things you learn about you
i feel like my head's been a little bit of a mess lately. not in a bad way, necessarily, but i'm coming down from that time of the month and there was a sudden influx of gay tv shows and a new zhanzhan drama but also christopher plummer just died and who knew that in 2021 i would still be getting weirdly emotional about fandom-type things? i thought i'd be too old for that by now. i definitely feel too tired for that, some days.
but i've also spent the last day and a half meeting some of my favourite people and having great conversations and i think that's another thing that's doing more for me than i ever expected it to. i've always liked people. i've always found people fascinating. there's a reason i thought i'd be a journalist, and then a psychologist, before i eventually settled on this field instead. i've always been a good listener, and i've always been someone who cares a lot - maybe too much, at times - but i've never been a very social person. i'm shy, and i'm not outgoing, i don't like meeting new people or parties, or mixing around in large groups. i like talking to people one on one, and the people i tend to be friends with are generally on the more outgoing side, so i don't have to be.
after the past couple of years, though, i think things have started to shift a little bit. i think a combination of my job, and getting to live overseas, and possibly even the continuous health scares, made me want to try new things more. made approaching new people and talking to people and carrying the conversations when necessary a little bit easier. made trying new things more exciting. i've always been a pretty passive person, i think, but i'm finding that less true these days.
i spend every weekend bemoaning the fact that i'm too busy to just lie in bed with some tv, but then i rinse, cycle, repeat the next weekend anyway. i'm going silversmithing for the first time with my new colleagues tomorrow, and i just got back from meeting my ex-colleagues for coffee (we would have gone for an escape room together but i've already completed the one they're doing, so it didn't make sense) after brunch with the undergrad valedictorian (who shared one or two classes with me in all four years but somehow managed to reconnect with me in chicago almost half a decade later). life is pretty neat that way.
i'm trying to label myself a little less - does it matter if i'm an introvert or an extravert or an ambivert or if i'm type a or type b or spontaneous or a meticulous planner if any and all of these options might change with the day? it's a strange experience feeling so sure that you're category this, and then re-evaluating and realising that maybe you don't fit in that box quite as solidly as you think. but it's been good. it's been stressful. it's like reformulating the outline of the person you might become, like smudging the lines of who you are a little more into the territory of who you maybe want to be. i don't like being pushed out of my comfort zone - and i think my comfort zone is already a pretty vast space - but i am learning a lot about myself.
at this point, 30-some years in, i think i'm kind enough and confident enough in myself that there's nothing i'm learning about that i actively dislike. a lot of it is surprising, but i still feel like i'm on solid ground. it's nice, this feeling sure of yourself thing.
i think the biggest lesson i've learnt is to draw the line between empathy and compassion; i don't have a lot of the former, but i don't think i need to be able to feel how you feel to hear you out or to genuinely care. and i do the latter two in spades. maybe i don't respond the way some people would like, and some people definitely find me abrasive, but i think i try to approach everything as genuinely as i can, and if i have to start calculating my responses when i'm with you so i don't hurt your feelings, you're not someone i want to spend that much time with or on. and that's okay. not everyone has to like me or find me a good conversation partner, or want to talk to me, but there is also zero need for me to try to shape my responses into someone else's mould. i don't like being a sounding board; anyone can do that for you, and i don't have the time. when we talk, you are asking me to actively care about what you're saying, and i do. so if i actively participate in that conversation, i don't want to be berated or belittled for it.
that feels good to know. i've always been a people-pleaser who doesn't want to be a people-pleaser, and it wasn't until i started at my new job and worked with my new colleagues that i realised how much better i had that shit under control. unless i genuinely feel like i fucked up, i don't and i won't apologise for what i say or feel or do, just because someone else might find it offensive. i lost a couple of internet friends over this not that long ago, and i wasn't even surprised when they turned out to be people i didn't really enjoy that much anyway.
i'm kind of a bull in a china shop. i'm not good for people with delicate sensibilities.
