Below is my “About Me” from facebook that I wrote a while ago. I obviously wrote it after graduating, but I think I wrote it before Homecoming of the next year. I wish I knew exactly when though, for reasons I can’t explain.
It’s funny how, when you look back at some things, you are a completely different person. You learn, you grow, you get better. But in other ways, you don’t seem to change at all. I think I’m a better writer, when I try to be, than I was when I wrote this. Parts of it seem… choppy to me, or something. But a lot of how I describe myself is the same. I can read this and say, “yeah, that’s me. I’m still like that.” Sometime this past year, I found an old facebook note of a bucket list of sorts and another of places I wanted to travel to. Nothing had changed - I still wanted to do all of that, badly. And some I had done. But what’s important to note is that when I wrote each of these, I was thinking pretty hard about my life and what I wanted. That’s all the same. If there’s one thing I am good at, it’s knowing myself and how I want to live my life, and what I want out of it. I think that’s interesting.
We live in a very complex world, but I do my best to keep life as simple as possible. I am not doing a very good job. Oh well. I’m very into history, technology, science, sports, and music. I never liked reading in school but now that I’m graduated I try and read as much as possible. My family travels a lot but I just recently started to enjoy it. I like photography but don’t practice enough. I love riding my bike. I have an awesome dog. I think the value of pop culture is greatly underestimated by most, but greatly overestimated by most people my age. I hate when people say “It’s just a game” during sporting events, because that just isn’t true for some people. I’m very passionate about my sports teams but get mad when people act like that’s all I am and it’s all I care about. I have 2 regrets from college - the 1st is not meeting more people. The other I’m working on correcting. No measurable progress yet. Updates may or may not follow.
For the last item in this paragraph, for anyone wondering, no - I never did post any updates on my progress. But I will now. I have since did what I was too afraid to do in school. It didn’t correct the regret, which doesn’t make sense, but you get the idea. Doing what I needed to do wasn’t some magic cure, and I never expected it to be. Things got worse, then better, and now I don’t know where they are. I suppose I would say, I made a lot of progress.
In order to make this public, I’m not going to say what the regret is, or any other information. But let me tell you a story that is sort-of related: growing up, I was afraid to call people on the phone. I hated how my voice sounded, because it was different from what I heard in my head and I didn’t like how it was different. I thought I sounded weird and other people would think the same. I also never knew what to say. I knew I always sounded nervous, like I was unsure of myself. I didn’t want to say anything wrong, or leave anything out. I was afraid I’d tell someone something I shouldn’t. Things like that - I was a kid and I wasn’t confident in myself, I was shy, and I just hated the phone. I hated calling my friends because if they didn’t answer, then what did I do? Leave a message? What if they didn’t call back? Was it because they didn’t want to hang out with me or because they didn’t get the message? When do I call back, or should I? If I do call back, how long should I wait, and how many times do I call? There were so many questions, and I hated it because I didn’t think I’d ever do it right and people wouldn’t like that. So I hated the phone. Well, then I got a job at a restaurant. I had to use the phone. It got better, but I still hated it. Then I graduated school, and I got a real job. One day, they gave me a phone. It was great, because it meant that I mattered - I was a real employee with a real job. But it was scary because I had to use it. And use it a lot more than I wanted. But I got better. I had to take sales calls, make calls to buy stuff, answer questions, walk people through computer issues when they were all the way across the country and have no idea what the start menu is, things like that. And now, I love the phone. I know what I’m doing. I’m confident. I know I have a tendency to jumble my words and not enunciate correctly, but that’s because I think too fast and I can fix that. I do a good job on the phone. I practiced, I got better, and now I’m not afraid.
I was afraid in school. I was afraid to mess something up that mattered. So I just stayed where I was, never took a risk, and my only real focus was not messing it up. I never had something like a job that pushed me to go out and just do it. I wish so badly that I did have something to push me. But, one day, I pushed myself. Only I didn’t, not really. Something else happened that scared me, that told me I took too long. Then I pushed myself. But I did do it. It was late, but I did do it. And even though, for now and maybe longer, I didn’t fix my regret, I did finally do it. And things have progressed. It’s just not done. In the meantime, I’ve done everything I can in many areas to get more confident. To make myself better in every other way. I can cook, somethings. I’m in much better shape. I wanted to get to the point where, no matter what the physical activity was, I could do it. Maybe not do it great, but I could do it. I’m there now. I lost weight and I look better. I have money saved up so I can do random things without having to worry. I think I’m friendly, and confident enough and interesting enough to carry on conversations with just about anyone about any topic. And yeah, I’m better all around. Part of that is for me. A lot of people say to do things for yourself. Well it is for me, but it’s also so I’m good enough to do things I want. I don’t just get better so I know I’m better. I get better so I’m better for other people. And I know I ramble, but that’s how I think.
I’m going to make burgers. I hope some friends come over. I might make bloody mary’s. And my roommate is playing Born and Raised. I love that song.
