if only for a moment, are with everyone who facilitates the ease of my life. In salt and pepper shakers, in shoes, in clothes, in iPods and headphones, it's those behind the objects that really matter. And they shouldn't be forgotten.
I can be really shallow sometimes. Most of my life I've spent gathering up useless ephemera and purchasing items that end up becoming artifacts of my childhood and my teenagehood. I associate them with memories and experiences, with people I know and love, with ideas that they spawned or helped to facilitate. But when do I ever think about where they came from?
Never.
Well, not never. But not much. And certainly not as often as I should.
Then I had a really deep and philosophical moment. Either that, or a really ditzy and stupid one. It's up to you to decide.
I was sitting at a dining hall table eating breakfast, when I looked at a salt and pepper shaker and said something like "I never think about who makes these."
Think about it. While so many of us aspire to become novelists, rollercoaster engineers or marine biologists, it's someone's job to figure out the details of constructing a salt or pepper shaker. "What would someone's title be if they made salt and pepper shakers?" I asked, still in a dazed stupor after getting up only 15 minutes earlier. But the question was legitimate.
My grandma used to work in the Honeywell factory in Torrance, California. Though I've never asked her for details of the job, I'm quite sure she worked on some assembly line.
It hit me pretty soon after the slightly eccentric conversation about salt and pepper shakers, that the people behind these every day objects are just as important as they are overlooked for the objects they make that contribute to the daily functioning of our lives.
I put a lot of weight in the presence of certain belongings in my life. I love my clothes and my shoes. I can't walk anywhere without at least one earbud of my iPod in. If I don't have a case for my contact lenses, I go crazy.
All of these things are just a quick walk away from my dorm. There's an Urban Outfitters less than a 15 minute walk from me. A CVS is only 10. The student center where I can buy a new iPod and earbuds is probably 5.
But the places where the things I so covet are made are miles and miles away from me, by people I've never met. And I guess it takes having a grandparent be an assembly line employee to remind you that sometimes those people do deserve credit.
My grandma is one of the most amazing, strong and admirable women I know. She raised a daughter virtually on her own after her husband left her, juggling jobs from newspaper writing to cooking sukiyaki at a local restaurant to working at the Honeywell factory. She saved and she had success, and through the toils of her efforts she managed to create a wonderful retirement for herself.
And the people behind the assembly lines, behind the computers where the 3D models for the salt and pepper shakers are made, they all have their own stories too.
It's weird to think that even those little things that we associate with ourselves have histories way beyond their presence in our lives.
Just today, I was working in the Archives at my school flipping through some papers to try and "accession" them, as the process is called. I set to work with a pad of paper, a pen and two huge boxes filled with books and paper materials.
As I fumbled through all the boxes' contents - among them books from publishers worldwide spanning various eras, magazine clippings, etc. - I realized that after I've taken all the junk in these boxes and put them into separate boxes with labels, after I've input all the information into a computer catalog so that people can later find these materials, after I've stashed them away in some remote corner of the library storage facility...no one will know.
For all intents and purposes, the middleman need not have existed. My name will in no way be attached to the boxes. No one will associate me with all the effort I put into their correct attribution and labeling. For all anyone knows, I never existed.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not much of an existential nihilist. I don't assume that everything I do in my daily life has no meaning.
But it's those moments, when you're working your butt off to try and get a task done, that you realize that once the task is done, it's behind you - not only because you've finished it, but because you're not present in it in any way.
And that's how a lot of the "stuff" we have is for the people who made it.
We look at a lamp, a sweater, a purse, a cell phone, an umbrella and we don't see anything but the object itself. But it took people, probably from different parts of the globe - and definitely from different ethnic backgrounds, different walks of life and different ages - much of their time and effort to make that silly little object we toss into the corner of our room.
If someone's lucky, they get to put their symbol on their work somehow. But for the factory workers like my grandma was, and even the higher-ups who maybe don't own a company but contribute to the methods of production, the only remembrance is what resides in the mind.
It would be dumb to suggest that everyone should pay every object in their life a second glance to consider its life before it arrived in their hands. That doesn't mean we shouldn't do it, though.
