ARE YOU WEIRD, YOU?

I have long been accused of this. Ohhhhhhh fudge well it's true. I couldn't even play slow-pitch softball right and that's....something.

I feel normal until I go to work. Then I feel ultra weird.

Work is weirdening.

I only feel weird when I get looked at weirdly!
Make sense?

Weird looks are weirdening.

The world is weirdening.

I hate it. I want to work alone or with 2/3 people I can stand up and scream a song at midway through the day or shout stupid things and have them laugh.

Yah, weird AND nerdy. Nice combo there.

I want to work alone or with 2/3 people I can stand up and scream a song at midway through the day or shout stupid things and have them laugh.

Having kinda half-done both of things, I feel the need to point out that they're no less, umm, weirdening:

work alone = you go out at 9pm to buy some tea and realize that you haven't talked to anyone all day, and the people walking around you all seem like odd video-game constructs and you start wondering what exactly stops you from just walking up to one of them and poking it in the face, why not, and then when the guy at the store asks if you want a bag, you start to speak and worry that you've forgotten how, like your tongue has stuck in your throat and you've forgotten how words work when they actually leave your head, and then after you've attempted to say "no bag" you begin wondering if you actually said it out loud or just thought it to yourself

work with 2/3 people you can stand up and scream a song at midway through the day or shout stupid things and have them laugh = okay yes, but you now have 2/3 people who may also stand up and scream songs or shout stupid things at odd intervals, and you have to laugh at them instead of being really creeped out or annoyed, turnabout being fair play and all -- plus when you work with 2/3 other people you are guaranteed to always have one of them over your shoulder going "we need this done RIGHT NOW" or "wait come out and help me move this" or "hey stop doing that we need to put all our energy into the website" or "someone needs to go pick up bagels and it's you" or whatever; you cannot just hang out at your desk and do stuff on your own time

I want to work alone

Would an office of your own do as well? So you can lock the door, shut yourself out for a moment? You're not alone all day, but the others are outside of your own space. I'm lucky enough to have this, I guess. I blasted Wolf Eyes in my office today (for reasons I'd like to keep to myself, heh). And I can. I like to have the opportunity to 'turn off' the outside world when I feel like it.

Also - very surprisingly - Nabisco otm on working alone. Tried it, failed miserably. I was getting even more introvert than I already am. That no good.

On weirdness: everybody's weird. I distrust people who say they are 'normal', or 'ordinary', like it's an achievement.

I blasted Wolf Eyes in my office today (for reasons I'd like to keep to myself, heh)

cold caller, wd like mah $5

I distrust attributes?

depends who I'm with. in some circles I am teh weirdest, in others I am not weird enough.

Wait... what?

xp to louis

I distrust attributes?

Well, I wouldn't call being 'normal' an attribute, for I have no idea what 'normal' is. My normal is another man's weird, and vice versa.

i thought it meant you were ridding yourself of a tenacious telephone tradesman by introducing the handset to a speaker playing wolf eyes

but evidently not

man, attributes...........

extant

I was long reluctant to say I had any.

There goes yer $5!

Now you've got me feeling WEIRD for liking Wolf Eyes :'(

Yeah maybe you're right Nabisco.

Actually I think I'd like to work with a good team of people where I could be myself, basically. Which sometimes would involve shouting and screaming stupid things.

My last retail job before this current newsroom job seemed like a stopgap but the people were so nice that I loved it. The people being nice and not feeling weird can override any job.

work alone = you go out at 9pm to buy some tea and realize that you haven't talked to anyone all day, and the people walking around you all seem like odd video-game constructs and you start wondering what exactly stops you from just walking up to one of them and poking it in the face, why not, and then when the guy at the store asks if you want a bag, you start to speak and worry that you've forgotten how, like your tongue has stuck in your throat and you've forgotten how words work when they actually leave your head, and then after you've attempted to say "no bag" you begin wondering if you actually said it out loud or just thought it to yourself

I just wanted to say thanks for this.

I've been working alone for seven years now and it's sucked all the weirdness out of me.

I feel like weirdness is a million bugs crawling over me in the wrong work setting. Drugs/drinking/illness may play a role in this but also working with people who are hyper concentrated and focussed and work FAST.

That is pretty accurate. I used to get that way on long solo road trips. Sit in a chair by myself for six hours, get out, and the man inside the gas station all of a sudden has a different accent and all the headlines are about a governor I've never heard of.

