Development

I've been thinking about the sort of things I've written about over the past few weeks and I'm starting to wonder whether I sound like I'm stuck in high school, chasing girls and worrying about what people think of me. It's true, that's what I was like in high school, pining over one particular girl and spending far too much time concerning myself with what people thought of me. For the most part, however, I didn't let that get in the way of the rest of my life. Now, in my mid-twenties, I'm concerned that I haven't grown up as much as I should have since then. While I'm certainly not living the hedonistic life of an eternal teenager, I don't think I've outgrown my teenage flaws and insecurities yet.

Every year, more and more people who graduated from school years after I did are getting married, becoming doctors and lawyers or whatever they've decided to do with their lives. I just don't understand why I'm not moving on. I'm not comparing myself to people in a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses type of way, just as a frame of reference. I don't begrudge anyone their success, I just don't know why I've arrested the progress of my life and have, for so long now, remained static.

I don't want to get into it too deeply right now; the main thing I wanted to get across tonight - and it seemed I got more than a little side-tracked on the way - was that I hope I'm not coming across as extremely immature. All this talk of 'I like this girl but she doesn't like me...' is most at home in the hallways of a high school and I don't want to come across as vacuous. I realise there are far bigger issues worthy of discussion so please don't think I spend my days recycling these thoughts in my head. It's just that whenever I sit down to write a post, that's what comes out. Like I think I mentioned once before, for a little while at least, blogging is going to be my therapy.

Duplicity

Something that really bothers me - and something I'm quite paranoid about - is duplicity. Strictly speaking, duplicity refers to deception or deliberate misrepresentation but, even though this is stretching the word's literal meaning, I consider duplicity to refer to the act of not meaning what you say or even not saying what you mean, even if you've got the best of intentions while doing so. Basically, regardless of why someone might feel the need to distort the truth, it's lying.

Yes, they're often what people regard as 'white lies', told to protect people's feelings when it's thought that the truth would be too painful. You know the ones: 'you don't look fat in that dress', 'I really like your cooking', 'you've got a really nice singing voice', and so on. These sorts of things are, to a large degree, quite understandable. When a friend asks you to evaluate their appearance or their cooking or their singing ability or whatever else, there's a lot to be said for being tactful in your response. Well, being tactful or distorting the truth a little bit so as not to hurt their feelings if your opinion is likely to do so. I will concede that it can sometimes be justified. Still, you've only got to look at some of the tone-deaf people who audition for Australian (or, insert-home-country-here) Idol to see how telling someone they've got a nice singing voice when that's not exactly true can lead to them being humiliated.

But I'm not talking so much about that. What concerns me more is the way people patronise someone with a phony compliment and then turn right around to someone else and say what they really think. I've seen it so often; a lot of people do it. If you haven't experienced it for yourself, all you have to do is listen to people at parties, at school, in the workplace, or anywhere else you happen to be in the course of your daily life and you'll see what I mean. I can't see how this is justified because, if your intention was to protect someone's feelings, why then go and laugh at them behind their back?

I'm occasionally guilty of the first infraction, distorting the truth so as not to offend people. As much as possible I avoid doing it but sometimes it's unavoidable. What I try never to do is tell somebody one thing and then make it known to everyone else I don't feel that way. And yet a lot of people have no problem doing this on a regular basis. I'm not talking about big stuff here, I'm talking more about situations like when someone leads someone else to believe they're friends and then, as soon as they're gone, talks about how much they can't stand them. When people behave in that way, how are you supposed to know if they're talking about you in the same way when you're not around?

You can't know, it's just a matter of being secure in who you are and trusting people. I wouldn't say I have a problem trusting people but I often wonder about people's motives for doing things. It's not much of a stretch for me to assume that someone is only paying me a compliment because they don't want to hurt my feelings by telling me what they're really thinking. I'm not good at taking compliments and most of the ones I do get are thought of in that regard. But that's got much more to do with my own insecurities than my ability to trust people.

What got me thinking about all this (in terms of writing blog post about it) was a conversation I had with a friend a few weeks ago. We were talking about a mutual friend, one who neither of us have seen in quite a few years. The three of us used to spend a lot of time together, going to movies and just hanging out. I drifted apart from the mutual friend but my other friend continued to see her quite regularly until a few years ago they too, due to their lives heading in different directions, went their separate ways. My friend and I were talking about her the other day, wondering what she was up to. We got to talking about her mother, who we had come to know quite well over the years, and my friend told me that she had once told him that her daughter, our friend, thought I was a creep. I didn't care what she thought about me (I wasn't particularly upset that we'd drifted apart years earlier...) but it did get me thinking.

