A Tuesday night.
Adventure time on Tv but little bro went to bed. Feeling scared and lonely as usual. (but shhh)
I don’t see what wallowing in the state of my personal life would have to do with why I have this blog.
It seems this is more of a blog about where I’m heading, who I chose to be, and where I chose to place my focus.
– – hello – –
Fear. Social anxiety. They’re still relevant. I don’t want to talk about my reasons tonight. How about I raise a question:
•
how do you “friends”?
•
It seems to me lately that making friends, like all new situations I’ve been causing myself to experience, is a matter of facing fears – of being brave, experiencing discomfort, but understanding that this discomfort is not an active ingredient in my plan of action, and that, most importantly, that the discomfort will dicipate gradually with regular exposure & familiarity.
In other words, at best, I think maybe it’s healthiest for us to see (our) social anxiety as a temporary reaction to a new situation. So long as we patiently & continuously contribute to breaking the ice and – maintaining both genuinity & an ability to pre-approve ourselves before (or during) the time that we worry too much about exterior reactions.
If you both 1.approve of yourself and 2.are yourself, you rely less on approval, but more importantly, the connections you make will make sense. In what way? In the way that you do what you can, no more, no less. (Fair expectations) And, that those who stay must be those who accept you. When this is not what you have, I hope the idea sounds tempting.
Random note: It isn’t because you can’t talk politics with kids that they can’t be awesome little things.
–
Every new encounter is an entirely new situation – or is it?
(Aw. There you go. I can* talk without digging myself into the ground!)(Been wondering.)
I like to think that it’s both. There are ways in which one should see others as similar to themselves (likely more than originally expected if they haven’t thought of this yet) (#humanity) but also, and this is rather fun, as individuals with endless differences. (In stories, in personalities, and so on)
We’re all the same, we’re nothing alike. Okay.
Next.
Putting people in groups, or judging them based on factors noticeable during first encounters, works mostly (I think) in profiling the potential directions of conversation, and at building theories.
Theories can be right on, or bad, depending, always depending. What I’m noticing is that judging a book by it’s cover is both unfair and a shame allot of the time.
It’s pretty surprising, actually. The more time you spend with the people that bore you, sometimes, the more they unbore you. – most people aren’t too bored at the start, but I’m a very intense person. Controlling my boredom requires a pause and this pause is something I demand from myself – I call it creating shades between black and white. And yes, the conclusion is, people can surprise you.
Why?
For one, take away the expectation for others to be as stimulating as you want them to be & do so in a way that is not condescending but comprehensive towards the struggles and imperfections of the frustrated willing. What you find is a creeping sense that the people you meet don’t owe you anything. That you are simply in the presence of another human being trying to stay alive (and find happiness/content/relief/security/fun etc etc.)
– Another thing – We don’t always have the benefit of being able to express all that we are in the time it takes for someone we just met to make a realistically fair assessment of the type of person we are.
And, the other way around;
Not everyone has the background to understand out references, tone, mannerism, what we mean by what we say or why we are who we are.
(Not everyone gets our jokes, man)
For example, social taboos like tattoos and piercings scare off older generations. There may already be an “incompatibility” because of age and values, and that could almost justify stopping there, (?) but if both generations understood each other better, well, it may not necessarily mean that they would both agree with each other, and god knows people can’t always agree with each other, but maybe they would be able to discover that they were wrong for associating certain things to certain behaviours or mentalities.
(^ False judgements)
In a nutshell, I bravely propose that you can not judge a book by it’s cover, and in that, I pay attention to all new encounters.
Previously I would have come barging into this kind of statement throwing objections around about the utter pain that is conversing with uninteresting people.
Conversing with uninteresting people can (sometimes) be interesting for you (rather than not) if you make it that way – if you steer or if you take a leap and throw things around. Experiment, see how people react.
I can steer conversations into interesting directions to a certain extent (for now) but, and this is personal and uncertain, most of the time, I prefer to tamper my personality in a way that will benefit the person I’m talking to at the end of the day. I’m a damn cashier for pete’s sake – my best shot at mother-teresa-ing is excellent small talk. (That won’t get me fired*)(They’re watching…)
– Not being boring? –
I think aside from the ways you express yourself, being interesting might come with acquiring interests and knowledge about those interests.
The more you learn and enjoy, the more topics you touch, the more you have to offer in conversation, the more will be returned, and so on. Some people will pick your subjects up and you’ll find yourself walking through new paths with them, or others may simply be entertained by your ideas, that being all they can squeeze out. (“God bless you, dear!”) Others, less open, will retreat. Retreaters sometimes disapprove, but I think there are also the retreaters who are as insecure as you are – pondering a way to accept you in this weird way, or simply thinking to themselves that it’s okay that you’re weird because you’re another person. (Introverts with high regards for others, working around their environments not taking too much room with their individuality – because that would be “unpredictable and unreasonable!”)
–
The kind of person that I am has a tender appreciation for all humans with behaviours I can understand. It’s two things
1- empathy switch always turned on
2- Personal circumstance is everything / buddhism.
I think there might be a little buddha in the back of my mind. Sitting comfortably on a chair, sorting out all these (ALL these) files flying/looping around at the unproductive lightening speed of ADHD into a set of prepped buddhism-mentality-folders. Smiling like a troll (metaphor getting carried away)
Mm.
Little memory munching bots running after all them files swooshing about, but they’re a little bit safer when placed in folders. Place thoughts in a system you can understand, what happens is habit. The problem with the way I think is that I create thoughts so quickly and so many (over active creation of new focuses) that I forget them. The strong emotional reactions I have to almost all kinds of thoughts makes it difficult to retain things. I don’t understand memory much, but with me personally, it’s hard not to remember anything unless it sticks out of the bunch on an emotional level.
This ADHD type of thinking is a pain. But hey. Apparently there are many ways in which I’m awesome because of it. (Consolation prize accepted)
–
Buddhism has some strong points to make about human relations.
Particularly on the subject of ignorance.
So much separates us and so much binds us. We were all brought up differently, damnit! That says allot on it’s own. How much of that are you? How much of that am I?
• • • Goodnight!
an Entire Person 