Every once in a while, just for a second, I like to think about how things came to be. In a restaurant, I consider the people in the kitchen making my food, in the dining hall I consider the people in the washroom power cleaning all the dishes, in a hotel I think about the person who is tidying up my room in the mornings. But it's even more nebulous than that.
There are people that do tasks related to what we own that we are wholly unaware of. People like my grandma who started the days of their middle ages assembling who-knows-what on an assembly line for Honeywell, came home only to go back and repeat the task. The only people who know about these people are those who love them. But everyone deserves to be appreciated for what they do - these are people who contribute to society, regardless of whether or not their name is associated with what they create.
To those who have done tedious and unrewarding work - like sorting through papers or putting together an appliance on an assembly line - I'd like to pay some respect. My thoughts, if only for a moment, are with everyone who facilitates the ease of my life. In salt and pepper shakers, in shoes, in clothes, in iPods and headphones, it's those behind the objects that really matter. And they shouldn't be forgotten.
Everybody wants to copycat
 |
| It's true, everybody wants to be a cat. |
So that's the way it is. Everyone wants to be a cat. Or a copy cat anyway. Even for those who don't want to be copy cats, most of the time we end up doing it anyway. And in the face of hipsters and anyone else who wants to proclaim their uniqueness and individuality, I say "phooey" (yes, phooey), because some of the best traits I have were borrowed from other people.
When I was three I loved Disney more than any other franchise in the world. More than absolutely anything in the world, actually. All of my clothes had Disney character decals from Megara in Hercules to Mickey and Friends. When I wasn't representing the characters by having their faces plastered all over my outfits like a walking billboard, I was dressed in an Esmeralda or an Ariel costume.
Once you reach your early preteen years, though, you become less interested in wearing your Disney pride every day along with your light-up sneakers, and instead you look for new ways to be expressive. In the interim, I forgot about my Disney roots.
From the age of 10 to about 13, I didn't have a Disneyland pass. It is strange to think that for those three years I was virtually detached from the one part of southern California that I love.
But in eighth grade, one of my best friends was a girl named Kristin. And Kristin was obsessed with Disney to a degree that rivaled even the young me. With her I went to Disneyland, re-watched all the animation of my youth, memorized Princess song lyrics and made Team Prince [Eric, Phillip, BEAST] shirts (with Diana and Kelly too, don't think I forgot!).
This isn't the perfect example of copycatting since it had a basis in my pre-existing love of the Disney theme parks and films. Yet I credit Kristin in some ways with the re-inspiration of my life-long love for Walt and his parks and in bringing out the only aspect of Orange County that keeps me connected to my home there.
If I hadn't let myself get carried away by the Disney parks with Kristin, I wouldn't have discovered a huge part of who I am now. Kristin knew "where it was at" and she shared it with me.
In some situations, sharing had nothing to do with my decision to copy.
Throughout elementary school, I remember experimenting with different writing styles. I would watch my friends curl the ends of their "Y"s and decide that I needed to do the same. I'd look at the way they wrote "a" and chose whether to do the single- or double-storied "a".
Looking back through my old childhood notebooks, I see uses of each. In fourth grade specifically, all of my "a"s had visors (they were double-storied), but by the time I arrived in middle school I'd tried to revert back to the normal lettering.
One of my sister's closest friends, Jackie, had the most enviable handwriting of all time. It looked something like the font Century Gothic, but even more crisp, clean and adorable. When I saw her writing, I had to copy her.
I started creating my own form of handwriting that based itself loosely off Jackie's. Even though she had no idea she was affecting such a big aspect of my life, there was no doubting my devotion to stealing her handwriting style.
By the time I arrived in high school, I had found my signature writing style. But it didn't come without a lot of trial and error and copycatting - and a little influence from Jackie too.
Yet for me, it wasn't these experiences that shaped as much of my life as my relationships with my mom and dad.
Both of my parents were sober and didn't use or abuse any substances - except Coca Cola in my mom's case (if that counts). I was raised assuming that a sober life was a happy life.