About five or six years ago I went on a date with a friend of a friend. We really hit it off and I felt comfortable enough around her to lose some of my ever-present nerves and relax. We talked about a lot of different stuff and I even made a few jokes (my sense of humour only emerges when I'm not plagued by anxiety) and, at the end of the date, it was clear that I wasn't the only one who had had a good time. I asked her if she'd see me again and she didn't hesitate to say yes. In my mind, the day couldn't have gone much better than it did. I re-evaluated that when a few days later she wouldn't take my phone calls. I later learned that going out with me had given her the confidence to approach the guy she was really interested in. I was more or less instantly forgotten. I didn't even get the "you're a really nice guy, but..." speech, code for 'I don't like you'. The whole experience bothered my for a while, and even now it makes me question whether I can read how someone is really feeling. Do they mean it when they say they like me or is it just lip service? I still find it hard to open up to people, just in case the same thing happens again.

As I said before, all this has mainly got to do with the fact that I am deeply insecure. I don't like myself and I want other people to like me. It's not so bad that I'd betray my own values in order to get someone to like me but I still want to be liked. I don't like that about myself, that I'm always looking for approval from others. What makes it more complicated for me is that, because of my insecurity, even when I get that approval I often don't believe it to be genuine.

---

On another note, still on the subject of not telling the truth: if you lie once, for how long are you subsequently regarded as a liar? I've often wondered about this. If you commit murder, you are forever and always labeled a murderer, and I don't disagree with that label in that case. But what about other situations? What's the statute of limitations on being regarded as a liar?

Milestone

Today I'm just writing a short post to congratulate myself for achieving my goal of posting once every day for the entire month of January. For once I can say that I actually admire my resolve. I'm not big on celebrating my own accomplishments but, although this is rather minor, I thought I'd better at least acknowledge my effort. So, from me to me, well done.

Enough of that. As of tomorrow, this blog shall return to its regular schedule featuring my lamentations about how difficult it is for me to pick up girls or figure out where my life is headed.

Passion

I think it was a psychologist who once told me that if you don't know what you're passionate about, try being passionate about whatever it is you're doing. That's the trick, I suppose, being able to manufacture motivation and drive where there would otherwise be none. Still, often the act of believing something is enough to make it so. These may seem like strange words coming from someone like me, slightly cynical and as pessimistic as I often am. Funny thing is, I think I really believe them. I'm not talking about anything supernatural or paranormal - although I went through that phase in my teenage years - but, as I keep saying, a little self-belief can go a long way to creating confidence, and all manner of good things can flow from there. I keep harking back to this because, although I have accepted this idea intellectually, I haven't embraced it emotionally yet. I keep repeating it for my own benefit, in the hope it will sink in.

My idea of passion isn't an elitist one. I don't believe it only matters if you're driven to be a doctor or lawyer or pilot; it's not about external measures of success, it's about individual emotional fulfillment. If your dream is to become a human rights lawyer and change the world then go for it but, equally, if it's your dream to open a fish and chip shop in a seaside town then go ahead and do that. It might sound cliched but I think that regardless of what your dream is, if you've got the courage to follow it you should be applauded. I'm not talking about following a dream at all costs with a screw-everyone-who-gets-in-my-way sort of mentality. Shirking responsibility to chase a dream is selfish and probably isn't going to leave you feeling all that rosy.

At this point in my life I have no real responsibility. Nor do I have any passion. I have a couple of vaguely-defined goals, neither of which I'm really working towards. There's the writing thing and there's also faint desire to play cricket for Australia. The latter is nothing more than a daydream considering I don't actually play cricket but, for the last couple of years at least, I've thought it would be something I'd enjoy. Not that it's actually that much crazier than me wanting to be a writer, I rarely do any writing either. The reason for this inaction, so I keep telling myself, is that I'm lazy. But that's not really true; I'm not a lazy person at all. It's really because I have no faith in myself. If I did have a real passion for something, or at least enough self-belief to pursue my current goals, I know I would whole-heartedly apply myself to achieve my objective. I know that's a cop-out - putting the solution beyond the realm of my control - but it's how I feel.

