i will be productive today, even though it's already 2:44 pm and the most useful thing i've done so far is eat. will clean my room, do my laundry, and get myself out of this dorm! i've got to go outside to write observations for my lighting design class, anyway, so i'll be forced to spend some time sitting in the sun, and later, in a large airy public space with a high ceiling, watching the crowds. so that'll be nice. and then tonight i've got to go watch a play, les blancs, for the same class. i'm really glad. i spend too much time indoors. want it to be summer, and want it now!
yesterday it was warm enough that i could have worn a tanktop during a good part of the day, if i'd only known. is finally becoming the time of year when it's worthwhile to check the weather in the morning. =)
signed onto the lease for that house with all the girls... am gonna live in the big top-floor double with an as-yet-unmet roommate. i hope she likes me. was talking with fatespawn the other day... i wish i could relate to people better. is tiresome to just coexist with everyone, i'd really like to be able to connect, but i think i'm just bad at it mostly. people call it being "shy." i begin to realize that a lot of people actually talk with other people about the kind of stuff i choose to write about in here instead. if shyness implies a kind of timidity, i don't feel like a shy person very often. i think it's just that i don't want to force anything on anyone, and since i grew up being taught that emotions were a kind of burden i'd rather lay down my load online, where people can walk by and look at it and maybe pick up a piece or two instead of having the honor of me dumping it upon them.
i guess people enjoy such an honor sometimes, though, under the right conditions. and then they become friends...
it confuses me.
in grade school i was always friends with the kids who didn't fit in and couldn't find any friends. they were easy to be friends with, and i was their recognized leader. i think none of us could understand the social scene, and that's how we all fit together: my two best friends were a chubby and unpopular girl and a girl whose voice was soft who barely ever talked. we also had the new kid (a would-be social climber who turned upon us later and ended up horribly alienated from just about everybody) and the boy whose butt wiggled when he walked - i think it may be because of him that i have an unusual gait to this day - about the time that my girl classmates were just starting to try and make the transition from 'cute' to 'sexy,' i was working to develop a way of walking that would minimize all butt movement. apparently it's morphed into a kind of spring in my step, but it's still unusual enough to draw the occasional comment.
but then, in junior high school i discovered that there was, indeed, a social structure, and that 'popularity' - a concept i'd thought inherently contradictory and unable to sustain itself - actually existed in nature. that was bizarre. i came out of that with my best friend ever, a sweet and brilliant girl who understood the social world but simply didn't care (and was self-sheltering, just like me, which is a hard trait to come by in the high school world). between her and my first goth friend (who seemed to find it amusing that i was so baffled/fascinated by the social structure) i enjoyed that period immensely.
but i also still tried to be a friend to people who didn't have any, and learned that their situation had changed drastically. the people who in grade school had merely been lonely were now turning into life-sucking voids of need, and it broke my heart. as soon as they saw that i was trying to be friendly they'd dump out all the problems and dreadfulnesses of their lives and start pushing them into my ears while i nodded dumbly. and helping them, even just enough to brighten their day a bit, was always beyond my power. luckily, with each i always managed to somehow disentangle myself before they drained me to a desiccated corpse.
perhaps it's partly because of those experiences that even when i do talk about emotions with people i often feel alienated rather than connected. and perhaps my deepest fear is that those people who really care might, with any prolonged exposure, dry up and turn to dust and blow away. heh - it's a very cinematic kind of fear.
of course, i also worry about getting dried up too, and when people talk to me about their emotions, even when it's not their not of the engulfing, enduring kind, i still don't quite know what to do.
i think i can lay my finger on the problem... any conversation about negative emotion (no matter how slight) is interpreted by me not so much as an expression of feelings as a cry for help - "help, help, save me from these confusing emotions!" but that's not really what any of us are saying....
i just don't know what we *are* saying, quite yet.
and on a related note, i need to figure out how to relate to my coworkers. that's another non-timid component of shyness - i'd talk to them, but i don't know how it works. i don't want to distract them from what they're doing or be seen as a lazy type who'd rather socialize than work, but i don't mean to be rude and secret myself away, either. it seems that right now i can only relate to people as friends-on-my-level, mere acquaintances, or as superiors/authority figures. i can't figure out how to lightly blend the two together in order to come up with the appropriate protocol for coworkers. and i'd kind of like to be friends with some of these people...