To this day, my copycatting in this situation has shaped a lot of my personal and social decisions. All of my friends are non-drinkers, non-smokers and none of them do drugs. We're all walking the straight and narrow, and though we don't exorcise those who do, we find pleasure in being ourselves without those influences.
My parents were both very nerdy. My dad still is. Through them, I inherited so much of myself - my political views, my obsessiveness, my favorite television programs and movies, my sensibilities to cultural issues.
When I was 17, I decided to try something I'd been ruminating on for a while - going vegetarian. My dad has been a vegetarian my whole life, so it seemed plausible for me to take on that lifestyle, having seen him live it quite comfortably every day for the past 19 years.
I copycatted my dad and became a vegetarian. And I feel no remorse in being unoriginal for having done so.
It's silly to want to break away from the mainstream to try and carve yourself out from society's norms. All of us are a mix of individuality and complete sameness. Even day to day, we make our decisions based on a set of cultural standards. The only difference between those interactions and the ones that affect our broader life choices is that we don't usually remember the origins of our bigger decisions. Why did we decide not to go to a frat party and get wasted like the rest of our peers? Why do we watch so much 30 Rock?
I enjoy that I can trace back my handwriting to watching other kids write in elementary school. It's fun for me to remember that my friend Kristin helped me gain a renewed interest in Disney culture. And more than anything, I'm glad that I can thank my parents for so much of who I am - party-less and 30 Rock-loving included.
We can try really hard to go against the grain, or we can go along with it and accept that we're a product of who we surround ourselves with. If we're surrounding ourselves well, then there's nothing to be ashamed of. It's the opposite, actually; having influences is something to be proud of (as long as the influences are people to be proud of).
Everybody wants to be a cat because cats know where it's at. Who am I to question that?
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
What's the use of wondering?
If I could make one wish for myself, it would be to no longer care what anyone thinks. Correction, it would be to no longer care what anyone other than the people who care about me thinks.
A lot of my most obnoxious qualms are borne of a deep-rooted belief that it is somehow my duty to please and appeal to others. Sometimes it's a positive push, like that moment when I'm deciding whether to do my job and write an article that I could get away with not doing, or risk the consequences of disappointing my editor. Other times it's a terrible burden, like when I'm standing around at work waiting to talk to my supervisor and I'm afraid to approach them because I don't want to bother anyone.
For those who aren't timid, maybe this isn't as much of a problem. But for me, and I suspect for a lot of other people, awkward situations lead to anxiety attacks because I become so bothered by the idea that someone might think I look stupid.
There are a few things, though, that have gotten me through these moments. They've become the basis of my relative self-confidence and why I no longer give much thought to doing tasks that make me look stupid.
Before I used to think people remembered my foibles.
But they didn't care enough to remember. At least, that's what I figured out.
Every day we live our lives we make dumb mistakes and look stupid probably around a dozen times. Maybe some more if you're a klutz like I am. Definitely more if you wear high heels.
I used to think that if I tripped in front of someone that they'd remember a week later that I was "that one who tripped in front of them." My awkwardness would make me feel uncomfortable at every future interaction with my witness. I would blush or avoid eye contact, maybe even pretend they weren't in the room so that I didn't have to acknowledge that they'd seen me look stupid.
The other day I was at work. One of my favorite routines while there is to file away papers whilst listening to my iPod, lip syncing and dancing like an imbecile (actually, like a Princess, but I probably look like an imbecile). As per usual, I started playing the soundtrack to The Princess and the Frog. When I heard "Almost There" come on, I started pretending I was opening up my own restaurant. I pranced around the room pretending to put plates down at tables, tasting soup from a pot and instructing my waiters to adjust their lapels.
As I rounded a corner, one of the other employees at my work came into sight and she was visibly asking me a question. I was deaf and dumbfounded from the loudness of my music, so after I finished twirling and shimmying, I looked at her with doe eyes and felt all the blood rush out of my face. Or maybe it was into my face. Either way, my blood was not evenly distributed throughout my body.
She apologized for interrupting me then asked me to do something for her. I agreed and after a few minutes thought about how uncomfortable I would be when I'd finished the job she'd given me and I had to report back to her.
