03-30-10 - The Worst

One of the weirdest/worst types of people are the guys who wear really wacky clothes, but then are just boring as hell. Like the accountant who toils away in the cube farm at your company, but wears purple sparkley dress shoes every day. Or maybe he has a whole collection of weird shoes. Often these guys focus on some particular weird accessory, like maybe rainbow suspenders, or bow ties, or hats, or whatever. They are into rockabilly or swing music or some other type of music that for a second you think "oh that's kind of cool" but then you realize it's completely uncool and uninteresting. (another variant of this loser is the guy who is constantly wearing clothing related to their hobby or interest, like wearing their swing dancing outfits to work, or wearing their league bowling shirt or whatever; oo how interesting, I'm just dying to ask you about your hobby which you are so obviously advertising). Their wacky clothes scream "talk to me!" but generally they are quiet and introverted. Obviously they are desperate for human interaction and to be interesting, but their actual personality can't make that happen, so they try to use the wacky clothing items to spark some conversation. Of course I categorically refuse to help them out by asking about their interest or wacky clothing item.

Sometimes I find myself dangerously close to this precipice. On the one hand, I think everyone is fucking boring and retarded, so I have no interest in actually talking to people and being outgoing. On the other hand, I think that just wearing what you're "supposed to" is fucking ridiculous and boring, so I am tempted to get wacky and break the rules of decorum to show that I am not going to play society's stupid conformist fashion game. The result is that I become the boring quiet guy in wacky clothes. That must be avoided.

Recently I've become much more aware of how childish and pouty I can be. When something doesn't go my way, I go into a quiet huff. Partly that's processing and thinking about the next course of action, but it's also excessive dwelling. It's also a subconscious way of showing the world that I have been bothered and you better not do that any more; I actually make a pouty face and glower, it's very obvious if I have a camera pointed at myself (which would be an awesome tool BTW). For some reason I am much more able to step outside my own consciousness and observe myself as I do this recently and realize "wow you are being really pouty".

Playing DDR the other night I realized I have a bad habit of clinging to easy things I am good at instead of pushing myself by doing hard things I'm not so good at. Years ago when I played DDR more seriously, I played almost the whole time on light mode, I moved up to the hardest songs like Paranoia, but would practice them over and over until I could get a 100% perfect, but I stayed on light mode. A few times I tried normal mode and it was really hard and I moved back to just perfecting light mode. I would have gotten much better much faster if I had just pushed myself more to move up in levels, even though it felt hard and frustrating. I realize now that I did the same thing when I was playing poker. I stayed at lower levels where I could completely dominate and make massive profit rates, where I was confident that I was the best at the table, rather than move up to levels where I might struggle a bit.