Last week, I read something that made something in my brain twitch.
I first started following Steve Errey, of The Confidence Guy because he interviewed Naomi from IttyBiz and anyone who likes Naomi is probably somebody that I’m gonna like too. I meant to read the interview at the time, but just didn’t have a chance.
I finally got around to it, and the very first line made my head spin:
“Stop giving a shit about the end goal,” says Naomi Dunford.
Oh shit, I thought. I worry about the end goal all the freaking time. In fact, it’s almost everything that I worry about now. And do you wanna know how far that gets me?
Really far, if moving backwards counts.
It stops me from making any kind of decision, or take any kind of action, because again and again, my brain plays out this scenario:
I do the thing, whatever the thing is. The world thinks that I am the most annoying person that they’ve ever seen, weird, ugly and odd. They decide that they hate me. I am then shunned forever by society and I never succeed at anything that I do, ever again, because the world, all 6 billion of its inhabitants, singularly hate me.
I wish I was kidding. I wish that this scenario was even in the slightest exaggerated. It’s not.
The outside in
I have always felt like an outsider. I have a pattern of feeling like an outsider. I was the weird kid, the ugly, awkward, gangly kid who was too intelligent, too creative, too talented, too good. I was rarely outright teased, but I was most definitely never part of the “in crowd”. I often felt out of place, different from everyone else. A tiny bit shunned. Not the last kid picked for sports teams, but most definitely never the first. Actually, more like second last.
The thing is, I think that everyone feels like that at some point in their lives, if not almost all the time. Havi talks about this here and calls it “The Clan of the Outsiders”. I have the same story going that she does – I’m on the fringes, different, weird. Certainly not part of the in crowd, certainly never going to fit in. I am the black sheep.
It’s just all part of the story that I tell myself, but I never really noticed until this weekend.
World’s worst college student
Okay, so obviously I’m not a college student. And never will be. But boy oh boy, would I ever suck at it. Me and Jesse went to stay with his best friend in Toronto for my birthday and hang out at his house for a couple days with approximately 10 other college students.
How many differences can I enumerate? I don’t drink or get high. I don’t go off on crazy adventures, or stay up late. I get tired easily. Staying up until 4:30 am just makes me want to nap all day. I go to bed at 11pm and get up at 7am so I can be a tree hugging yoga hippie. I talk about things like community and changing the world and inspiring people and making a difference.
They just want to party, have fun and survive university without failing and being completely broke. And there’s 100% nothing wrong with that and I thought that they were all really, really sweet, nice people. I liked them a lot, and completely respect their way of life. I don’t think less of them, or anything.
I just felt different. Out of place. Worried that my feeling completely exhausted and therefore incredibly antisocial was going to make them hate me. All I wanted to do by the end of Sunday was go hide somewhere.
Sudden realization
It hit me this morning that if I threw these college students into my world of art, and social media and web design and changing the world and being a tree hugging yoga hippie chick that they would feel equally, if not more, out of place. I mean, at least I know what a mickey is – they’d have no idea what I was talking about if I started going on about how the new layout of the WordPress admin page was taking a while to get used to.
However, none of this eases any of my fear about the whole world hating me if I do the thing, whatever “the thing” is. There’s still a part of me that says that I’m an outsider, and I’m shunned and it doesn’t matter how hard I try, I’m just always going to be hated on sight.
For now, I’m just letting the fear be there, sitting with it, and trying not to struggle past it. It’s just a part of me, a part that wants to be heard and acknowledged, like anything else.
I think some love and attention is just what the doctor ordered.
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6 Comments
Here you go, sweetie. Love and Attention. Hugs. Hot chocolate (since you don’t drink beer).
There are plenty of students who do want to change the world, btw. And plenty who don’t study full time. Just so you know. In case one day you find something potentially useful about college. I wouldn’t want you thinking it was something you “couldn’t” do. Though it might be something you never choose to do.
JoVE’s last blog post..One thing at a time?
There’s a part in the book The Story of B, where the main character explains how, to an outsider, all of the world’s religions look essentially the same. As a Muslim, I look at you as a Jew and I can only see how different you are. An alien would look at us and say that for all practical purposes, we differ in only the most superficial details.
It’s amazing to think how we spend so much time feeling different, when others would look and say we’re just the same. JoVE is weird because she took stuffy academic stuff and put it on (gasp!) the internet. And she homeschools. The academic communities basically just shit on her head, right there.
I dropped out in grade eleven to have a baby with a Mormon and then (horrors!) married him. Never went back to school. It’s only recently that people stopped telling me, “You know, it’s not too late to go back to university.” Um, right. Sign me up.
I can’t speak for JoVE, but it always blows my mind that you and I feel like we’ve had such different stories, yet other people would look and say the dominant factors — the feelings — are identical.
In other news, while 5,999,999,999 people may indeed hate you and want to eat you with chopsticks, I do not.
Naomi Dunford’s last blog post..Guinea Pigs, Gurus, and a New Columnist at IttyBiz
We’ll have to grab you back for another chat! You won’t be able to move for the love and attention
Joely Black (@TheCharmQuark on Twitter)’s last blog post..The power of audacity (doing epic shit)
I once heard that it’s like everyone is standing outside an empty fishbowl, looking in. To each of us, it looks like the fishbowl is full of people, talking, laughing, being together, and we’re stuck on the outside, alone. But the truth is that that feeling of isolation is an illusion. None of us are really outsiders. It just feels that way.
That might not be helpful. I just love that comparison.
Diane Whiddon-Brown’s last blog post..A Note from the Grammar Mafia
I’m a little bit stumped by your honesty Sarah. Like the other commenters here, I’ve felt like an outsider from right back in my childhood.
Over the years I’ve grappled with it, and pummelled it and given it a wedgy, before finally realising that it doesn’t really matter. I’m different in some important ways and the same in other important ways.
That’s just how it is, and me fighting with it won’t do anybody any good.
What you say about fear is spot on – don’t try to do anything with that fear, just acknowledge it with that blistering honesty of yours.
Steve Errey – The Confidence Guy’s last blog post..Confidence Interview – Michael Bungay Stanier
Wow — thank you for your honest words. I’ve always felt on the outside, too. But us outsiders are finding “our people” — true? The places where we feel we don’t fit in inform us of where we do. Keep it up.
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[...] can’t be someone I’m not. Even on the weekend, when I felt so out of place with Jesse’s friends, it was because I was trying so hard to fit in, to be like them and I made myself miserable. I had [...]