To a degree, I also feel as though not trying is a way of keeping alive the idea that anything is possible. It's counterintuitive, I know, but if I follow a dream and fail, I'll need to accept that I'll never achieve that dream. If I don't try (and consequently don't fail) then, at least in theory, I'll always be able to believe that dream is still possible. In practice, however, it is pretty clear that accepting this means accepting that I'll never achieve anything.

If it wasn't already, it should now be blindingly obvious that I over-think and over-complicate just about everything. Some advice I got in a comment a few days ago definitely needs to be applied, quite liberally, to my whole life: don't think so much. If I disconnect the unnecessary part of my brain for just a minute, one thing is clear: I'm a fool if I wait around for things to happen to me, I need to make them happen. Life is going to come and go, with or without me.

A Musical Note

There's something almost spiritual about lying in total darkness listening to your favourite song. With the headphones in and the volume up, the inside of your head becomes a concert hall for an audience of one. Your other four senses numb and you just absorb the sound while it absorbs you. That's the power of good music, the sort of music you connect with.

Music often becomes associated with the best and the worst moments of people's lives; hearing songs can take you back to times and places long forgotten, instantly recapturing emotions of years past. I can remember crying myself to sleep listening to some songs while others remind me of a time when I felt a sense of possibility that now eludes me. Good times and bad times, much of life has a soundtrack. Not in a cheesy, pop kind of way - like holiday snaps set to the latest number one single - but on a far deeper level, where a song perfectly encapsulates how you feel at a particular point in time and becomes permanently imprinted with that emotion so that every time you hear it you're reminded of your former self. It's a symbiotic relationship in a lot of ways; music has the power to influence your mood and inspire you but at the same time you are able to project your own thoughts and feelings into songs so that they become uniquely meaningful for you in a way that other people who hear the song will never know.

Songs become people, places, and raw emotions, forming an aural record of your life. When I actually think about how many songs take me back to a place or a time or a person meaningful to me, I come up with dozens. I often enjoy taking long road-trips by myself because it gives me a chance to just listen to many of those songs. For three or four minutes it's just me, the road, and a reminder of who I used to be or how I used to feel and then, for the next three or four minutes it's another memory and another outmoded version of myself. You can re-live your life in a few hours. It's a great way to reconnect with yourself, to remember how you used to feel and see how much you have or haven't changed since certain moments in your life.

There's a lot of value in this sort of refection. I think it's one of the best ways to get through a difficult time. If you can remind yourself of a period in your life when you were at your lowest, when you couldn't see how you were ever going to recover and yet you did recover, then that should be enough to give you just a little bit of hope that, even though you may once again be down and don't know how to pick yourself back up again, you'll get through it. That anguish will eventually become just another song in your playlist.

Away From Me

I’ve spent about half of the last two and a half years overseas. My travels have taken me through Asia and across the United States; I’ve already seen more of the world than I ever thought I would. That’s primarily because, as a child, I never had any real desire to travel at all. I wasn’t one of those people who couldn’t wait to finish school so they could take off and explore the far corners of civilisation – I savoured the comforts of home too much for that. A couple of years ago I decided an overseas holiday would be good for me and it really was. Since then I’ve traveled on-and-off for a couple of months at a time.

I’m a different person when I’m overseas. I don’t know what it is but for some reason, when I’m away, I feel much happier. It’s almost like I instantly become a better, more optimistic version of myself as soon as I touch down on foreign soil. I’m more confident, capable, and, in general, really enjoy life. That confidence doesn’t extend to dealing with girls but I guess I can’t have everything.

Last year I spent some time in South-East Asia with a few friends. For a few days we rented motorbikes and rode around a small town in the south of Thailand. The first day we had the bikes we took it pretty easy – I’d never ridden before – and we did a few laps of the main streets of town while we were getting the hang of our hogs (they were only about 100cc). After a few laps, a fellow tourist on the side of the road waved me down. My friends were riding ahead and once they realised I’d stopped it took them a few minutes to turn around and come back to me. The girl who'd got my attention was in her late twenties or early thirties, European and, if I may say so, pretty attractive. We were a couple of kilometers from the centre of town and sort of in the middle of a desolate area and she explained that she was looking for a monument she’d read about in her guidebook. We’d passed it a little way back and I told her it was about a half hour’s walk down the road. She wasn’t enthused about the prospect of walking all that way in the mid-afternoon heat and asked if I would mind giving her a ride. I didn’t mind at all except that, after only about twenty minutes of riding the bike I didn’t fancy my chances of being able to maintain my balance with a passenger on the back. When my friends eventually caught up to me and I explained what had transpired they just laughed at me. I’m forever whining that I can’t pick up a girl and when one literally asks me to pick her up I decline.

