Skip to main content

You Are Not So Special

I haven't written much lately and it's been because I've been thinking a lot but about things I didn't really want to share with the internet.  I have been thinking about possibility and self-limitation.  While definitely not the impetus, there's a You Are Not So Smart article about the Benjamin Franklin Effect in which you ask someone for a favor and it makes them like you even if they didn't before.  Like most things on You Are Not So Smart, it's about mental limitations, our own and others'. 

Which leads to a pre-revelation: I'm 30 and I'm still not really sure what I want to do with my life.  There's not revelatory because I'm not sure I've ever known what I want to do with my LIFE, but the big difference is that I used to feel like no matter what I actually did, not knowing made me a failure.  I mentally backed myself into a tiny little corner where the only options were what I'm doing (i.e. a life) or one path to a PhD and being qualified for exactly two jobs (i.e. a career).  But really there are so many options other than that, but for as long as I could remember I have been so focused on finding the right thing that I've never really thought about life as this thing that is MINE, something that can be anything I want.  My therapist and I decided that my next big step is to give myself time to think about this without coming to a conclusion and without having a panic attack.  (Seriously, I had a panic attack at breakfast the other day thinking about this.)

It took a divorce to teach me that relationships didn't have to be a certain way, and only now am I learning this about life as a whole.  I just never gave myself permission to think about it, and I don't know why.  And oddly enough, You Are Not So Smart is delightful and universal.  We are not so smart.  And we are not so special. 

Lots of people don't know what they want to do with their lives.  Lots of people are mixed up.  Lots of people choose something that isn't the pinnacle of everything.  Lots of people come from complicated families, screw up and have to learn from their mistakes, have parents that have died.  We are not so smart, and we are not so special. 

I'm really grateful to my parents for telling me every day as a kid that I was special, that I could do anything that I wanted, that I needed to do something important.  All that made me be better than I would be otherwise.  Unfortunately, it also made me feel like the only way to not fail was to be special and amazing every second of every day.  It's a big burden, and maybe I'm just not that special.  Maybe I don't want to be. 

Comments

Carl Johnson said…
:-/

Am I allowed to like your writing while disagreeing with your conclusion?
October 13, 2011 at 4:51 AM
Denise said…
Saying you like my writing is a big compliment, so thank you. I'm curious about what part of the conclusion you disagree with.
October 13, 2011 at 10:14 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts from last Thursday: Tonight we set up our Indie Bits game, and I'm consumed by nervous anticipation. I imagine this is not unlike when your firstborn child goes to kindergarten. OK, maybe it's not that serious. But the feelings of, please don't bite anyone , and I hope you make friends translates roughly to please don't break while someone is playing you , and also please no one play this game because What if you don't like it?  What if people hate it? What if it doesn't work? What if it's uninteresting? What if the puzzles are too hard? There are so many ways this can go wrong. These are not feelings I typically experience with the things that I make, as I usually make things just for myself. I've always been more of an engineer then an artist. At middle school art camp, I was competent at various techniques, but I never had any great ideas. We would be set free to our own creative devices with a new method, and I sat there, feeling inad...
Post a Comment
Read more

2011 Reading Challenges

On the first day of this new year, I am pulling together the reading challenges in which I want to participate.  There are so many that sound interesting that I'm not doing, particularly a bunch of them that are regional authors, which I'm trying to cover with my Global Reading Challenge.  I've chosen a bunch of them, but the problem won't be reading quantity, but more like reading strategy.  I read 3 or 4 books a week and most of these challenges allow crossovers, so I see no problems reading enough books, merely reading the right books and then, perhaps more challenging, writing about them, which some challenges require, and some only suggest.  Either way, it's a neat way to prioritize reading for the coming year. The Challenges in Which I Shall Participate Southern Literature Challenge - I've never read enough Southern Lit, and while some of the newer stuff is truly awful, I'd like to explore some older books. It's any book set in the South by a S...
4 comments
Read more

The Land of Lost Things

I met my new therapist last week.  I test drove a few, and she was the one that stuck.  She seems like she's not going to let me get by with any bullshit, and she said a couple of things that zinged me in our very first meeting.  That was unexpected, delightful, and now, with time to think about it, terrifying. I've been doing so much soul searching lately, so much careful consideration of my life and where I am - you'd think I'd be finding myself, but instead I feel so completely lost.  A few reasons: 1. I sabotage relationships in a really predictable way.  I had always thought of this behavior in one way, but with one sentence, this woman last week made me question everything I thought about that.  It's good to question it; it's what I wanted, but to be confronted so quickly by something that I had never considered is frightening.  I've spent so much time trying to figure this stuff out, and it turns out that I've been so completely wrong about ...
6 comments
Read more