I hate Adam Levine. Not because I loathe his music (although I do) or I think his band is overrated (again, I do), but because that sonofabitch has looked dead into the eye of an interviewer and, without so much as a hint of irony, stated, “I believe Maroon 5 is the greatest band in the world.” And instead of being laughed out of the industry, he turned around and had even more millions of fans support such a ridiculous statement that completely validated this delusion that he happily resides within and effing profits from. What a jackass.

But honestly, I kind of want that. I want to be so full of myself and so fully subscribed to this delusional myth of myself that I just hurl myself forward, so convinced of my own greatness that I just arrogantly laugh at those who would dare to question me. And I want to be able to do all this and actually be successful solely because of it.

That’s the thing. We all know those completely delusional people who believe themselves to be brilliantly talented musicians or actors or whatever who are simply audacious in their grandeur self-proclamations of greatness who, really, aren’t that good. They may be “talented” in that they can play an instrument or recite lines, but they aren’t actually creating anything new and different that would render them an “artist”. Nevertheless, they plow forward with their juvenile, inflated sense of their own self importance, brushing off those of us who think they’re insane and pompous and holding themselves with what can never be confused with simple humble confidence. It’s gross.

But the woooorst part is when those idiots go on and somehow become wildly successful and have all these legions of people who stand behind them and go “Yes! Yes you ARE the greatest artist/architect/singer/model this world has ever seen!” and, thus, they find vindication for their mentality and success. And, because art is totally subjective, who am I to argue with the bazillions of fans who are busy convincing Adam Levine or Avril Lavigne (heh, they rhyme) or Nickelback or Creed or Limp Biskit or Amy Poehler or Slipknot or Flo Rida or Scarlett Johansson or Kid Rock or Jimmy Fallon that all their arrogance wasn’t for naught? These people, in all their egomaniacal bliss, have been given exactly what they wanted, all from being delusional.

And, even though it’s really annoying to be around one of those types of pretentious douchenozzles, there’s a part of me that really really wants their ability. I want the ability to convince myself that I’m undeniably awesome and that everyone who thinks otherwise is just socially, intellectually stunted and “One day they’ll see! One day they’ll appreciate me for the great forward-thinking genius I really am!” and just plow forward in my convictions. And even if I never find success with my apparent genius, then I will live happily in the assumption that I’m a real bohemian who is before my time and will only be revered in my postmortem career.

God, wouldn’t that be nice? Just to eliminate all that doubt and fear with a genuine sense of insane arrogance? It would get rid of all that time I waste on hesitation and kicking myself when I get rejected and really just pave new paths for me. I mean, even if people effing hate being around me and my Kanye-esque mentality (not behavior) there are bound to be sheeplike people who will totally buy whatever I’m saying and believing because that’s just what people do when there’s someone out there who’s completely convinced of their own awesomeness, even if that idol has no effing idea what they’re doing. (Oprah, anyone?) And with that diva-like (HAAATE that word) egomania, I’ll become this great self-fulfilling prophesy, able to convince others that they SHOULD think I’m awesome or else they’re just a bunch of morons with no taste. What an incredible trait/ability/feat.

The problem with that is that it’d be a lie for me and I’d feel like I was playing a part. I know I’d constantly be going “Why are these people listening to me? Do they have no minds from which to draw their own conclusions?” and then I’d start resenting my fans for being sheep… but not as much as I’d hate myself for feeling like my entire professional persona is just a big lie that doesn’t represent who I really am, and what kind of life is that?

So, I’ll keep trudging along in this hyper-self-conscious/aware creative process I’ve set out for myself and I’ll continue to spend weeks talking myself into submitting work that my friends have told me is really pretty good. Because at least that’s who I am and how I feel most comfortable functioning. At least from that point I can write from some sense of genuine self-actualization without having to create some self-inflated alter ego to speak for me.

I dunno, maybe I’ll at least make an effort to not immediately assume those who give me positive feedback are just being nice or have no idea what they’re talking about…
Baby steps.

I am severely, noticeably awkward.
And not in a way I know how to classify.

A lot of people say that about themselves, mostly because “awkward” has somewhat become a trendy form of humor these days like in “The Office” with the painfully social ineptitude of those characters or the bumbling awkwardness of Lemon on “30 Rock.” In this new post-technological society where nerds are ruling the world, “awkward” has suddenly become a mainstream form of “genius” entertainment, bringing back styles similar to those created by Andy Kaufman.

There’s the cool awkward where a cute girl is klutzy or emotionally crippled in some adorable, faux-needy way.
I’m not that.