But isn't 'weirdness' also very strongly related to what we see as 'unique', or what makes the 'self'? For me it is. I like to believe that I know my own weirdness, as opposed to the people I work with/family etc. I don't cultivate it, but sure do cherish it. It feels like an important thing to hold onto, because it's so 'me'. It's part of who I am.

So in the wrong work setting, yeah, I can totally see how it could feel like a million of bugs crawling over you. But I sure hope that image doesn't last. It's also the very unique quality of who you are.

xp to Local Garda

I distrust people who say they are 'normal', or 'ordinary', like it's an achievement.

Ha, I think I often feel the opposite: I have developed this weird admiration for people who can walk around confidently feeling like they're normal. I was semi-obsessed with this idea for a few years, and for a while the bulk of the fiction I was writing tended to be about that. (It still kind of is.) There was a time when I would actually watch The Bachelor just to marvel at all these people on it who seemed so outwardly confident that they were normal, these unashamed human beings who fit into all the categories they perceived as the norms of American life. . . . I mean, I think I would totally agree that I don't entirely trust these people, because I don't entirely understand them -- they seem slightly foreign and unknowable to me -- but there is a level on which I think that can be an achievement. It's something I'd be happy to achieve, from the other direction; not seeming so naturally and obliviously born to it, but actually achieving it.

Yes...I agree with you. This is why I feel I need to change jobs.

Though surely not all parts of us are worth keeping? It's a good job which many people would love to do, people are impressed when I say what I do and yet I feel uncomfortable in my own skin doing it.

I keep thinking of self help phrases like "feel the fear and do it anyway" and thinking not wanting to feel weird ever is like demanding a comfort zone.

I never felt weird until my 20s. It really ramps up as you get older!

x-post Nabisco so otm. I am so jealous of people that just seem to function in a way where action and thought are in perfect harmony.

i feel like i'm pretty normal, to the extent that anyone can be normal

I want to work alone or with 2/3 people I can stand up and scream a song at midway through the day or shout stupid things and have them laugh.

You should be an archaeologist. That's the normal work environment.

I've always felt weird, but finally I'm realizing that that's kind of...normal. Or perhaps I'm just able to surround myself with people I have things in common with, rather than the random teenagers who happened to live in my county, so the average level of weirdness is higher. Either way, it's nice.

nabisco otm re: working alone

I'm just able to surround myself with people I have things in common with, rather than the random teenagers who happened to live in my county, so the average level of weirdness is higher. Either way, it's nice.

this is the key! I know I am weird sometimes, or in some ways. but I never feel weird with my friends.

i feel like i'm pretty normal, to the extent that anyone can be normal

Ha, I suspect it's that second phrase that exempts one from the Bachelor thing I mean. I think of myself as fairly normal as well, but in a sort of considered way. Possibly the people I fixate on are the ones who seem never to have thought of the issue at all, to rarely (if ever) have had even a moment where they much had to feel or wonder about their being odd.

I find people with that attitude annoying, though, I think that it might be the same attitude that draws lines between "real people" or "people who matter" and "people who can be ignored because they're in some way not normal." Like when people think they have the right to explain "how Americans think" to other Americans because there must be something WEIRD and WRONG about the other Americans who disagree with them.

i dont think nabisco isnt irritated with them, i think he finds them strange and fascinating

Ha, I think I often feel the opposite: I have developed this weird admiration for people who can walk around confidently feeling like they're normal. I was semi-obsessed with this idea for a few years, and for a while the bulk of the fiction I was writing tended to be about that. (It still kind of is.) There was a time when I would actually watch The Bachelor just to marvel at all these people on it who seemed so outwardly confident that they were normal, these unashamed human beings who fit into all the categories they perceived as the norms of American life. . . . I mean, I think I would totally agree that I don't entirely trust these people, because I don't entirely understand them -- they seem slightly foreign and unknowable to me -- but there is a level on which I think that can be an achievement. It's something I'd be happy to achieve, from the other direction; not seeming so naturally and obliviously born to it, but actually achieving it.

― nabisco, Wednesday, September 24, 2008 7:39 PM

I am in total agreement with you. And, also in regard to Local Garda: the 'weird' I had in mind is the 'weird' to treasure, specific stuff like, indeed, at a given time just wanting to start dancing or singing. Or having a perspective on things that, in comparison to others I live with on a daily basis, seem other wordly. That, I treasure.

