Questions, Queries, Ponderances...

Time = 1:41 AM

Mood = Tired

Music = Pleasure (pleasure) by Bang Camaro

What I SHOULD be doing = Sleeping, like as not.

Random face about me = Every morning I wake up with a random song stuck in my head.

So I've been thinking, and I've realized a couple of things. The first thing is that I do not handle stress well. And when I say stress, I really mean anything that puts stress on me emotionally. Whether that be an unexpected deadline, manipulations coming from multiple sources, not having a steady place to call home, or even pressure to do something that I will eventually get around to. Clearly, all of these things have happened to me recently. Why? Because life is a nasty thing and likes to pile things onto me instead of letting me deal with things one at a time.

When I get stressed, I just shut down, and no amount of coaxing can get me back to work. The only thing to do is let me recover, and then I'll work as quickly as I can without rushing. But all of this has made me wonder why I am so constantly unsatisfied with life. Why is it that one small action of my Mom or my Aunt leaves me feeling uncontrollably perturbed? Why am I so focused on receiving the approval of my friends?

I'm starting to realize that I can't coast through life as a perfectionist. Sometimes, life gets messy, and the only thing you can do is say "well, this is a shit hole." What are you going to do? No matter how much dish soap you pour into a shit hole, it's still a shit hole. It just might smell a little bit less like one. But if you look at it, you know exactly what it is. Life would be so much easier if people stopped trying to pour dish soap into their shit holes, and just called a spade a spade. Rather than running around trying to cover up the smell, why not work at the mess piece by piece until it's cleaned up?

Another thing I'm starting to realize is that I need to surround myself with people who like me. This sounds stupid, but it makes sense. Rather than surrounding myself with people that I constantly feel like I have to be better - to live up to their standards, I can surround myself with people who like me for me. All my faults included. I feel like this is very idealistic, and the pessimistic optimist inside of me wonders if it would ever actually work in this world.

What I don't get is why everybody is so damn appearance oriented! The president has bowel movements just like the rest of us. It's a fact of life. Paris Hilton gets depressed and stuffs her face with chocolate. She's female, she's got to have done it. So why do we put these people up on a pedestal of perfection? We know they're not perfect, so why do we expect them to be perfect? Why do models have to starve themselves to be in the public eye? Where did all of these social stigmas come from? And maybe the biggest question of all.... Why aren't people thinking about this?

Someone I know told me today, "Freedom is just an illusion". Now this is extreme, but I've been thinking about it. Freedom is an illusion. They say we're free to choose what we wear, but every season change comes with new styles, and god forbid if you're wearing something from last season! Radio stations play the most popular songs, doing stuff like top ten. They're saying, "everybody else is listening to this, why aren't you?" I'm not a big conspiracy theorist, but think about it. Our entire lives are dictated by others. We work hard to impress someone. We work hard to get money to buy the clothes and the trinkets and the music that are the must haves of the season. We tread lightly to avoid hurting people's feelings, or we tread heartlessly to hurt people's feelings. We rely on other people for opinions on ourselves.

Actually, that one deserves an entire paragraph of it's own. Why rely on people's opinions of you when they come out with things like "You're fat" or "You're an ugly cow" or "You'll never amount to anything"? If you let people talk you down like that, then you'll talk yourself down like that. And the result? incredibly low self esteem. The result of low self esteem is fishing for more compliments, hoping somebody will tell you that you're worth something. Inevitably, because you don't believe in yourself, people will put you down. They will see you as an easy target to build themselves, and crumble your fragile self esteem. And thus it becomes a vicious cycle. What if the entire world stopped caring what other people thought? What if people started doing what they loved, loving how they felt, and feeling without inhibitions? I know, right, revolutionary idea.

Think on it.

Dragonista.