Then I remembered that she didn't care. It's not exactly rocket science to realize that even when you find yourself acting unbelievably oddly, the people around you will appreciate the humor for a second and then brush it off. Maybe it's because we have short attention spans, maybe it's because we are concerned with our own foibles. Either way, most of the time I don't remember when people have danced to their iPod in front of me. It's just not a big enough deal.
Before I believed my acquaintances minded when I was weird.
A day later, I was walking into my dorm and listening to the Tangled soundtrack (there's something about listening to Disney music and being in awkward situations, isn't there? Not that that'll stop me from listening) when I did my signature twirl upon scanning my key to enter the front door.
But I wasn't alone.
I reached out to open the door and a friend of mine was on the other side. "Is that your Disney Princess twirl?" he asked.
"Yes, and usually no one's around when I'm doing it," I said uncomfortably. He smiled and we both walked in the same direction, but I refused to address the issue anymore.
About a year ago, a similar event happened when I was walking through another door in my dorm. After I opened the door, I pushed down the handle and let myself walk through, but not without having my foot pop à la Princess Diaries.
"You're so adorable," said someone who I really can't remember the identity of right now.
At that moment I felt a twinge of awkwardness for having someone see me pop my foot as I opened a door. Another one of my weird quirks that no one is supposed to see, and suddenly someone is privy to it. After a second thought, I realized that there was nothing to be ashamed of.
The person who commented had said it was cute. They didn't laugh. They didn't chortle. They didn't scowl or look at me with one eye bigger than the other. They had basically complimented me on my weirdness.
Even when I feel I'm doing something strange, the reaction from others is likely going to be in the way of amusement rather than disdain. That's fine.
Before I hoped people would accept me for who I was.
With the foot-popping and Princess twirling incidents, I realized that I'm more often me when I'm amongst the filing cabinets at work, in my room or in a door frame in my dorm (I don't know why). The facade I put on to impress people and make them perceive me as normal isn't me.
I'm not normal. I'm weird.
I don't know why I ever worried about people thinking I was something other than myself when they saw me in my element being ditzy. Because sometimes that is me. The real me.
It's not that difficult to reconcile pleasing others and being happy with yourself. In fact, the two go more hand-in-hand than I ever realized before being revealed as the weirdo that I am.
There's no use in wondering whether someone thinks you look dumb, because most judgment of you is based on how you perceive and present yourself. Timidity is where a lot of us go horribly wrong.
Feeling unsafe in my own skin always made me act like a less interesting person, and more than anything that skews the public's perspective more.
Moral of the story is to be yourself - foot-popping, lipsyncing, dancing, twirling and all. Is this a cliché? Yes. But is it true? Also yes.
A lot of my most obnoxious qualms are borne of a deep-rooted belief that it is somehow my duty to please and appeal to others. Sometimes it's a positive push, like that moment when I'm deciding whether to do my job and write an article that I could get away with not doing, or risk the consequences of disappointing my editor. Other times it's a terrible burden, like when I'm standing around at work waiting to talk to my supervisor and I'm afraid to approach them because I don't want to bother anyone.
For those who aren't timid, maybe this isn't as much of a problem. But for me, and I suspect for a lot of other people, awkward situations lead to anxiety attacks because I become so bothered by the idea that someone might think I look stupid.
There are a few things, though, that have gotten me through these moments. They've become the basis of my relative self-confidence and why I no longer give much thought to doing tasks that make me look stupid.
Before I used to think people remembered my foibles.
But they didn't care enough to remember. At least, that's what I figured out.
Every day we live our lives we make dumb mistakes and look stupid probably around a dozen times. Maybe some more if you're a klutz like I am. Definitely more if you wear high heels.
I used to think that if I tripped in front of someone that they'd remember a week later that I was "that one who tripped in front of them." My awkwardness would make me feel uncomfortable at every future interaction with my witness. I would blush or avoid eye contact, maybe even pretend they weren't in the room so that I didn't have to acknowledge that they'd seen me look stupid.