But when you weigh in 'attributes' like confidence, unashamed, like Nabisco does, then yes: I feel I'm on the bench all the time, watching my teammates (other humans) playing soccer, having a blast, and most importantly, know what they are doing and doing it well. Understanding the art of living. It's like I never participate, I wouldn't even know how. I am almost 30, but this 'game' of living, of being alive, still seems so absurd to me. I can't grasp the concept.
The thing is though, I'm okay with that now. For a long time I wasn't. It was a chokehold. But I've learned to appreciate my seat on the bench. I'm allowed to watch it all unfold before my eyes, this 'living' game. It's the position I prefer, if I were put up for a choice. Let me live on that bench, observing others gracefully, unashamedly living life.

i've grown weary of weird people

"When I remember as far back as I can, I’d say that there was hardly any separation between inside and outside. When I crawled towards something, it came on wings to meet me; when something important happened, the excitement was not just in us, but the things themselves came to a boil. I won’t claim that we were happier then than we were later on. After all, we hadn’t yet taken charge of ourselves.

In fact, we didn’t really yet exist; our physical condition was not yet separated from the world’s. It sounds strange, but it’s true: our feeling, our desires, our very selves, were not yet quite inside ourselves. What’s even stranger is that I might as easily say: they were not yet quite taken away from us.

If you should sometime happen to ask yourself today, when you think you’re entirely in possession of yourself, who you really are, you will discover that you always see yourself from the outside, as an object. You’ll notice that one time you get angry, another time you get sad, just as your coat will sometimes be wet and sometimes too warm.

No matter how intensely you try to look at yourself, you may at most find something about the outside, but you’ll never get inside yourself. Whatever you do you remain outside yourself, with the possible exception of those rare moments when a friend might say that you’re beside yourself.

It’s true that as adults we’ve made up for this by being able to think at any time that ‘I am’- if you think that’s fun. You see a car and somehow in a shadowy way you also see ‘I am seeing a car’. You’re in love, or sad, and see that it’s you. But neither the car, nor your sadness, nor your love, nor even yourself, is quite fully there.

Nothing is as completely there as it once was in childhood; everything you touch, including your inmost self, is more or less congealed from the moment you have achieved your ‘personality’ and what’s left is a ghostly hanging thread of self awareness and murky self regard, wrapped up in a wholly external existence.

What goes wrong? There’s a feeling that something might still be salvaged. Surely you can’t claim that a child’s experience is all that different from a man’s? I don’t know any real answer, even if there may be this or that idea about it. But for a long time I’ve responded by having lost my love for this kind of ‘being myself’ and for this kind of world."

most people who think they are weird are just vaguely quirky at most, these people are ok with me. people who are really seriously weird are either just sad or come across as trying really hard to be weird.

most people who think they are weird are just vaguely quirky at most, these people are ok with me. people who are really seriously weird are either just sad or come across as trying really hard to be weird.

― metametadata (n/a), Wednesday, September 24, 2008 8:18 PM (37 seconds ago)

Do you consider yourself perfectly normal, then? If you say that 'people who are seriously weird are either just sad or trying really hard', says more about your definition of weird than anyone else on this thread, I think. 'Weird people' - by your standards - are perfectly capable of living a happy live, believe me.

x-post just for the record....I don't think I am weird or different necessarily as a given, just feel very weird in certain situations...and it kinda makes you weird when that happens.

nabisco OTM about the going out to by tea at 9 pm thing and being all weirded out

Do you consider yourself perfectly normal, then?

i answered this upthread

basically i'm just saying there's a difference between "weird" and weird

and weird

i'm just a normal, regular person

I think I sometimes class trying-to-be-weird people in this "strange and fascinating" world of reality-contestant types. I mean, if they're trying in certain ways. I should probably emphasize that I don't find these healthy confident "normal" types to be technically normal at all -- they're odd and rare. Most genuine normal people have experienced things like uncertainty and marginalization and shame and self-doubt. Most genuine normal people look at these types who seem like people from commercials and go "that person's a bit odd, he/she is like someone out of a commercial."