and that used to make me feel kind of guilty, like maybe i should be trying harder not to offend the people who choose to be around me, or i should worry more about hurting their feelings, but fuck it. i spent way too many formative years at home and in school being emotionally blackmailed by guilt, and i hated it. it never fixed anything, or changed how they felt. i'd do something else that was equally offensive and then we'd be back to square one. i like that about me now - or i try to embrace it, anyway. growing up has helped. i will say things that other people don't want to say, but i will do it as unoffensively as i can, in as honest and genuine a manner as possible, and then let the cards fall where they may. some people hate me for it, but i feel like i've come out with enough relationships in tact that i'm doing okay.
growing up i think writing was a refuge. it was somewhere i could make people make sense, and make them do and say what i wanted, when everything around me felt out of control. it was somewhere the bad things could be funny, and you'd always get your happy ending, and you'd never have to worry about whether your mother never tried to protect you from the uncle that kissed you in a locked bedroom when you were a teenager (whew, that got dark for a second). and then after all that it became something i could do. it became something easy, and fun, and an avenue to pour all the big feelings i had that i didn't know what to do with. to meet people who were amazing and clever and witty and interesting and liked all the same things that i did. it was such a cool fucking space to grow up, i am and will always be endlessly grateful for all the people i knew and met and loved.
and i liked my brain when i was writing. sometimes an old lj comment catches my eye, or a snippet of a thing i wrote pops up, and oh my god i was actually funny. when did that happen? how did that happen? all those hours of honing a skill that never felt like work made my brain light up in all these amazing, fun ways. it's rusty now, which makes me sad, but it's also not something i need anymore. i have other creative avenues, and other ways of expressing myself. i love language and words and the idea of writing, but it's also always been something i attach to sadness. it was my one constant when i was feeling sad or lonely or alienated, my little reminder that things wouldn't always be this way. and now i literally have a tattoo to remind myself of the same thing, and writing feels like time that i will never get back, that i want to spend doing all these other amazing things, just because i can.
i hope i come back to it, one day. i hope i sit down and start writing and it's like the old magic comes back. i feel like i should've fulfilled my wanderlust when i was in my 20s but i wasn't quite ready for it. not like i am now. and i really am. it's such a strange time to say that i'm in a good place, maybe the best place i've ever been emotionally, but there it is. everyone's been so upset about travelling, and i've honestly barely felt it. if anything, i miss the wonder, and the new sights and sounds and food, but i don't feel like i'm dying without it, i don't need to escape from the little life i've carved out for myself here, doing a job i love in an imperfect workplace, with all the most important people no more than half an hour away.
but i've also spent the last day and a half meeting some of my favourite people and having great conversations and i think that's another thing that's doing more for me than i ever expected it to. i've always liked people. i've always found people fascinating. there's a reason i thought i'd be a journalist, and then a psychologist, before i eventually settled on this field instead. i've always been a good listener, and i've always been someone who cares a lot - maybe too much, at times - but i've never been a very social person. i'm shy, and i'm not outgoing, i don't like meeting new people or parties, or mixing around in large groups. i like talking to people one on one, and the people i tend to be friends with are generally on the more outgoing side, so i don't have to be.
after the past couple of years, though, i think things have started to shift a little bit. i think a combination of my job, and getting to live overseas, and possibly even the continuous health scares, made me want to try new things more. made approaching new people and talking to people and carrying the conversations when necessary a little bit easier. made trying new things more exciting. i've always been a pretty passive person, i think, but i'm finding that less true these days.
i spend every weekend bemoaning the fact that i'm too busy to just lie in bed with some tv, but then i rinse, cycle, repeat the next weekend anyway. i'm going silversmithing for the first time with my new colleagues tomorrow, and i just got back from meeting my ex-colleagues for coffee (we would have gone for an escape room together but i've already completed the one they're doing, so it didn't make sense) after brunch with the undergrad valedictorian (who shared one or two classes with me in all four years but somehow managed to reconnect with me in chicago almost half a decade later). life is pretty neat that way.
i'm trying to label myself a little less - does it matter if i'm an introvert or an extravert or an ambivert or if i'm type a or type b or spontaneous or a meticulous planner if any and all of these options might change with the day? it's a strange experience feeling so sure that you're category this, and then re-evaluating and realising that maybe you don't fit in that box quite as solidly as you think. but it's been good. it's been stressful. it's like reformulating the outline of the person you might become, like smudging the lines of who you are a little more into the territory of who you maybe want to be. i don't like being pushed out of my comfort zone - and i think my comfort zone is already a pretty vast space - but i am learning a lot about myself.