Then there’s the “nerd” awkward where the social ineptitude leaks over from adolescence into the real world and LARPers and Trekkies still think it’s important to violently argue about Asimov’s theories. (By the way, it’s weird how geeks across the planet have the same awkward speech cadences and ticks, or how they have identical gestures or facial quirks… it’s like a gene.)

That’s not me, either.

There’s the random-humor-and-obscure-loser-reference awkward that Andy Samberg and the Lonely Island guys like to play with.

Not me.

And then the painfully-insecure-overcompensating-Michael-Scott-epic-fail type of awkward.

Ehh… Used to be me. Then I stopped drinking, so not so much anymore.

And there are countless other subcategories that aren’t really publicly illustrated but are definitely noticeable to the average person. There’s the fat-girl-lost-a-lot-of-weight-and-doesn’t-know-she’s-hot-so-still-acting-self-loathing-and-sell-outty awkward. There’s the 40-year-old-math-teacher-divorcee-trying-to-reclaim-her-youth awkward. There’s obligatory-creepy-lecherous-perv awkward. There’s the-gay-guy-trying-to-cling-onto-the-coatrack-in-the-closet-even-though-everyone-KNOWS awkward. The list could go on forever.

Again, none of these are my type of awkward.

I’ve known about my type of awkward since I was little and started listening to my deeper-than-everyone voice on my parents’ tape recorder. I noticed that my cheeks encompassed a majority of my face and the corners of my mouth stick together when I’m talking, which has caused more than one person to remark, “You remind me a lot of Melissa Joan Hart.” (…awesome…) My nose spreads endlessly across my face like a tribute to Bill Cosby, my arms have always looked like turkey legs even at the peak of my weight-training regimen, I have more facial hair than anyone who isn’t Italian should legally have and for whatever reason, I’ve always been at the very least a leeeetle heavier than my doctor says I should be.

And that’s just the physical stuff. I literally can’t leave any social situation without having at least one moment I look back on and think, “Why in the hell did I do/say/wear that?! What the eff is wrong with me!?” Fortunately, these actions are never part of a major disagreement or conflict (God blesses me with good judgment and the ability to only say what I mean during those moments) but the other 96% of my life is fair game for my social uselessness. Actually, the only place I don’t immediately flinch at my actions in retrospect is in text and I accredit that to my ability to edit. This same questioning-of-actions is constant and is heightened when I revisit old performances or photos or memories of defunct relationships or any era when I was really reeeeaally dysfunctional and/or inebriated. Suffice to say, there’s a lot of forehead slapping involved in my self-analysis.

And honestly? Yes, I am always amazed that I’m able to have/keep better-than-amazing friends and even more amazed that I’ve ever been able to trick anyone into finding me attractive. That’s the truth.

Don’t get me wrong here. When I say that I’m awkward, this is not me being self-depreciative or loathing, if you can believe that. I’m not saying I’m socially inept or incapable of any sort of productive, enjoyable existence. And I’m definitely not saying that I don’t have any redeeming qualities about myself, physically or otherwise. I’m really just saying that even after spending years upon years watching myself and finding that, even after years of therapy and tankerloads of introspection, the Awkward is the one thing that remains constant. It’s mine to keep, apparently.

The problem with having recognized my awkwardness is that, unlike performers like Rachel Dratch or Chris Farley who seized their awkwardness and entertained the masses with it, I have no idea how to make any of my Awkward appealing or humorous… or if it’s even possible. At all.

Even though I worked a lot of the “Who am I?”s and the “What the hell is going on with me?”s out in my younger years, I’ve come to realize that I still waste a LOT of time grappling with this ongoing resistance to the ultimate notion that I’m a bit left of center. I still play dress up and take pictures of myself to try to convince myself that I’m extraordinarily attractive when really, even the one usable photo out of every 200 that I take is only satisfactory. I still fling as much of myself “out there” as I possibly can even if I have absolutely nothing informed or relevant to bring to any table at which I may be aiming. I recognize that I did a lot more of that in my adolescence, which is really strange considering how much I haaated myself. You would think that someone who was completely convinced she was a hideous moron would hide under a rock but for some reason, I still enjoyed being a bit rogue and outspoken when I could… I know; it doesn’t make any sense to me, either.

Now, though, I don’t have all the disgust and hate for myself that trails around with me through all my actions, so I’m really just looking at myself objectively. I’m awkward, not ever going to fit into some battleax role, nor am I ever going to be a lusty object of desire. And, despite all my flailing idiocy, I’m 99.9% sure that I’m always going to slide into average obscurity with the rest of the masses. That’s just how it is and I’ve become happy with that. (And yes, for the record, I do blame this celebrity-crazed society of ours for trying to convince everyone that if they aren’t wildly famous or publicly lauded then they aren’t worthwhile. It’s all lies that I’m happy to avoid.)