You indeed said you feel perfectly normal and grew weary of people who feel weird. But plz elaborate on "weird", weird and weird. I can't make up the difference.

xp to metameta

http://sarvik.com/blog/uploads/images1/dune_weirding_module.jpg

i no longer need the weirding module

I feel a need to note here that n/a actually really does seem admirably well-adjusted, in person.

you...realize that you haven't ... and then when the guy at the store asks if you want a bag, you start to speak and worry that you've forgotten how, like your tongue has stuck in your throat and you've forgotten how words work when they actually leave your head, and then after you've attempted to say "no bag" you begin wondering if you actually said it out loud or just thought it to yourself

This happens on any day that I don't go to work and don't leave the house (altho I have enough roommates now that just being home is usually a social activity to some degree). Sometimes in my head is a nice place to be, when it comes as a change, but I can't spend more than about 24 hours there. It's extremely extremely un-anchored, and while I like the magical-thinking aspect of reality feeling so...plastic, it's not really any good for living in the world.

But I've spoken about this feeling to enough people that I'm pretty sure it's not weird. If fact I think it might be whatever passes for "normal".

Weird is the new normal.

I totally do not claim to have reached that point of calm self-knowledge, but I would agree that the last couple years of my 20s saw a big jump closer to it.

(It might just be that you can make more excuses when you're younger, figuring that things would be completely different if you just lived somewhere else, or went to grad school, or had different friends -- but by the time you're getting toward 30 you've probably noticed what's constant about you and what your deal is.)

I may be hungry but I sure ain't weird.

another Captain heard from.

by the time you're getting toward 30 you've probably noticed what's constant about you and what your deal is

Hopefully, though I hesitate to put numbers on emotional maturity, partly out of fear that I'm way behind in the game, but mostly because it's unnecessary.

But it does seem to me that of your steps outlined above -- self-knowledge, perspective parts 1 & 2, "owning" -- it's the "owning" that hangs most people up, very much including myself. Because that's a bit of mental judo involving recognizing your own limitations as real, which is a freakin' *mountain* for anyone with an ego, which is anyone, I suppose. And then taking what feel like broken leftovers and using those as tools, well, no wonder therapy costs so much.

GLABIAQUINFUROFALONG

All I see in there is "labia"

g-spot labia quim furry long

it's a verbal Rorschach test

since i've been about 14 i've made a concious attempt to be as "normal" as possible. i have a slight disdain of people trying too hard to be different for the sake of it.

Square.

Circle

at school i would try and wear whatever clothes were fashionable (timbaland jacket, kangol shoes, baggy jeans, loose plaid shirt) and try to listen to whatever music was "ok" to like. i remember buying the armand van helden remix of tori amos' "professional widow" and asking a friend if he thought it was weird before admitting i liked it.

i don't really care that much now, but i am still a bit of a square.

AFAICT most people who know me do seem to find me pretty deeply weird. I disagree with them, generally, but that probably just makes me weirder.

I suck at softball too, if that's a criterion.

I'm 100% normal. Thanks for asking, weirdo.

i have a slight disdain of people trying too hard to be different for the sake of it.

Being the same for the sake of it is just as bad, though, no? It's all just picking sides. Like the difference between having a Jesus fish on your car and a Darwin fish. "Hi there, this is what side I'm on, not that you asked."

those jesus fishes eating the darwin fish eating the jesus fish crack me up

most people who know me do seem to find me pretty deeply weird. I disagree with them, generally, but that probably just makes me weirder.

I'd agree with this self description, pretty much.

I think that who I am and the way I am makes perfect sense for a person who has lived the kind of life I have lead.

But it feels like it's the world that has decided that this is somehow not ordinary, not me. I'm just doing the best I can with the resources I got.

We're all just little kids who got older.

Some of used to eat scabs, though.

(some of us used to etc)

People who claim to be normal always remind me of the bit from the movie "Performance" where Chas says "There's nothing wrong with me. I'm normal!"

those jesus fishes eating the darwin fish eating the jesus fish crack me up

― Brosef Stalin (latebloomer), Wednesday, September 24, 2008 6:43 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://www.holyobserver.com/issues/v01i11/images/TRex_lg.jpg

I used to think I was really weird, but then I started meeting TRUE freaks and realized I'm just slightly eccentric and have odd tastes. But for the most part, quite normal.

i love you dinosaur

shopped.

But when you weigh in 'attributes' like confidence

Whoa why d=d that word get square quotes? (apostrophes?)

I am handsome but am extremely shy when it comes to meeting girls. Does that make me weird?

Aw nabisco don't be self-conscious of your long – and muy OTM – post. Not that you were nec saying this about yr paragraphs, but it is a thing in this world where if someone gives, or uses, just straight, Dale Carnegie-ish advice...