at this point, 30-some years in, i think i'm kind enough and confident enough in myself that there's nothing i'm learning about that i actively dislike. a lot of it is surprising, but i still feel like i'm on solid ground. it's nice, this feeling sure of yourself thing.
i think the biggest lesson i've learnt is to draw the line between empathy and compassion; i don't have a lot of the former, but i don't think i need to be able to feel how you feel to hear you out or to genuinely care. and i do the latter two in spades. maybe i don't respond the way some people would like, and some people definitely find me abrasive, but i think i try to approach everything as genuinely as i can, and if i have to start calculating my responses when i'm with you so i don't hurt your feelings, you're not someone i want to spend that much time with or on. and that's okay. not everyone has to like me or find me a good conversation partner, or want to talk to me, but there is also zero need for me to try to shape my responses into someone else's mould. i don't like being a sounding board; anyone can do that for you, and i don't have the time. when we talk, you are asking me to actively care about what you're saying, and i do. so if i actively participate in that conversation, i don't want to be berated or belittled for it.
that feels good to know. i've always been a people-pleaser who doesn't want to be a people-pleaser, and it wasn't until i started at my new job and worked with my new colleagues that i realised how much better i had that shit under control. unless i genuinely feel like i fucked up, i don't and i won't apologise for what i say or feel or do, just because someone else might find it offensive. i lost a couple of internet friends over this not that long ago, and i wasn't even surprised when they turned out to be people i didn't really enjoy that much anyway.
i'm kind of a bull in a china shop. i'm not good for people with delicate sensibilities.
and that used to make me feel kind of guilty, like maybe i should be trying harder not to offend the people who choose to be around me, or i should worry more about hurting their feelings, but fuck it. i spent way too many formative years at home and in school being emotionally blackmailed by guilt, and i hated it. it never fixed anything, or changed how they felt. i'd do something else that was equally offensive and then we'd be back to square one. i like that about me now - or i try to embrace it, anyway. growing up has helped. i will say things that other people don't want to say, but i will do it as unoffensively as i can, in as honest and genuine a manner as possible, and then let the cards fall where they may. some people hate me for it, but i feel like i've come out with enough relationships in tact that i'm doing okay.
growing up i think writing was a refuge. it was somewhere i could make people make sense, and make them do and say what i wanted, when everything around me felt out of control. it was somewhere the bad things could be funny, and you'd always get your happy ending, and you'd never have to worry about whether your mother never tried to protect you from the uncle that kissed you in a locked bedroom when you were a teenager (whew, that got dark for a second). and then after all that it became something i could do. it became something easy, and fun, and an avenue to pour all the big feelings i had that i didn't know what to do with. to meet people who were amazing and clever and witty and interesting and liked all the same things that i did. it was such a cool fucking space to grow up, i am and will always be endlessly grateful for all the people i knew and met and loved.
and i liked my brain when i was writing. sometimes an old lj comment catches my eye, or a snippet of a thing i wrote pops up, and oh my god i was actually funny. when did that happen? how did that happen? all those hours of honing a skill that never felt like work made my brain light up in all these amazing, fun ways. it's rusty now, which makes me sad, but it's also not something i need anymore. i have other creative avenues, and other ways of expressing myself. i love language and words and the idea of writing, but it's also always been something i attach to sadness. it was my one constant when i was feeling sad or lonely or alienated, my little reminder that things wouldn't always be this way. and now i literally have a tattoo to remind myself of the same thing, and writing feels like time that i will never get back, that i want to spend doing all these other amazing things, just because i can.
i hope i come back to it, one day. i hope i sit down and start writing and it's like the old magic comes back. i feel like i should've fulfilled my wanderlust when i was in my 20s but i wasn't quite ready for it. not like i am now. and i really am. it's such a strange time to say that i'm in a good place, maybe the best place i've ever been emotionally, but there it is. everyone's been so upset about travelling, and i've honestly barely felt it. if anything, i miss the wonder, and the new sights and sounds and food, but i don't feel like i'm dying without it, i don't need to escape from the little life i've carved out for myself here, doing a job i love in an imperfect workplace, with all the most important people no more than half an hour away.