why do i have the persistant feeling that so much of this stuff is supposed to come naturally?
yesterday it was warm enough that i could have worn a tanktop during a good part of the day, if i'd only known. is finally becoming the time of year when it's worthwhile to check the weather in the morning. =)
signed onto the lease for that house with all the girls... am gonna live in the big top-floor double with an as-yet-unmet roommate. i hope she likes me. was talking with fatespawn the other day... i wish i could relate to people better. is tiresome to just coexist with everyone, i'd really like to be able to connect, but i think i'm just bad at it mostly. people call it being "shy." i begin to realize that a lot of people actually talk with other people about the kind of stuff i choose to write about in here instead. if shyness implies a kind of timidity, i don't feel like a shy person very often. i think it's just that i don't want to force anything on anyone, and since i grew up being taught that emotions were a kind of burden i'd rather lay down my load online, where people can walk by and look at it and maybe pick up a piece or two instead of having the honor of me dumping it upon them.
i guess people enjoy such an honor sometimes, though, under the right conditions. and then they become friends...
it confuses me.
in grade school i was always friends with the kids who didn't fit in and couldn't find any friends. they were easy to be friends with, and i was their recognized leader. i think none of us could understand the social scene, and that's how we all fit together: my two best friends were a chubby and unpopular girl and a girl whose voice was soft who barely ever talked. we also had the new kid (a would-be social climber who turned upon us later and ended up horribly alienated from just about everybody) and the boy whose butt wiggled when he walked - i think it may be because of him that i have an unusual gait to this day - about the time that my girl classmates were just starting to try and make the transition from 'cute' to 'sexy,' i was working to develop a way of walking that would minimize all butt movement. apparently it's morphed into a kind of spring in my step, but it's still unusual enough to draw the occasional comment.
but then, in junior high school i discovered that there was, indeed, a social structure, and that 'popularity' - a concept i'd thought inherently contradictory and unable to sustain itself - actually existed in nature. that was bizarre. i came out of that with my best friend ever, a sweet and brilliant girl who understood the social world but simply didn't care (and was self-sheltering, just like me, which is a hard trait to come by in the high school world). between her and my first goth friend (who seemed to find it amusing that i was so baffled/fascinated by the social structure) i enjoyed that period immensely.
but i also still tried to be a friend to people who didn't have any, and learned that their situation had changed drastically. the people who in grade school had merely been lonely were now turning into life-sucking voids of need, and it broke my heart. as soon as they saw that i was trying to be friendly they'd dump out all the problems and dreadfulnesses of their lives and start pushing them into my ears while i nodded dumbly. and helping them, even just enough to brighten their day a bit, was always beyond my power. luckily, with each i always managed to somehow disentangle myself before they drained me to a desiccated corpse.
perhaps it's partly because of those experiences that even when i do talk about emotions with people i often feel alienated rather than connected. and perhaps my deepest fear is that those people who really care might, with any prolonged exposure, dry up and turn to dust and blow away. heh - it's a very cinematic kind of fear.
of course, i also worry about getting dried up too, and when people talk to me about their emotions, even when it's not their not of the engulfing, enduring kind, i still don't quite know what to do.
i think i can lay my finger on the problem... any conversation about negative emotion (no matter how slight) is interpreted by me not so much as an expression of feelings as a cry for help - "help, help, save me from these confusing emotions!" but that's not really what any of us are saying....
i just don't know what we *are* saying, quite yet.
and on a related note, i need to figure out how to relate to my coworkers. that's another non-timid component of shyness - i'd talk to them, but i don't know how it works. i don't want to distract them from what they're doing or be seen as a lazy type who'd rather socialize than work, but i don't mean to be rude and secret myself away, either. it seems that right now i can only relate to people as friends-on-my-level, mere acquaintances, or as superiors/authority figures. i can't figure out how to lightly blend the two together in order to come up with the appropriate protocol for coworkers. and i'd kind of like to be friends with some of these people...
why do i have the persistant feeling that so much of this stuff is supposed to come naturally?