However, the underlying question that keeps nagging at me after all these conclusions is simply “Where the hell does that put me?”

What does my type of Awkward qualify me for? Where would my Awkward be best utilized? How can I get that to work for me? How do I even start figuring all that out?

“Well the young man, he ain’t got nothing in the world these days.” 

There are things that have been cropping up in my recent life that have made me feel very very old. Weary. Worn, even. 

I don’t mean that I’m suddenly realizing that I’m 26 and I’m disillusioned with the pop culture du jour and the idiotic recklessness of teenagers. I don’t even mean that I stagger in shock when I realize that this year’s college freshmen were born in the 1990’s (although that did throw me for a loop when I first did the math.)

It’s something much deeper than that, something I actually didn’t see coming and would never have guessed about myself if you’d asked me even as recently as a week ago. I feel older than a mere 26 in a number of ways and it seems I’ve undergone a sort of disheartened dropping of the veil that has gradually occurred when I wasn’t paying attention. 

Sometime when I wasn’t looking, I became experienced and a bit more understanding. Of a lot, actually. I woke up suddenly with deeply rooted knowledge of things that my younger self would have balked at and resisted fervently. These days I chuckle at the absurdity of childish mind games I used to spend hours submerged within, I snort mockingly in the face of empty flattery,  I tap the ashes off my mental cigarette and raise an eyebrow in amusement when people believe they’re pulling the wool over my eyes. It’s not so much that I’ve become cynical, because I still have ideals built on wild optimism that I consider to be realistic despite the naivete they might allude to. But moreso that I’ve become both wary and accepting of human nature, relinquishing the desire to change everything and everyone, yet still maintaining optimism that everyone has potential good buried somewhere inside them. 

There’s a certain powerlessness that sets in after the abrupt realization that every person is only guaranteed a one-line synopsis about their identity, their life when it’s all said and done. This realization, of course, sets in motion an obligatory quarter-life (sometimes later) existential crisis in which one’s mind becomes riddled with the “Why am I here?”s and the “What does it all mean?”s. Hell, it’s easy to plummet into despair when one even takes the time to whittle down the true value of themselves even with regards to the people in their immediate lives. It all suddenly becomes overwhelming and usually leads to a lot of denial and postponement in which this person buries him/herself under a pile of bottles or pills or naked bodies or paperwork or credit card bills or possessions, etc. 

But immediately following this pretty typical freak-out is the renewal of power within one’s own personal being. Soon arrives the selfish notion that, if nothing else, your life means the absolute world to your life. It’s all very self-contained and liberating in the sudden detachment this realization provides from the restraints of societal expectations, both from the General Society Planning Committee (not related at all to the Illuminati, or the Dunkin Donuts corporation, by the way. I asked.) and from one’s immediate personal audience (which may or may not include the Illuminati or Dunkin Donuts, based on your particular lifestyle choices. I don’t judge.) Suddenly arises this refreshing independence that allows this newly-awakened person to start considering life from the outside in, which is accompanied by such questions as “What people do I really give a shit enough about to keep around?” and “Why in God’s name do I own all this superficial bullshit?” and “Why am I wasting all my time with thus-and-so?” Naturally following this is the abandonment of taking everyone else’s actions so damned personally and, from this, a whole restructuring of the mind is put into motion and priorities shift and motivations change and yackety schmack so-on-and-so-forth. 

I’m at the place just after that, where the great shift has all taken place, the dust has settled, and now I’m just sitting back, functioning on a slightly higher level of awareness than before, and awaiting the next major adventure/lesson/sale. This is where I’ve set and become comfortable with my standards for my time management, my company, and the energy I spend on both. I’ve made mental agreements about the sort of lifestyles I’ll no longer tolerate, and I’m pretty resolute in the issues and situations I will and will not waste my energy on from now until forever.

Which is why, when I’m taken for a foolish/naive ingenue figure, I can’t help but snort loudly at such an asinine insult to the life I have experienced and the terrifying bullshit I have waded through. (I’m not out proclaiming myself to be some great martyr or survivor of a soul-deteriorating life or anything, but I’ve certainly seen and experienced enough to confidently describe myself as “seasoned”.) However, instead of reeling in offense to these various blatant disregards to my character (or running to my friends to talk smack about my offender) like I would have in my younger years, I’m genuinely only amused by the audacity and ignorance of the person working against me. It’s a weird new trend for me, but instead of sitting around and beating myself up for the stupidity of someone else’s attempted manipulations, I sit back comfortably and quietly smirk at their obliviousness, their cocky certainty in underestimating my awareness. 

