1. We all do a certain amount of winging it at our main occupation (this does not have to be paid work- it can also refer to raising children.) Do you ever feel like you're "faking it" at your job? Or do you ever feel like so much of a phony that if other people found out, you're afraid you would be fired? Is it all emotion or do you feel that there is some truth to it? What do you do to encourage yourself? I feel like I'm faking it all the time. Like at this moment. I have nothing to do but one thing. I feel like I should do it but I can't until I get my boss to dechiper it for me. She's the one that wrote the mathmatics to begin with! But I don't think I'd get fired because they know I do my work so fast I have nothing to do.
2. If you consider yourself to have low self-esteem, do you find it difficult to hang out with folks who have high self-esteem? (Or, likewise, if you have high self-esteem, do you find it difficult to hang out with folks with low self-esteem?) YES to the main question. It is difficult to hand out with people with high self-esteem because, personally, I don't feel I'm up to their standards. But I have fun with all my friends with low self-esteem. I figure hang with others like me, in one way or another, and I can find fun with them. But I guess you can say over the past few years, my esteem had grown. A few years ago, I would have let a wrong price pass me and now, I'm agressive in getting the price as marked, for on example.
You do know all these memes help my thinking and writing processes? I was watching an interview with Mark DeRosa. Goodness, he was using terms like "chicken winged." You do not know how much I enjoyed the interview for the vocabulary used in it, alone. It made me missed the type of vacabulary I was exposed to at school. Give me a challenge, any day.
But back to the memes…
3. What is self-esteem? Can it be learned? Can you raise low self-esteem and lower high self-esteem? How? Self-esteem is how you feel and focus on yourself. I don't know if it can be learned. And yes, you can rasie and lower self-esteem. All it takes is a glamorous comment or a real below the belt remark to get you thinking about yourself. So people, choose your words carefully!
4. Did the messages you received when you are young conflict with how you are now? For example, if your parents always said that you were a good person, did you grow up and face low self-esteem anyway? Or if your parents always said you were a bad person (not usually in so many words), did you grow up to have high self-esteem in spite of that? How did either situation happen? Or did the messages you received when you were young accurately predict your self-esteem today? For example, told bad equals feel bad today. My parents always said I was a good person and in some ways, I grew up with low self-esteem. It wasn't anything they did, it was my exposure to the real world. Think about 7th grade. I think that grade makes or breaks most people. Some girls and boys in that grade love to play with toys while over kids in that grade of off running around on dates, wearing makeup, and out having sex! I was a child that prefered to play with Barbies at that age. Other girls were wearing makeup and busy talking about crushes. Being in another development level than other girls helped me feel like crap. Ok, so I didn't have a person in school I had a crush on…since Phillip moved away. That shouldn't have made a difference, then. Ok, so I didn't have jeans for most of the year. Now that did get me. I was a growing child and wasn't to certain of the size I was meant to be.
7th grade is and was hell.
But I think after all I've gone through, I think I've become a better person because of it.
5. I think you should all come to this Boston Bloggers event with me tonight! (Although, most of you don't live anywhere near me!) Oh, here's a good question: where are you all from? (for some of you, I already know the answer, but I don't know it for all of you!) Loved to, but stuck here in awful Savannah, GA.
Posted by Shawn at May 15, 2002 11:32 AM in Other Memes.
Nope, they don't sound kooky to me!
Wow- the outside world is definately a factor in our self-esteem. One of my friends grew up with mostly positive messages, but when she went to school, it was all downhill. I think schools now are starting to work on stopping the petty cruelty that happens to children by other children (rather than writing it off as "kids will be kids.") You're right, though, 7th grade is a tough year- it's an in-between year for a lot of people. You're not quite a teenager, but you're not quite a kid, either. I was looking after a girl who was in the sixth grade who started on day to talk about "going out with boys." Of course, I freaked (on the inside, not on the outside!) But then I asked what "going out" meant to them- it is so different from what it means to an adult or even a teenager. "It just means that you're going out together. And then everyone says that you're going out together so everyone knows." Whew! I imagine it is hard for the young women who are not there yet, and have no need to be. I imagine that it gets lonely, though- to want to still play and to know that your peers "look down on that" when really they're probably longing to play, too!
Posted by: Eve at May 15, 2002 1:34 PMAnd it doesn't seem to ever get any better. The petty cruelties don't end in school. They are in just about eveery work place, just more subtle. Not being asked to join the rest of the "in" group to go out to lunch. Not being included in the conversations. Feeling like an outsider no matter how hard you try to be nice and sociable. Why is it that some people, like me, just always seem to be the outsider even when they have done nothing to be treated that way? You go to a new place, do the same thing everyone else is doing, talk about the same things and be friendly, yet it doesn't matter. Is there like some sort of "vibe" that people like me put out or something? I would really like to know.
Posted by: Dragon at May 16, 2002 2:23 PMI don't know the answers to everything, Trish. I say "WALLFLOWERS UNITE!"
And Eve, that's what it meant in 6th & 7th for me, too. But what can kids those age do?
The books I read at that age had kids those age go to a local hangout spot. Well, that's easy if you live in a small town, I guess. But Fort. Bragg was large and all the kids went to one school. There was only one local hang out spot - the ice skating rink. And it sucked if you were an enlisted child who couldn't skate!
Oh well, at least in 9 th grade, there was Ryan to hang around and my Girl Scout troop.
Posted by: Shawn at May 17, 2002 9:18 AMWallflowers Unite. I like that. But then we wouldn't be wall flowers anymore would we? We could start a clique of NON popular peeps and then we would be popular... Maybe... Just a thought.
Posted by: Dragon at May 17, 2002 10:10 PM
