Fuck Tuesdays. Seriously.

[musedmoose]

Learned today that, when our per-item pay rates next change, the thing that I do the most will pay less. This is an item that hasn't gone up in years - the last time it changed, the pay for it went down. It's what I spend most of my days working on. And why? Because, as a department, we're too good at it. Yeah, so much for all those lies we

Comments

[kaleidors]

Ok, maybe dirty and used are too strong a words for what I want to convey. Growing up evangelical Christian, purity was a big thing for me (no drugs, no alcohol, no sex, no cussing, etc etc) and it was very humbling for me to find that I was no more pure than the next person, since I had put such a value on me being "pure".

I ran across this women's story about her purity ring, and this part really rang true to me...

I realized that I had valued my purity more than my intelligence, or my creativity, or my love for others. I had elevated my purity above everything else. I had boasted of it, flaunted it, cherished it. And suddenly I found myself questioning the value of “purity... I took a deep breath and left behind the need to be pure or to label myself with terms like “pure” and “impure,” “virgin” or “slut.”

re:people commenting on your purity; maybe you just need to be a bigger flirt? The flirty response to, "I'm afraid I'm going to corrupt you," is "Do your worst," with a saucy grin--or even a wink, if you're a complete cornball. This response also might help mitigate whatever belief they might harbor that you're all that innocent after all ;)

[musedmoose]

Makes sense that you'd feel that way, if that was how you were raised. I've never liked the idea myself, but I've grown to dislike most labels as I get older, and that's another journal entry. ^_^

And ugh, I've never been a good flirt. A lot of it is that it's rare for me to find someone I'm genuinely interested in who isn't already with someone and seems interested in me. Kind of used to it by now. *shrug*

[kaleidors]

Personally, I am both really good and really bad at flirting. It has come to my attention that what I think of as "being friendly" (gentle teasing, complimenting, lots of eye contact, etc) is probably a form of flirting. Really though people do this all the time to just be friendly or pass the time.
What I'm really bad at is doing/perceiving flirting with a purpose aka hitting on people. I generally assume that no one would really want to ask me out, so all attempts at flirting are just being friendly. Only through the perception of others/extreme hindsight have I come to figure out otherwise. (Like perhaps that guy in freshman year who was asking if I was thinking of going to the dance with anyone was not just striking up a speculative conversation but in fact was trying to segue into asking me out. This occurred to me at least a decade after the fact).
But getting back to the flirting/purity/interest kind of thing, finding interesting single people can be tough if you're not actively looking, but finding interesting single people who are also interested in you is going to be near impossible if you're not doing anything to advertise that you are actually interested in finding someone-like flirting. If You and your interesting person are interested but not showing interest because the other seems not interested, you're going to have some kind of flirting cold war until one of you breaks.

This is kinda a pot-kettle-black comment, but I find that in people who find dates nothing-not income, looks, or personality--matter as much as just going out there and looking for something.

[musedmoose]

I'm in the same boat as you on some of this - I've had people think I was flirting when I was just being friendly, and I've looked back only to realize that someone was flirting with me. Oi.

Between this and my general trouble with meeting new people, well, that kind of covers my lack of dating life over the past 13 years. ^_^ On the plus side, it's been long enough that I've mostly stopped caring, except when stuff come up to remind me of it. Ah, well.