I know, this all sounds completely arrogant. Look, it’s not like I spend my days reclining on my laurels, feeding myself grapes on this great pedestal I’ve built for myself or anything. I don’t consciously think to myself “God, I rock. Why can’t all these other little people see that?” and I certainly don’t believe I have anywhere near the amount of Answers I should have to reach true happiness and enlightenment and nirvana. In fact, it’s a rare occurrence when I come right out and admit my capabilities at all. But there is a great amount of self-comfort and reassurance that I’ve recently experienced in being able to see the complete transparency of most people.  It gives me a little unexpected confidence and the new idea that maybe I can start taking care of myself, maybe I do have the wherewithall to hold my own in the inevitability of human drama and general interaction, maybe I don’t have to cling so tightly to people who will swat away emotionally dangerous figures for me.

Maybe, just maybe, I was blessed with two fully functioning legs and a receptive, adept mind that can choose, all on its own, whether I stand my ground or run for my life.   

And if I choose to point and laugh at the idiocy of my antagonist before walking away, then that’s okay, too.

I was once in love with a man who exclaimed that I was quirky. Like most of his statements, his tone was nearly impossible to decipher and, after he left me, I opted to think that he saw these quirks as flaws. So, I hid these away for a few years, terrified that these same quirks would drive away other loves that crossed my paths [instead of maybe admitting that he was just a cowardly, self-servicing, calculating man without the slightest clue how to connect with humans on an emotional level because he's too busy trying to fling everything into a logical, scientific forum... No, I'm not bitter.] When I met my husband, I was petrified that my dark past, in addition to my plethora of seemingly harmless quirks, would inevitably drive him away. They didn’t. (When I tried dumping all my flaws and quirks and neuroses into his lap to try to sabotage things, he finally looked right at me and calmly stated, “You’re not going to scare me off if that’s what you’re trying to do.” This is among the higher numbers in the Top 20 Reasons I Married Him list. He’s that good.)

Since we’ve been together, I’ve started recovering these quirks and exploring them, weeding through them and seeing which actually embody my tendencies and which are unhealthy habits I could do without. Here are three that I’ve recently rediscovered about myself that I’m hanging onto:

I love driving around and looking at Christmas lights… by myself…for hours.

This personal tradition started with my father, who would always take the time for a detour on the way home from anywhere during the holiday season to look at Christmas lights. My mother never allowed any outstanding Christmas decorations and limited our household holiday decor to a tree, a wreath, and candles in the windows. Every time we passed a gaudy, overlit house, my dad would chuckle to himself and stare in childish wonder of every Griswoldian spectacle, the envy of such freedom sparkling cheerfully in his eyes. As I got older, he and I were the only ones who enjoyed driving around for hours as it seemed everyone else had someplace more important to be. Soon, we were having to schedule annual dates a week before Christmas for the exclusive purpose of looking at lights and then there were years where we never saw them together at all.

When I moved home in 2003, I found myself very very alone in my drunken insanity. I had successfully pushed all my family away from me and staring at Christmas lights seemed too intimate and a little too embarrassing to share with anyone else. For many many December evenings, I’d fill a Nalgene bottle with Bailey’s and ice, wrap up in a warm coat, find my Charlie Brown Christmas CD and take myself for a drive, often staying out for more than 3 hours, driving, smoking, singing, and crying into my chilled wassail at the beauty that surrounded me and the joy that seemed to elude me. It was dangerous and reckless and unbelievably pathetic and kinda insane in retrospect, but those nights were the highlight of that dark year. In years following this, I would sometimes “treat” myself to a night off the wagon, slowly perusing quiet neighborhoods and parking my car in front of the tackiest of houses to bask in the lights and try to immerse myself in whatever Christmas was. AGAIN, it was dangerous and reckless and unbelievably pathetic and kinda insane in retrospect, but those nights were the highlights of my darkest Decembers.*

In the time I’ve actively embraced sobriety (you know, without just telling everyone that’s what I was doing), I’ve found that I can contain my excitement for Christmas lights about as easily as I could for a surprise gift of a million bucks. I’m always grateful that sobriety has brought my family back emotionally, as they now ride with me enough to allow me to take indirect routes home to ogle the various electric expressions of holiday celebrators.