The other day I was at work. One of my favorite routines while there is to file away papers whilst listening to my iPod, lip syncing and dancing like an imbecile (actually, like a Princess, but I probably look like an imbecile). As per usual, I started playing the soundtrack to The Princess and the Frog. When I heard "Almost There" come on, I started pretending I was opening up my own restaurant. I pranced around the room pretending to put plates down at tables, tasting soup from a pot and instructing my waiters to adjust their lapels.
As I rounded a corner, one of the other employees at my work came into sight and she was visibly asking me a question. I was deaf and dumbfounded from the loudness of my music, so after I finished twirling and shimmying, I looked at her with doe eyes and felt all the blood rush out of my face. Or maybe it was into my face. Either way, my blood was not evenly distributed throughout my body.
She apologized for interrupting me then asked me to do something for her. I agreed and after a few minutes thought about how uncomfortable I would be when I'd finished the job she'd given me and I had to report back to her.
Then I remembered that she didn't care. It's not exactly rocket science to realize that even when you find yourself acting unbelievably oddly, the people around you will appreciate the humor for a second and then brush it off. Maybe it's because we have short attention spans, maybe it's because we are concerned with our own foibles. Either way, most of the time I don't remember when people have danced to their iPod in front of me. It's just not a big enough deal.
Before I believed my acquaintances minded when I was weird.
A day later, I was walking into my dorm and listening to the Tangled soundtrack (there's something about listening to Disney music and being in awkward situations, isn't there? Not that that'll stop me from listening) when I did my signature twirl upon scanning my key to enter the front door.
But I wasn't alone.
I reached out to open the door and a friend of mine was on the other side. "Is that your Disney Princess twirl?" he asked.
"Yes, and usually no one's around when I'm doing it," I said uncomfortably. He smiled and we both walked in the same direction, but I refused to address the issue anymore.
"You're so adorable," said someone who I really can't remember the identity of right now.
At that moment I felt a twinge of awkwardness for having someone see me pop my foot as I opened a door. Another one of my weird quirks that no one is supposed to see, and suddenly someone is privy to it. After a second thought, I realized that there was nothing to be ashamed of.
The person who commented had said it was cute. They didn't laugh. They didn't chortle. They didn't scowl or look at me with one eye bigger than the other. They had basically complimented me on my weirdness.
Even when I feel I'm doing something strange, the reaction from others is likely going to be in the way of amusement rather than disdain. That's fine.
Before I hoped people would accept me for who I was.
With the foot-popping and Princess twirling incidents, I realized that I'm more often me when I'm amongst the filing cabinets at work, in my room or in a door frame in my dorm (I don't know why). The facade I put on to impress people and make them perceive me as normal isn't me.
I'm not normal. I'm weird.
I don't know why I ever worried about people thinking I was something other than myself when they saw me in my element being ditzy. Because sometimes that is me. The real me.
It's not that difficult to reconcile pleasing others and being happy with yourself. In fact, the two go more hand-in-hand than I ever realized before being revealed as the weirdo that I am.
There's no use in wondering whether someone thinks you look dumb, because most judgment of you is based on how you perceive and present yourself. Timidity is where a lot of us go horribly wrong.
Feeling unsafe in my own skin always made me act like a less interesting person, and more than anything that skews the public's perspective more.
Moral of the story is to be yourself - foot-popping, lipsyncing, dancing, twirling and all. Is this a cliché? Yes. But is it true? Also yes.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Your success and my failure
Sometimes I'm snarky about things that I have no right to comment on. I wonder, in these moments, why I feel enabled to be opinionated in any capacity. Are there certain affiliations or stereotypes that I subscribe to that give me license to make bold and unabashedly slanted commentary on a subject? Sometimes, I think yes.
I posted a status on Facebook yesterday in response to all those who have been telling everyone on their friends' list that they are interning at such-and-such a place this summer. "I'm so excited about interning at [insert publication here] this summer! Just wanted to join in on the festivities," it said.