How can I better qualify what I am trying to say...like you say "12-stepish." Which to me has connotations of some external locus of control (due to personal biases regarding various addiction-breaking philosophies). I think self-consciousness about the connotations of practical advice for self-improvement has made many afraid to give or seriously consider it. For example:

• It's corny. It might make people feel like some goofy, aw-shucks Son Knotts dad figure. Square.
• "Self-help" is associated with "self-help books" and the people associated with them. In my mind, they're narcissists who are loud, and although they haven't seemingly improved themselves, they have advice for everyone else. And they give it to everyone, without asking, in a manner that is usually tactless.
• Sometimes it can feel like it implies you are wrong, in any variety of ways, and that is not a preferred feeling.
• My biggest one: it can feel like it reeks of the confessional, voyeuristic attitude and atmosphere of talk shows such as Dr. Phil.

BUT: if you are tactful, and are genuinely trying to make right by you, I don't think there's anything bad about that sort of advice. For yourself, definitely. For others, if there's a context (ie useful therapy, genial conversations about the subject like this very thread).

People think I'm a real "character"

burt stanton = Mr. X

I used to think I was really weird, but then I started meeting TRUE freaks and realized I'm just slightly eccentric and have odd tastes. But for the most part, quite normal.

― homosexual II, Wednesday, September 24, 2008 11:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

^^^ otm.

One of the normallest seeming guys I work with - wears regular working clothes, likes football and boring pop music, wife and kids, looks perfectly ordinary - is one of the oddest people I have ever met.

he reminds me in fact of Steve.N's addled boss and his tourettey snippets. This guy will do shit like spontaneously erupt into an loud voice in a silly accent pretending to be a BBC World News reporter, and carry on like this for 10 minutes. Then he'll sing just one or 2 lines of something like "Owner of a Lonely Heart" all day long. ALL DAY LONG. Its like every single thought that rushes into his brain has to come out his mouth. It is bizzare, but I've learned to tune it out.

I dont think he's mentally ... err... challenged in the slightest. Its just odd.

I dont think I'm weird at all, incidentally. I'm rather boring to be honest.

i bet people on the train thought i was weird because i was singing the chorus of "don't fear the reaper" to myself on the way home tonight.

I dunno, were you polishing a gun while you were singing?

"I'm just a normal guy really."
http://www.mnfilmarts.org/screenshots/CrispinGlover001.jpg

I find it one of the funniest ironies in the universe that someone from *my* family wrote a book called "How To Win Friends And Influence People."

What, *the* book of that name? wow.

Um, I've always been taken for *strange* by people who are, um, unstrange. Without affectation on my part.

During the time I was contracting, the amount of short-time work I was doing meant I had to reel in my particular 'off-the-wall'/'lateral thinking' style of humour for fear of being misunderstood and as there wasn;t enough time for people to get to know/understand me.

So, no-one regards me as 'strange' thesedays, but then maybe the world has opened up a bit since then...

contracting as in working at places for short amounts of time, not shrinking myself into a spiral, you understand...

Yes, *that* book. Grandmother's cousin.

I think this is the thing, the difference between "weird" as affectation and just, well... "different".

(This was one of the things that I was struck by when I first moved to NYC, the difference between artists pretending to be weirdoes and weirdoes pretending to be artists.)

I think conformity has diminishing effects as one gets older - partly one gets more comfortable in one's skin, also that people who are "in their 40s and still UNUSUAL", it is increasingly likely not to be an affectation, but rather something that simply isn't going to change.

In that way, contract work is easier for me, as I don't *have* to show as much of myself as is expected in long term jobs.

Sorry, I'm not making much sense. I can't stop thinking about tea and ginger biscuits.

Even in long-term jobs, I find I have to be there two years before I can relax and 'be myself'.

Maybe I'm just shy, mary-ellen...

Once you get older they start to call you 'eccentric'.

Or, worse, "free spirit".

I thought 'free spirit' was euphemism for 'female hippy, likes a drug, terrible man for the casual sex'.

I thought it was just euphemism for "mad old biddie" but these two things are not mutually exclusive.

my gf calls me a free spirit :-/

This thread title is phrased oddly, you.

Are 2 D, 2?

i bet people on the train thought i was weird because i was singing the chorus of "don't fear the reaper" to myself on the way home tonight.

That doesn't make you weird, it's all Jesus the Bartender's fault.

i'm weird. i think people are ok with it but sometimes i'm not sure that i am. most of the time i can make it ok.