Consciousness

I really wonder if people write great speeches days, weeks, or even months before they have to give them. If they do, I tip my hat to them; personally I dont think I've ever written anything up more than a day or two before it was due/I had to present it/I wanted to say something to someone (not even the really important things!). I guess that some great people have/do write things last minute; I'm pretty sure that Lincoln (supposedly anyway) wrote the Emancipation on a napkin on a train while he made the journey to...wherever he was going.

Rambling aside, last week I discovered that various people actually knew about and/or read my blog, which was kinda... surprising, if anything. At first, it did kinda pile the pressure on me because what I write seriously pales in comparison to what I see other people write so... yea I was feelin a bit strange for the past few days. This nice (read as: terrible) feeling of self consciousness enveloped me for about a day, which honestly probably wasnt as bad as the word "terrible" is, but I cant really think of any real adequate adjective (yo its 1:30, gimme a break) to describe it.

This brings me to the meat of this post. Now, I think I've talked about this before... but I think I'd like to expand on it even if I did. Its kinda cool writing about the same thing twice, especially if your view has changed or you just noticed something that you hadnt really before.

Anyway, I noticed that self consciousness is easily the biggest thing that weighs down people. Its like that whole "the biggest critic is yourself" deal; on Thursday I saw the end of Community where Jeff (I think its Jeff) was talking about how no one can really see the good in themselves, or something like that.

Which is all really true, people rarely see how awesome they are and just go "man I'm so stupid" or "I look like a goat" and the favorite "I'M SO FAT... AND I WEIGH 90 LBS." Usually none of these are true (maybe that goat one), but we like to beat up ourselves anyway. This makes it seem like we're all closet masochist and we love to self-degrade ourselves which is terrible/weird/kinky.

I'm not gonna deny I dont do this too, but I probably do it less than a lot of people do. I mean, I have all these awesome traits that it might be borderline impossible to self degrade myself. For example, I am:

A genius
A ladies man
Extremely good looking (Handsome is a burden my face has to bear)
Amazingly strong

I do however, have to struggle with the fact that...none of those are true, hence the self-consciousness. (As a random sidenote, I can never seem to spell that word right; I've had to spell check it 6 times now.)

But seriously, even though I have various talents, I still usually focus on some of the more negative things that I dont have/the things that I do have that arent so great (eg. Not the sharpest tool, a little chubby, farting too much etc.) I do try not to think about them, but they creep up on me like a very good stalker. For example, sometimes I'm self-conscious about the way I look, so I'll quickly look in a reflective surface and maybe do my hair. (basically just rough it up like I usually do)

Yea there are probably tons of outlets to blame for this. Well, ok theres really only one, the media, but I do like the way the "tons of outlets" sound. But yea, we're constantly thrown this barrage of "you must be Barbie to be beautiful Bernice; so buy Brenda's bodacious beaming beauty cream" (Bam I just hit you with an alliteration, albeit it kinda sucked) that basically tell us that we dont look good enough.

But enough with what you guys already know (or...well ok ya'll are smart cookies so you did know this) lets talk 'bout... well I dunno about using the word "solution" but... I guess help methods? Yea I'm not really functioning well but I think I'm trying to say a method of not...being self-conscious (First time I spelled it without spell check, holla!) or possible making it feel like no one else has to be self conscious. (Did it again, awww yea!)

So yes, there is the whole "focus on the positives" method which works wonders, but (this is a big but, thing ghetto booty status) this really doesnt work most of the time because, as far as I can tell, people dont really tend to see how awesome they are and do tend to focus on the negatives.

Ok I'm 100% sure I've said this one, but I'll say it again because its damn good advice: just see the other person as just... a person; not Fatty McFatster, but Aaron Gumabong. (see what I did thar?) Now, you probably just dont go "Damn he so fet" right off the bat and then write them off as just... a fat person. Um... I 'spose I'm talkin 'bout just looking past their faults and just seeing a person who does X and is good at Y and is my Z!

I think the best solution would to be to do what Ricky Gervais' character did in The Invention of Lying (Which, due to peer pressure I will write...something on); he looked past whatever they looked like on the outside and just saw...well, two people that loved each other.


Ok so at this point I think I've just spewed out a bunch of things that you already knew... but I do still think its still valid (though not completely justified since this is just kinda some hodgepodge of text) to get this out there... again.

Actually, I wanted to just throw this out there, even though it might seem kind of a slight repeat of the above. Now, I used to play the beautiful game called Runescape... up until sophomore year I think. I started in 6th grade so yea, I played it for a long time. Now, I never told anyone except for two people, and they were my best friends. (Yaknow, I think its weird that we say that we have multiple best friends but the superlative best implies...the best. Rambling aside, read on!) Now, I didnt tell anyone because I knew I was going to be made fun of if I actually told anyone; I remember people were bashin Runescape while I was standing in line for lunch. I remember thinking "...Yea I'm not going to tell anyone, ever, that I still play."

So what does this have to do with anything? Well, we do tend to label certain things with a not so great stigma that make people feel bad and maybe feel shame that they do them. Granted, there are somethings that obviously should make people feel bad and feel shame that they do them (eg. Murder, thievery, playing Hello Kitty MMOs, yaknow, crimes and whatnot.) But our tendency to do this alienates people and makes them less open about these things. In the long run, this will most likely hurt relationships with people in general. Lets face it, if someone is going to have a hard time admitting they play with dolls still, why would they confess some major stuff thats goin on in their lives?

All this self consciousness has lead to some stuff that really made me sad. A month or two ago I saw this group that said "RIP Someone Lastname" and thus, I checked it out. Now I was just siftin through the pictures and then I saw this comment that said "I didnt know her and I dont even go to [the school] but could you please put my name on there anyway?"

Yes, this guy could have been sincere, but I really dont get why you would randomly do that especially if you didnt know the person... at all. I did consider multiple possibilities, including him wanted to be nice, him genuinely caring, him being an idiot... stuff like that. I talked it over with someone and they said this:

"[Its] not because they really care but because they want to show they are capable of caring"

Its pretty sad that we've come to this, doncha think?

I'm a goddamn misfit, miss-matched but never missed much
Just a "by the way" thing, but I started this on 5/24/10 at 11:19PM. Just to let you guys know I'm not slacking just...procrastinating.