Then there was the time I was wandering around a mall in New York and out of the blue a girl comes up to me and nervously says, “my friend overheard you talking and thinks your accent is really cute, where are you from?” Somehow I manage to walk away from that situation having politely explained that I was only in town for a day and in a couple of weeks would be heading back to Australia. What was I thinking? In fairness to me, I was working that day and was in a bit of a hurry but I didn’t think to get a phone number or an e-mail address or anything. Opportunities like that never present themselves to me and when they do I don’t recognise them. The universe is probably thinking, “what do we have to do for this guy, send him a singing telegram?” Maybe that would help; at least it’d get my attention.

My monumental ignorance notwithstanding, I really enjoy my time overseas. It takes a lot to get me down when I’m away. When I get home, for a few days at least, I maintain that positive state of mind but it doesn’t take long for me to lose the momentum and sink back into an apathetic stupor.

It’s tempting to take off again but, right now, it just doesn’t feel right. It would almost be like I would be running away from my problems, which are all pretty much inside my head anyway. There must be a reason why my mood alters so drastically depending on my geographical location. I will head overseas again sometime this year but I first want to work out why I’m so unhappy while I’m here. I’ve got no reason to be – my family and friends are supportive and I have life very easy. Maybe my discontent and disconnectedness is my way of telling myself that, right now, I should be somewhere else.

A Different Approach

I was at a barbecue today, thinking that all I ever seem to do is play tennis and go to barbecues. I still haven't done any writing, despite wanting to. Or at least thinking I want to. This week I will do it - I'll make myself do it and accept no excuses.

I got a comment from Kylie yesterday, talking about how my friend's suggested approach for talking to the girl seemed a little much. She suggested being a little more casual about it and slowly building a rapport by making small talk a few times. In theory, I agree. Being too direct could scare someone off. Strangely enough, it scares me more to think about just making small talk. I'd be less afraid to just ask her out. That's a little weird, right? How can it be harder to make small talk? I don't know why but I feel like I have more to lose doing things that way. It's almost as if I'm expecting to fail and want to get it over and done with more quickly. Spending time trying to get to know someone feels like it would be time wasted and just a way of falsely getting my hopes up.

Maybe I don't think I can take any more rejection. It's not much fun. But how am I going to break the cycle if I don't try? I feel like anyone who would agree to go out with me would only do so out of pity; like they'd be doing me a favour. I just can't believe that I'm desirable, on any level.

I remember asking someone out about five years ago. It was someone I'd gone to school with and had stayed in semi-regular contact with after we graduated. A mutual friend told me that, unbeknown to me, she had been interested in me for a few years. I called her up and we went out for a cup of coffee. Incidentally, this isn't the story I alluded to yesterday, where I, according to a friend, behaved so pathetically I disgraced all mankind, but this isn't much better and I would probably do things differently if I had the opportunity. Come to think of it, I could probably write a (humorous?) book about how not to ask girls out. I've figured out quite a few of the wrong ways to do it.

Anyway, we met for coffee. I hadn't been having a great year and was struggling to figure out where my life was headed. I was pretty depressed. So I told her that. It was a really stupid thing to do but it felt right at the time. I told her that I'd liked her for a while and that I wanted to go out with her but I thought it was only fair to her to let her know I was going through an emotional rough patch at that time. How dumb can I be? I mean, really? Looking back, it's quite obvious that I was subconsciously trying to sabotage myself. What astounds me is that I didn't consciously realise it at the time. I'm happy to say that I haven't repeated that mistake - I realised that moroseness isn't something most people find endearing. But I do think I've probably been the victim of self-sabotage on numerous occasions. And that begs the question, is it that I only think I'm going to fail or do I really want myself to fail? If I continue to undermine myself the way I have done in the past I'm probably always going to.