FYI: For Your Information
"Are you guys gonna watch 12 Days a Slave?"
"Actually, I think it's called 12 Years a Slave."
"Oh...that's much worse."
Several months ago I purchased a weight bench during a fit of laughably naïve optimism when I believed myself mere weeks away from being ready to start a workout routine. Since then, it's been a seemingly permanent fixture of my garage, a sinister cobweb-draped monument to failure and laziness. Pretty soon it's going to be too cold to workout in the garage, so if I want to continue deluding myself that I'm "definitely going to start next weekend" I'll have to move it inside. I'm not sure if I'm ready to lie to myself like that.
I'm twenty-seven years old and still afraid to get to know people. Even when I make a good impression on someone, I want to avoid them so I won't ruin that good impression. "Look, there's Jaime. I think he sees us--oh, wait, now he's walking in the opposite direction. He must've forgotten something." That is crazy. For me, getting to know someone feels like a staircase going deep underground where every step I take down I have to hear a recording of something someone has said about me, but all the worst things people have ever said about me are clustered together at the top of the staircase. And it feels like there is no way I can make it all the way to the bottom of the staircase, where all the good stuff people think about me is. So it's kind of this terrible thing that in order to be appreciated, I have to subject myself to the mortifying ordeal of letting someone get to know me.
I'm going to make an effort to care less, but caring less shouldn't take effort, which is what's bugging me.
"Actually, I think it's called 12 Years a Slave."
"Oh...that's much worse."
Several months ago I purchased a weight bench during a fit of laughably naïve optimism when I believed myself mere weeks away from being ready to start a workout routine. Since then, it's been a seemingly permanent fixture of my garage, a sinister cobweb-draped monument to failure and laziness. Pretty soon it's going to be too cold to workout in the garage, so if I want to continue deluding myself that I'm "definitely going to start next weekend" I'll have to move it inside. I'm not sure if I'm ready to lie to myself like that.
I'm twenty-seven years old and still afraid to get to know people. Even when I make a good impression on someone, I want to avoid them so I won't ruin that good impression. "Look, there's Jaime. I think he sees us--oh, wait, now he's walking in the opposite direction. He must've forgotten something." That is crazy. For me, getting to know someone feels like a staircase going deep underground where every step I take down I have to hear a recording of something someone has said about me, but all the worst things people have ever said about me are clustered together at the top of the staircase. And it feels like there is no way I can make it all the way to the bottom of the staircase, where all the good stuff people think about me is. So it's kind of this terrible thing that in order to be appreciated, I have to subject myself to the mortifying ordeal of letting someone get to know me.
I'm going to make an effort to care less, but caring less shouldn't take effort, which is what's bugging me.