How Encouraging

You know how if the house is messy you tend to hang out elsewhere, because being in a messy house makes you feel guilty for not cleaning it up?

No?

Okay. Well I do. Similarly, if I haven’t posted for a while I avoid my blog because I feel so guilty for not posting. But today I decided to visit the dusty deserted thing, and found six comments I hadn’t read, and that by some fluke I got an enormous amount of blog views today.

Being substantially encouraged, I decided to post. I decided to title my post “How Encouraging.” And then I decided to google “how encouraging” and see what popped up.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

A few thoughts. Feel free to comment your thoughts about my thoughts.

1. I usually don’t shop much, but as it is the Christmas season, shopping is in order. I realized the other day that shopping makes me feel discontented and poor. I’m totally proud of my free clothes and borrowed books until I hit the stores, and then I just wish I had money to blow on cute lacy sweaters and the latest Lemoney Snicket book.

2. I get uncomfortable when people put themselves down. I know that there are a lot of people who have insecurities, and these insecurities manifest themselves in people dissing themselves. However, I am not one of those people.

(Yes I have a few insecurities, obviously, being human, but it is very unlikely that I point them out to people.)

However, sometimes I put myself down as part of a joke. For instance, I posted on facebook the other day, “I just realized that both my parents get phone calls all the time and text way more than I do. Also, my mom’s blog gets way more hits than mine, and she has almost twice as many facebook friends as I do. Suddenly I feel very un-cool.”

I posted this because I thought it was hilarious that my parents were more media-savvy and “cool” than me. My mom, understanding completely, posted “neener neener,” and I laughed and laughed. But some people felt they had to reassure me that I was actually cool.

Similarly, in my last post about being stupid and not even knowing it, I obviously called myself stupid. I was actually kind of calling everyone stupid. I used the word “stupid” because it was the most attention-grabbing way to say it. I was in no way trying to get reassurance that I’m smart.

Once I told someone that I was the kind of girl that guys are very comfortable being friends with, but didn’t get crushes on. I didn’t realize I had ventured into “putting yourself down” territory until they began vehemently reassuring  me that this wasn’t true. I had actually thought I was paying myself a compliment by saying that guys are comfortable being friends with me. Fail.

As much as I appreciate the reassurance, I find it a little frustrating that people think I’m legitimately putting myself down when I’m not. So for the record, if you hear me diss myself, I’m most likely making a joke or dissing the human population in general or trying to compliment myself.

3. What do you do when you are trying to direct a Christmas play and a whooping-cough epidemic dances at the fringes of the school, threatening to weed out your performers one by one?

…

That’s all for now. The end of this blog post. Goodbye. Have a happy life. Find a dusty under-used blog and comment encouragingly on it.