Say what you will about the ridiculous overcommercialization of Christmas and how a giant, inflatable Mickey Mouse-dressed-as-Santa has nothing to do with the “real meaning” or how computer-programmed twinkle lights are impairing society’s ability to focus on Our Lord Little Baby Jesus Christ. Nothing makes me feel more childlike than staring at the sparkling spectacles created by overzealous Christmas fans, beseeching passing cars to take a moment to crack a smile and remember joy in it’s most basic, ridiculous, aesthetic form.

Last year I took myself on my solitary drive to sing Christmas songs to the baby inside me and explain to her what this swelling joy was in the atmosphere around her. This year I cannot wait to capture her reaction as she experiences it for herself.

*I don’t advocate drunk driving and I fully acknowledge that my doing so on so many occasions was extremely selfish and wrong. Even though I was never caught and never hurt anyone, it is still something I’m very ashamed to have done so willingly and frequently.

I have a problem with false nostalgia

The fact that I’m a Memory Lane junkie is no secret. I could sit around and reminisce everysingleday with those who inevitably haven’t thought about the past in years and years. In the advent of networking sites, this habit of mine has gone into overdrive in the last few years, seeing me delving into old relationships and old scenarios that simply don’t exist anymore. Gross. Anyway, I’ve curbed my need to indulge in memory so often on a public forum (even though “The inward eye is the bliss of solitude”, you know) but I think I’ve channelled that need for nostalgia to revisiting the past that I wasn’t a part of.

Heh?

I’ve always liked looking through old photos of my family during times that wasn’t around, which I don’t think is entirely unnatural. I love looking at my parents when they were younger and going through the drawers and boxes full of cluttered photographs at my Gran’s house to obtain clues about who my family were and eventually are. I kind of become manic about it, actually, taking time every other year or so to just peruse through forgotten photos and scrapbooks for an entire day and getting lost in memories and eras that I was never a part of.

This weird desire lives on a bigger level, too, in that I love watching old movies for their social commentary and the reality that Hollywood wanted us to embody and remember about this time. Additionally, I love reading about how people lived in their day-to-day lives in the past. It feels voyeuristic, but I love learning about people’s various quirks or the things that made them outstanding or boring. I love reading about what made Lucy and Desi Arnaz actual pioneers in both comedy and television even though their show seems so silly and trite to me today. I love trying to understand the mentalities of the average person during the most tumultuous times in history and how every one of society’s heroes had normal neuroses and quirks just like the rest of us. Like that Beethoven was apparently filthy and wouldn’t leave his room in the palace for weeks, covering the walls in scribbled music and covering his floors in rotting food and feces. (The royal administration would move him to a different studio each month to clean and air out the old one.) Or that Juliette Gordon Lowe dragged Rudyard Kipling out of a party she deemed as boring to go fishing in their formal wear.

A couple years ago, I came across an old 8mm projector and about 80 reels from a family that lived in Miami during the late 1950’s. I wanted to make a project of acquiring clues from the videos and eventually finding the family that would know those involved in the film, but this massive undertaking only lasted a few months before I became distracted by outside influences. However, while I still plan to eventually find the family eventually, I’ve found that I love watching these reels to peer into the past of a genuinely average mid-century American family. It’s amazing how they all look exactly like all the fake reels that cinema and television have recreated in the years since this era and I delight at watching women leave the house in pearls, dresses, hats and gloves and tinsel-covered Christmas mornings and burly men wearing short shorts and heavily-gelled hair while smoking a cigarette next to some infant. It’s fascinating and I hate that these videos contain no sound as I’d love to hear the dialogue and language of these people as well. This voyeuristic collection of mine is by far one of the most intriguing possessions I own.

I don’t know if I enjoy looking into the past for purely voyeuristic reasons or if I’m some sort of whacked-out history buff but, either way, this is a part of myself I hope doesn’t fade. I just wish there was some sort of career I had immediate access to that would allow me to explore this further. Like being a video librarian at a massive archive. Although I’m sure I’d sit in an editing room all day waiting to hear someone say something inappropriate or laughing when someone farted. This, I feel, is the humanity that unites us all.

I need to feel like I have enough.

This one doesn’t warrant an essay, but I’ve always felt like I can’t let things run low. I have to keep my possessions stocked at all times, I have to feel like there’s enough of something when I need it. I can’t let my gas gauge get less than a half-tank full without refilling it, I can’t let any makeup or bathroom products or food supply reach anywhere near scant proportions, I can’t let the laundry go without being done for over 4 days…

I think I have a problem with dealing with the tail-end of things. I always write in notebooks until there are a few pages left and then I abandon them, I never eat the last slice of bread or Lean Cuisine in the fridge, I can’t finish one tube of toothpaste unless there’s another already laid out.

Hunh… I’m weird.