EPTMy dad once told me I shouldn't pace, because it worries the troops.
Let them worry. I do my best thinking when I pace. I like to think it's because it gets the blood moving, my heart beat a little more active. It's probably just a classical conditioning affect though.
Lately I've been thinking about what makes a person fit a definition. What makes a person weird, what makes a person brave, what makes person smart, what makes a person a 'good guy.' Normally I just think about these things while I walk, and keep my conclusions to myself. I'm never wit enough on the spot to have a conversation about it with someone, and I change my mind so many times I would be constantly correcting myself. Last year though I wrote the results of one of these sessions down, and looking back at it now I realise my disposition has changed quite a bit, and I enjoy observing where I've changed and why. So I plan to do so again, not altogether arbitrarily on the week of my birthday.
I was having a conversation with a friend who was complaining about another friend, but ended the monologue with the phrase 'but he's a good guy.' He often does this, and I sometimes reassure the statement especially when he is talking about a close friend of ours, but this time I stared kind of silently at him with a bit of what might have been an unimpressed face. "You don't think so?" he said to me. I thought to myself "not really..." but maintaining the ever political nature of opinions, said "eh... I dunno, I haven't really seen him as much as you have," instead. That's not true though. I know when someone is a 'nice person' or not. At least I know when I am choosing the definition of a nice person. I think many people use the phrase so loosely it has no meaning, and might better have not been said at all. They use it as a tool to cover themselves for the complaints they've just issued, as if the long winded tale of their faults should not sway me to dislike them when balanced against the short phrase 'but he's a good guy.' You hear this often in conjunction or in place of the phrase "means well." 'My professor is a huge idiot and is really annoying BUT SHE MEANS WELL.' Really? So the person who is constantly inconsiderate of other people's feelings and priorities 'means well.' Nah, I don't think so. When I use the phrase "means well" I hope that I only use it to describe someone who generally tries to make the people around him or herself comfortable, but by some unanticipatable factor, have wronged someone accidentally. That's someone who meant well. Meaning well is not just the absence of maliciousness. Someone who pulls you into doing things you don't want to do without thinking about your life doesn't mean well and isn't being malicious. They're just neutral, and more or less selfish. So no, I don't think they're a 'good guy' and I wouldn't particularly want them for a friend (or necessarily particularly avoid their friendship to my inconvenience).
When I think of these things, they always coincide with introspection. I feel it's only a fool who judges others without judging him or herself. It seems natural to think that means the question I should ask myself is "am I good person?" but after I think for a moment, that wasn't the judgment I was making at all. I was making a judgment of inappropriately defining people for political reasons. I don't think I'm guilty of this. I don't often outright say what I think of people, but when my response is silence or a pointed stare, I don't think I'm fooling anyone. I think I'm communicating very clearly my opinion is not one they'd like to hear, while being fair enough to say that my judgment is based on so little information it's not necessarily wise to present it anyway.
This is all very dull though, so maybe a more interesting question (thought not less conceited and convoluted) I've asked myself. What is weird? Eccentric, strange, odd, UNIQUE? I want very much to be unique, and I feel it is necessary to be so for success in the career I want. Not only that, I feel it's necessary just to be interesting. I hate so much when I see someone come up with something that does not differ in spirit much from something I have come up with. It makes me feel like I am only different by my superficial appearance, and that my intangible qualities have no need to be measured. But some things I know about me are different from most anyone I know. For instance, I am never bored. I hear people complain all the time that they are bored, usually on MSN, but I have never experienced that. If I am at home, and I have a lot of time, I have an endless number of small projects I can do. I will spend hours working on something that some might say was not worthy of such an amount of effort. But it was worth it. To entertain others and to grow as a person, every project I have is worth whatever time I have. I do not like being idle. If I am in a class listening to a lecture that is mostly filler and bullshit, I am not bored, I am angry. Angry that my time is being wasted on something that will not make me grow. I do not feel that emotion is the same as being bored. I'm a very tensed and stressed person, 'bored' just isn't one of my emotions. I don't understand how someone at home can complain to me 'I'm bored.' Well write the story you're supposed to have written for months, or paint, or have a think about life. My brain is always active, how can yours be empty? If you are lazy and want to be entertained, go find a book or use the internet. If you are so lazy you don't want to find your entertainment, then go wallow by yourself...
Maybe that doesn't make me weird, however. It sounds too idealic, like I'm bragging and even lying to myself. So what about interesting things that make people 'weird?' Things we do when we're alone and no one worth worrying could be looking. Maybe your thoughts turn to something perverse, a strange fetish or a voyeuristic fantasy. But is that even weird? Especially if I were able to predict it? Sometimes when I find myself in this situation, alone but for the possibility of an observer I would not care about, I go outside. Three in the morning, pouring rain, I roll in the grass like some kind of mental person. I love the rain. I like being wet, and soaked, and cold. I like how soft the grass is when it rains, and I like resting my head on it. But is that weird? Not liking rain, and rolling in grass, which is quite a common fantasy, but being cold, and getting soaked, and actually doing it in the middle of the night? I'm reminded of the movie Risky Business where the protagonist dances in his underwear all over the house. That's not uncommon. The freedom to do anything you want and not be judged for it. So what if someone might have looked out their window and seen my flailing in the grass in the rain. Everyone does 'weird' things when they're alone. What I want to know, is does anyone else do that exact thing. Still very probably anyway...
So what am I that makes me worth listening to, if I have so much in common with what everyone already knows? If my experiences are all shared with other people. How far should I push myself to experience things few others have ever experienced so that I can share something you didn't already know? Many of my favourite authors never wanted to be writers. They simply experienced something no one else had, and wrote honestly about it. People who have been to war, people who have murdered, people have been extremely abused. What can I do with my imagination to pretend I've experienced something no one has, that someone else hasn't imagined themselves? I often like to think that I have some kind of mental disorder. Something that makes me different, and therefore interesting. But maybe I'm completely normal. Maybe the only thing I can do is draw from as many different places as possible to combine known experiences in ways no one has yet bothered to try. I try to expose myself to all types of music, art, food, places. Maybe I don't need to. Maybe people like reading about themselves.
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Sorry, just squeezing out the last of my teen angst before I turn 20 ^^