That was light poking - I think. And I'm glad that no one took it personally - I hope. Because in truth, it was a hypocritical comment to make. When I was accepted to study abroad in London, I immediately wrote a Facebook status about it. Right after calling my dad and letting him know, my next stop was the internet. I even wrote a blog about it later.
I don't know what my motivation was at the time. I think sometimes when you have exciting news you just can't wait to let the entire world know - or at least let someone know. In the case of London, this was something I had been planning since before I arrived at college. In senior year of high school I applied to go to university in London. In the end the cost was too high and I decided to settle on a school in the Midwest United States. I never regretted my decision, but I did set my sights on eventually going to England to study.
About a month into freshman year, I set up a meeting with the study abroad adviser who handles universities in the UK. She offered me some information, but reminded me that most students endeavor to study abroad in their junior years, not sophomore years. I had to wait two whole school years to go to the country I could have already been studying at.
I didn't think I could handle the wait, but I did. A year and a half later, I got the confirmation that not only was I going to be studying abroad in England, but it would be at my top choice university - the one I had wanted so badly to go to when I applied via UCAS in senior year.
So in some way, I think I hold a little bit more of a right to exclaim over this particular win. For those of us who have gone through the internship search, there is rarely a single place we are incredibly excited about working at. We put our names in the hat at a million different organizations - hopefully all that we care about to some extent, but who knows - and pray that someone picks us out by chance.
Getting an internship is exciting, and a great one is even more exciting - but is the reason we're sharing it online because it really matters to us, or because we want a hearty congratulations?
In the case of London, I believe my motivation was the former. I could have gotten no responses to it, and I would have kept the status up as a reminder of the day I heard the exciting news I'd been waiting for since I started studying at college.
I realize my judgment is harsh. People have different reasons for doing things - not everyone is sharing their place of internship because they want congratulations and some people really are just excited and feel the compulsion to share regardless of who they reach with the news.
But it also bothers me that while a lot of my friends are still struggling with the internship search, some of our mutual acquaintances are being incredibly forthcoming, maybe even gloating, about what they've snagged for the summer.
When I heard back about my internship, I was sitting with my dad waiting to see Fountains of Wayne come on stage. My immediate reaction was to yelp and then try and figure out how on Earth I'm going to learn to drive on a freeway. I was lucky to have my dad nearby to help me work out my anxiety and let out my excitement.
Maybe that's the problem here. When we're at school we don't have our moms and dads nearby at whom to scream "I'M DOING SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE THIS SUMMER!" Without that outlet, we turn to our next best friend - the Facebook news feed.
To be honest, I don't mind people sharing where they're interning online. It's exciting to see what people are planning on doing over the summer. But yesterday it started to feel like it was a trend for the trend's sake. After one status went up, a half a dozen others followed. For some reason I doubt that everyone got the news of their internships within the same 24 hour - more like 5 hour - period. If I had wanted to, I could have done the same by offering the news of my internship a few days after the fact to receive some congratulations. But in the end, I came to the conclusion that I'd rather just have the support of the people who actually care.
The reason I told everyone I was studying abroad in London via my Facebook was because it was an instinctive decision - not premeditated at all, really - to throw the information online. I didn't take a few days to share it, it was a result of the impulse of the moment that I couldn't hold back.
With all this said, I must give my concession to those who did share their information. It is an exciting prospect to be interning for the summer. But considering all the extrapolations from your decision, was it worth it to get a few dozen likes?
I still remember getting letters back from colleges in high school. When I didn't get into a few that I hadn't considered reach schools, I was eager to shy away from the world and never talk about acceptance letters again. But the news of other people getting into one of my dream schools (Berkeley, in case you were wondering) was pervasive and distracting. I would walk around school, look at my Facebook wall, etc. and be unable to escape the news of my peers being successful while I failed.
It may not be anyone's intention to achieve this result, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered. Good news is great when its purpose is to be shared with those who matter in one's life. But when it becomes a mechanism for self-flattery and resulting hurt to others, it's no longer any fun. For anyone.
I posted a status on Facebook yesterday in response to all those who have been telling everyone on their friends' list that they are interning at such-and-such a place this summer. "I'm so excited about interning at [insert publication here] this summer! Just wanted to join in on the festivities," it said.
