On Shyness

Hello, audience. Based on my blog stats, you actually exist, which is gratifying. I assume you do, anyway. That, or things are randomly linking to my page, and people search things that I posted pictures of.

But I thought I'd take a few minutes tonight to explain to the internet at large why I HATE HATE HATE shy people.

Do you know why it is?

Because they're so full of crap.

We've all met the people who are just quiet. They don't talk a whole lot, and they're cool being on their own, and they don't need you to tell them it's okay. That's being called self-contained. When people say they're shy, you should automatically read that as "I'm an attention whore with a propensity to martyring myself." Because we've also all met those people. I've met several.

Let me take a moment here, my dear, faithful, presumably interested audience, to explain something: I am loud. I am opinionated. I am comparatively oblivious, and I don't cater to anyone in conversation (excepting age, because some things can't be said around the over-thirty-five/under-seventeen crowds). Get over it, sweetheart.

Someone posted this thing on Facebook that said something akin to, "I'm the friend who always gets cut off mid-story, and walks behind everyone else, and invites people to hang out so that I'm not excluded, and I will always be that friend, because wah wah wah." Or something like that. And being the diplomatic angel I always am, I commented.

I have been Bitched Out on more than one occasion (at least twice by the same person, who was the kind of "shy" I'm talking about here) for being a verbal bulldozer, being rude, interrupting, being pushy, loud, etc. And you know what? I am those things most of the time. But you know what else? Most of the people who actually enjoy talking to me (like my friends and close family members) can deal with that. They talk over me, and I talk over them, and it's not because either of us thinks we're more important than the other. We're just talking. We're comfortably sharing ideas and stories in a free manner.

This isn't frickin' LD Debate here, guys. I don't make an opening statement, followed by your opening statement, nd then my rebuttal, and your rebuttal, and my follow up, and your response, and then our closing thoughts. Conversation is a free flow thing. If you can't handle that, maybe you should only talk to people via text, because instant messaging, email, and texting all take place line by line where no one steps over the other.

Come to think of it, most of the whiny "shy" people do spend all their time online...

Anyway, the thought I had originally started with is this: People who claim to be shy are usually just looking for someone to validate them. And there are two things I have no respect for, and when people exhibit them on a regular basis, I stop talking to them so that no one gets throttled.
1) Stupidity. This is the cardinal sin in the Book of Rachel.
2) Excessive insecurity.

Let me clarify here. Everyone is insecure about things. No one is totally confident, totally happy, or totally together. We all have duckies that are getting away from us. But most of us have the decency not to cram it down everyone's throat.

In my experience, people who are "shy" are looking for excuses to martyr themselves so that other people feel sorry for them or pay excessive attention to them. So that when you don't make way on a red carpet covered on rose petals for their every little thought, you're a dick for not letting them speak.

Because I have news, babydoll, no one can tell you that you don't matter. No one can make you feel insignificant or unimportant.  No one can make you shut up when you want to talk. No one can make your opinions less important.

UNLESS

you lie down in front of their feet and explain softly that you're a worthless doormat, and  if they would be so gracious as to make you matter...you'd bitch them out for being so thoughtless and selfish as to think that their opinions matter. How dare other people be aware of their own worth when you need yours given to you by external forces?!

When you need validated and told you're a beautifuw snowfwake and we all appweciate evewything about you, it's your own weakness.

There you go, friends and neighbors. I think "shy people" are weaklings, and full of their own selfishness and arrogance on top of it. You don't get to condemn me or anyone else for asserting ourselves just because you need permission to say anything unless it;s to complain about your lot for being the self-proclaimed victim.

Shut your whore mouth, you freaking shy people. Get over yourselves.

Words No One Should Use (Part 2)

Because I am largely a creature of my word, I shall finish my list of annoying words and phrases. Hopefully quickly, so that the posts are in the same month in the drop down menus. It's also going to be quick, because I have other things to do, and I'm in a less ranty frame of mind than last time.

