flavor of the week
i seem to be in the habit of quoting things without much comment lately.
oh well. anyway.
today it’s this:
“So you can’t be everything to everyone. You have to just be you. The various of versions of you that there are. Sometimes you will be internet you, sometimes you will be real life you. Sometimes you will be grumpy jerkoff you, and sometimes you will be hat-in-hand apologetic you. Sometimes you will be that you who comes out and makes everyone go “Man, I wanna buy that guy a beer” and you’ll go “self, where does that guy GO and could he come out more often?” and your self will go “hey, we are ALL you. Go easier on us, be as nice to us as you are to everyone else, stop trying to be liked by everyone, and we’ll see what we can do.”
So I’m finally learning that it’s okay to not be liked by everyone. I’m even learning that it’s okay to stand up for yourself, to do right by yourself, even if it’s uncomfortable and awkward, even if it means people you in fact like might turn around and dislike you. Even if it means everyone might dislike you.”
i’ve been stewing on this subject a lot lately. i won’t get too personal here in this public place, especially since before i’ve even written this i know it’s going to reek of self pity and that’s not at all what i am trying to say or want reactions to be responsive to, but anyway: i go through periods where i start to get the feeling that more people don’t like me than i was previously aware of. meaning, of the people i spend time with (in all the various ways/places i spend my time, this is a lot of people, so i am not talking about close personal friends, but people i see/work with/hang out with repeatedly), i suddenly feel like, maybe when i walk into a room, they don’t care about saying hello. and i understand why. because it’s no coincidence that these same periods are the time when i am least liking myself, times when it seems like “THAT girl” who is one of the many versions of Me who lives inside me that neither i nor anyone else likes has been out more than the version who is compassionate, joyful, enthusiastic, fun, etc. so i don’t blame them, these people who i’m pretty sure don’t feel like saying hello to me anymore, or calling me, or txting me, or communicating online. it’s ok. i know if i’m being the me that *I* like, then more people will like me, and vice versa. duh.
recently, 2 things brought this all into a bit more focus for me personally. ok, probably more than 2, but 2 are what i will point to right now.
1. I am not a morning person. one of my newer coworkers is. not long ago she was prodding me because i never give her a super friendly “GOOD MORNING! HOW ARE YOU?” at the office. i usually just mumble “Hi” and try to wake up while reading my email and drinking coffee before actually speaking to anyone. i jokingly responded with something like “You haven’t worked here long enough if you think you can turn me into a morning person.” from the other room, my boss, whom i’ve worked with 40 hours a week for 10 years, chimes in: “Yeah, but maybe you could try being nice.”
ouch.
2. I recently visited my family, and had a difficult time not feeling like a judgmental bitch, when really i just care so deeply about them that it’s somewhat difficult for me to not comment on certain lifestyle choices, which i know causes friction and makes me seem holier-than-thou. i am aware of this. could i comment more compassionately? Yes, and in the future, i will try. i promise.
So there we have 2 cases in which people who know me very well/have spent a lot of time with me were not liking me, or, maybe in the 2nd case, even though no one directly said anything by the end of the 3rd or 4th day i was feeling like they weren’t liking me, because i was not liking myself in that situation. These do not even account for all the other people in my life who i’m pretty sure i’ve rubbed the wrong way recently, with a comment or a look or a something.
the crux of all this appears to be that while “being yourself” is key to authenticity, and yes this means that some people will not like you and that is OK, it is also important to be your best self, a self that you like, whether anyone else does or not. using the excuse that being a sour, judgmental person is just “who you are” does no one any good, even if it’s true.
back to the point: why i go through cycles where the version of me who is most present in my life is someone i don’t like is something i am trying to investigate. it’s ok for other people to dislike me. it’s not ok for me to dislike me. that is dysfunctional.
update/addendum, from my comment on the original post:
thx to leah @ohheygreat for being brave enough to start the conversation and writing about this, as it’s something i’ve been stewing about for a while but felt…..immature? for even thinking about, like this is something that only teenagers should be concerned with and once you reach a certain age you should stop giving a f**k if anyone likes you. but the truth is, some of us never thinking about it (and what it means about yourself if you realize that you’re unlikable), which to me is a sign of self-awareness, but a lot of older people just repress the hell out of these thoughts because it’s seen as a sign of weakness or something and succumb to accepting themselves as an “angry old wo/man”, believing that’s “who they are” and that there is no point in trying to change, which is sad to me.
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i wish i could articulate my thoughts/feelings the way you do.
I really find this relatable because I am a confident person and generally feel indifferent for the most part if people don’t like me because — hey, not everyone is going to like me. But I am also a pretty sensitive person and it then becomes a bit more difficult or at least it adds a complicated element of reflection when I realize that people are responding to something that I also don’t love about myself. I especially relate to the judgment thing — I have family and friends who I dearly love but sometimes I just see them making decisions or even (sigh) having opinions that I just think are RIDICULOUS. And it is hard for me not to rail against that and communicate it because I feel disingenuous keeping silent, but then again not everyone is interested in my opinion all the time. It’s a tough balance. Great post — thought provoking.
i have been pondering “what the hell do i do with a personal blog?” because, well, tribe.net is pretty much a non-entity at this point, facebook is annoyingly stale by contrast to what tribe used to be, and livejournal just felt so disney that i abandoned it years ago in favor of the tribe.net community… so i was thinking “i always enjoyed amy’s thoughts. i’ll see what her blog is about these days”… and i come across this post.
i had an experience about a month ago… i was at a concert in ithaca, ny (yes, a grateful dead spin-off project) and this woman came up and introduced herself to me as someone who had friended me on facebook. i had been arguing with my sweetheart for many consecutive days in the most heart-wrenching agonizing ways… was truly emotionally just a mess. well, this woman later posts on facebook that i was too young to be a grumpy old man, etc. and i was thinking “hey, fuck you! if you knew me, you’d know that my head / heart were in a really heavy place.” a few days of this went by and eventually i wrote to say something trite to her to apologize, but didn’t hear back. the point to me wasn’t so much that i had upset her, or needed her to accept my apology. to me what was more important was that i realize and internalize that i was making that impression on someone.
anyway, we’ve only met in person for all of about eight minutes at a dusty camp at burning man, but your thoughts on tribe.net were always among my favorite. i miss a lot about the regular interactions on that site and your blog posts are among the things that i enjoyed reading regularly. it is nice to have a connection to someone’s thoughts and not really know them as a person. i know we have mutual friends and i know there are people who’d give me the impression that we would get along if we knew each other, but (strangely) knowing you is not that important to me. being able to peer inside your skull every now and then and see that you are thinking interesting thoughts and articulating them well and just questioning the world is reassurance enough that i’m not alone in my questioning of those things that i have passion, ambivalence or complete confusion about.