I too often make the mistake of opting not to write because my thoughts occur to me in a situation where I cannot document them. More often than not I neglect my impending interests and thoughts for the sake of remaining likable. I used to be fairly overbearing with my ideologies and opinions – eager to share and impose them. I see now, however, there’s a balance. The trouble I have now is that I’m only moderately passionate about many things. That isn’t to say that everyone should have one dedicated passion and that’s the ideal – but I do think that there is something – one maybe two things out there – that is (are) so fascinating that I want to dedicate my whole heart to it. More often than not I find myself dedicating my whole heart to people. It’s frowned upon and far too romantic for the public ear these days to hear how impassioned someone is for another – gushy if I may say. There’s also the pressure of having your interest being intellectual. An interest in self-care or plants is far less intellectual than interests in neurological advances in discovery of mental health features about self-depreciation and plant cells. To hell with plant cells! This aspect of social desirability not only makes individuals bad experiment subjects but awful writers. We write what people want to see – its marketable that way. Perhaps the problem then is that we view ourselves as products — not metaphorically.
Social desirability – correct me if I’m wrong – today has gone from being humble to being self-depreciating; from romantic to cynic. It’s desirable to be snarky, intellectual, uncaring and above it. We exaggerate poor qualities about ourselves and butter up our friends about their differences and insecurities. We project what we neglect to give ourselves. If we put the general young adult population on a chart in Maslow’s Hierarchy we constantly touch but fail to break the glass ceiling to self-actualization. We stare from the other side of the window because it’s easier to fit into a society where self-depreciating is respected than to live in a world where fulfilling your life’s wishes and desires goes deeper than pictures to document it.
Many adults define our generation as a generation of laziness. I don’t think we’re lazy – I think we like to observe, to look. More individuals today are willing to admit that people watching is one of their favorite things to do. Humans of New York is one of the most successful Facebook pages. We’re an interested generation rather than interesting. What makes the innovators of our generation stand out is that they follow after observing. They aren’t satisfied with just seeing, they want to be involved.
So maybe I’m not sure what I’m supposed to dedicate my life to, I’m not sure if it’s something so far beyond me I’m not there yet or something so within me but I’m so far from. I don’t know if I want to be an innovator or an observer or whether I can find a good balance between both outside of a 9-5 job.
Each Tuesday I’m going to get myself to write a page about something I’m interested in in that very moment. It doesn’t have to be big, or expansive, it just has to be written. It could be the episode of Family Matters I just saw, criminalization of drugs, gun control or anything for that matter as long as I want to write about it and as long as I can.
Also please enjoy weekly Photo Booth pictures of me in my atm writing environment. Also feel free to edit my writing for AP style. Rip me to shreds baby!
It's French 