-Pejoratives for race, gender, sexual practices, etc
This is just a common decency thing with me. If you're not a total worthless douchewaffle, you don't decide people are not worthy of respect based on anything other than their character. Treating them like crap because you don't agree with them is totally not okay. You don't get patted on the head for it, but you don't deserve to be lynched either. Using words to demean someone because of their  gender, race, religion, sexual orientation, etc just makes you more of an ass than you're saying they are. Except hipsters. It's okay to hate on them.

-The One
As you may have noticed if you've read basically any of my other posts, I passionately hate romance. When people talk about "The One" in any context other than The Matrix, it basically means you can write them off as a sappy moron and ignore anything else they have to say about people.

-True Love ____
Waits, is whatever, and so on. These phrases just irritate me, because they're not only stupid and/or obvious, they refer to "True Love," another idea I have absolute disdain for, because they mean it in the Disney sense. If we're talking "true" as in real or genuine, I have no issue, but those are far in the minority. People like the idea of having a Destiny, because they're not smart enough or strong enough to take responsibility for their own love life. Or most other things.

-Expecially
This just makes you sound like an illiterate waste of a free education. Can you not read phonetically? Sound it out, you imbeciles.

-Nucular
See above. If you look at a word letter by letter, you can probably say it right, and with simple words like this, there's no excuse.

-Punny
Who even invented this word? Why would people decide it's okay? It's obnoxious. Puns are supposed to be clever, and they're usually more annoying than not. This is some bastard child of "pun" and "funny," but it's totally unnecessary.

-Pointless letter changes to diffuse profanity
Here's a novel thought: Say what you mean! If you're going to use profanity, use it. If you're trying to be sensitive to people who may be too old or too young to hear those words, get a better vocabulary, and use a different word. Everyone knows what you mean, so you may as well have just used the obscenity you had in mind.

A Month of Simple Pleasures, Day 14

Is anyone else kind of starting to lose steam with this? Because I'm starting to feel like I never shut up. How do people deal with posting things online all the time? And habits? How can anyone do things daily that aren't a physical need?

In other news, I got another free coffee today because they took like half an hour to get me mine. The guy made it a large too. I'm liking this whole "regular" thing.

And the irony of that is not lost on me.

On with the list!
14. Witty banter

This ties fairly closely with some of what I said in my last post. I really enjoy good communication, and it can be incredibly fun with the right dynamic. This is another reason I really enjoy intelligent, sarcastic, good-humored people. Me and my friend Chase have some of the driest, most ridiculous conversations ever.

Have you ever watched a decent game of volleyball? Ideally, the ball actually volleys, coming back and forth from both sides fluidly and quickly with different players jumping in and returning it. That's how conversation is supposed to be: fluid, participatory, and entertaining. Hopefully without animosity, but I suppose one can't have everything.

The best group interactions I've had (and when I say "group," I mean between four and ten people, because after that, it's hard to have actual, collective interaction) have been when there's comfortable, intelligent banter that everyone is taking part in.

Even if it's not in a group, one on one banter can be incredibly fun. Though, that's one of the reasons I've ended up in awkward, friend-zoning conversations.

People: amicable, enjoyable, humorous conversation is not always flirting. Flirting is also not always humorous or intelligent. If I had the motivation, I would make a huge Venn Diagram, but right now, my laundry, ferrets, videogames, etc. are more pressing, so you'll just have to imagine it.

I'm open to suggestions, though. I'm probably seeing Taryn on friday, so maybe I'll start one with her. And then bring Christy in, because I like making lists with her.

Anyway, I'm getting distracted, and there's less and less time before I go to work.

Also, I'm missing a figure study club, because it happens exactly during my shift tonight. Such obnoxious luck. I want to draw from models again!