That was light poking - I think. And I'm glad that no one took it personally - I hope. Because in truth, it was a hypocritical comment to make. When I was accepted to study abroad in London, I immediately wrote a Facebook status about it. Right after calling my dad and letting him know, my next stop was the internet. I even wrote a blog about it later.
I don't know what my motivation was at the time. I think sometimes when you have exciting news you just can't wait to let the entire world know - or at least let someone know. In the case of London, this was something I had been planning since before I arrived at college. In senior year of high school I applied to go to university in London. In the end the cost was too high and I decided to settle on a school in the Midwest United States. I never regretted my decision, but I did set my sights on eventually going to England to study.
About a month into freshman year, I set up a meeting with the study abroad adviser who handles universities in the UK. She offered me some information, but reminded me that most students endeavor to study abroad in their junior years, not sophomore years. I had to wait two whole school years to go to the country I could have already been studying at.
I didn't think I could handle the wait, but I did. A year and a half later, I got the confirmation that not only was I going to be studying abroad in England, but it would be at my top choice university - the one I had wanted so badly to go to when I applied via UCAS in senior year.
So in some way, I think I hold a little bit more of a right to exclaim over this particular win. For those of us who have gone through the internship search, there is rarely a single place we are incredibly excited about working at. We put our names in the hat at a million different organizations - hopefully all that we care about to some extent, but who knows - and pray that someone picks us out by chance.
Getting an internship is exciting, and a great one is even more exciting - but is the reason we're sharing it online because it really matters to us, or because we want a hearty congratulations?
In the case of London, I believe my motivation was the former. I could have gotten no responses to it, and I would have kept the status up as a reminder of the day I heard the exciting news I'd been waiting for since I started studying at college.
I realize my judgment is harsh. People have different reasons for doing things - not everyone is sharing their place of internship because they want congratulations and some people really are just excited and feel the compulsion to share regardless of who they reach with the news.
But it also bothers me that while a lot of my friends are still struggling with the internship search, some of our mutual acquaintances are being incredibly forthcoming, maybe even gloating, about what they've snagged for the summer.
When I heard back about my internship, I was sitting with my dad waiting to see Fountains of Wayne come on stage. My immediate reaction was to yelp and then try and figure out how on Earth I'm going to learn to drive on a freeway. I was lucky to have my dad nearby to help me work out my anxiety and let out my excitement.
Maybe that's the problem here. When we're at school we don't have our moms and dads nearby at whom to scream "I'M DOING SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE THIS SUMMER!" Without that outlet, we turn to our next best friend - the Facebook news feed.
To be honest, I don't mind people sharing where they're interning online. It's exciting to see what people are planning on doing over the summer. But yesterday it started to feel like it was a trend for the trend's sake. After one status went up, a half a dozen others followed. For some reason I doubt that everyone got the news of their internships within the same 24 hour - more like 5 hour - period. If I had wanted to, I could have done the same by offering the news of my internship a few days after the fact to receive some congratulations. But in the end, I came to the conclusion that I'd rather just have the support of the people who actually care.
The reason I told everyone I was studying abroad in London via my Facebook was because it was an instinctive decision - not premeditated at all, really - to throw the information online. I didn't take a few days to share it, it was a result of the impulse of the moment that I couldn't hold back.
With all this said, I must give my concession to those who did share their information. It is an exciting prospect to be interning for the summer. But considering all the extrapolations from your decision, was it worth it to get a few dozen likes?
I still remember getting letters back from colleges in high school. When I didn't get into a few that I hadn't considered reach schools, I was eager to shy away from the world and never talk about acceptance letters again. But the news of other people getting into one of my dream schools (Berkeley, in case you were wondering) was pervasive and distracting. I would walk around school, look at my Facebook wall, etc. and be unable to escape the news of my peers being successful while I failed.
It may not be anyone's intention to achieve this result, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be considered. Good news is great when its purpose is to be shared with those who matter in one's life. But when it becomes a mechanism for self-flattery and resulting hurt to others, it's no longer any fun. For anyone.
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