Hedy Lamarr once said "any girl can be glamorous. All you have to do is stand still and look stupid." This succinctly explains an awful lot of my motivations. The rest can probably be explained by
David Foster Wallace (although not succinctly and with an awful lot of footnotes) and
Pema Chödrön.
(ETA: this introspection came after reading the latest SoCH post on The Hairpin, "
The Ecstasy of Hedy Lamarr". I know it was posted last month, but I'm still chipping away at stuff I didn't read in August.)