A Month of Simple Pleasures, Day 13

13. Effectively translating something from thought into a tangible substance

This is one item on my list that I really thought about the phrasing of, because the original thought was about art, and then it expanded. I kept adding "ands" because of the other ways I create. I love to be able to take something in my mind and be able to present it to someone else, who can then understand what was in my head.

It's the joy of communication for me. Two base things that fill me with rapture are understanding and creating, and they're two of the things I seek most to do. There are different forms these take moment to moment, and different ways that I think about them, but when I strip away all the layers, that's what lies at the bottom of most of my frustrations, accomplishments, goals, pleasures, etc. I want to do both of them infinitely.

There is something magic about being able to take a thought or feeling I've had and to turn it into an image that someone else can look at and recognize. I get the same feeling when I look at art, but in reverse; I am communicating with another mind, though, and that amazes me. The same is true when I write something, and it's just perfect. It means what I want it to mean and says what I wanted to say. It happens verbally and visually and musically and in all these other ways that I find completely astonishing.

We can know and communicate with that which makes someone themselves, and we can be known and communicated to in our cores.

Maybe that's not all that "simple" a pleasure when I break it down and really explain it, but if that's too heavy for you, just assume I meant that art makes me happy. Which is true.

A bit on Mexico

I feel kind of obligated to post a blog since I haven't in nearly a month, but I also have a few things swirling around in my head that I'd like to spew at my unsuspecting audience. Which has either gotten much larger, or someone is giving me repeated pageviews to boost my self-esteem.

(It's Taryn, isn't it?)

Not gonna lie, though. I feel like a total winner for reaching over six hundred views.

Anyway, as most of you know, I got back from my annual week in Mexico on saturday (the 16th), and I always come back to the US with a different perspective on a lot of things. And fortunately, this trip fell on one of my more optimistic stints, so I spent a lot of it looking forward to all the amazing things that could happen in the future and enjoying the present. It's a nice way to feel, but I often don't manage it for more than a couple of hours.

The thing about Mexico is that it's a completely different world for me. Everything is so radically different for the single week that I'm there that I can't help but come away with a slight paradigm shift.

For those who don't know, I go every June with a group from my church to Cuidad Juarez, just south of El Paso, Texas.
We work with a sister church on any projects they're currently working on. Which we've been doing for about the last sixteen years, the last five of which I've been on. Temperatures are generally in the hundreds (it was between like 95 and 105 Fahrenheit the entire week this year), and this year we didn't have much in the way of shade. We were helping to start foundation work on a new building in an open lot across the street from the church. For the last couple years, it had been used as a parking area for the church, but since it's grown so much, they wanted to put in a new building.

I don't know if many of you are aware of this, but they speak Spanish in Mexico, and the number of Mexicans that speak English is relatively small. I speak very little Spanish, having taken four years of French in high school and one semester of Spanish in 12th grade, so most of what I know is simplistic and mangled, but one of the things I find constantly amazing is that language is not the main source of communication. I'm reminded of that every year when I enter into a world that I understand very little of.

And make no mistake, boys and girls, South American culture is an entirely different world from the one I live in. I imagine that's true of every culture, and it's something I'll have to get used to as I travel.

But where I was going with that was this: I always have an incredibly fun time and it's become kind of a "home away from home" thing, and this year I made a few friends, only one of whom spoke English. Because with Saras and Mayra and Erick and Antonio, we didn't have to be able to understand every word, you just have to be able to listen to what they're saying.

I learned once that only something like 10% of communication (I could do some research to substantiate that number, but I choose not to.) is based on the actual words coming out of your mouth. Body language, tone, expression, and so on play a much larger role. That's something that I never really consider when having conversations with people, but when you spend half the conversation exchanging questioning looks and laughing at each other's and your own incomprehension in between the exchange of information, you suddenly understand the value of such things.

I find that kind of amazing. It's an incredible learning experience.

And now I've lost motivation to continue this post, so I shall silence myself. Perhaps there'll be more about Mexico later, because I really didn't talk about anything I'd intended to, and I've said basically nothing about the actual trip.