Column 5 – Part 1

Mom quote for the week

“I think you should lose the sunglasses.”

Well mom, I just wanted to say, “I don’t think I will ever lose the sunglasses”

Do I smell?

I am going to go out on a limb here.

I would say that in general, people don’t like me. Surprised you are, I can tell.

I think those who feel the need to inform me of how I come across, assume I don’t realize. But I know how I come off, and I know what people think. I am going to list a few of the reasons here, and you all can see which, if any of the reasons, you might fall under.

Reason numero uno

I concentrate on the negative. Big surprise.

Anyone who has met me for roughly five minutes has heard me say something is stupid, or retarded, or people who protested our war in Iraq are inconsiderate jerks. I am so negative, I have actually applied for my own button right next to the plus sign on the calculator, but Texas Instruments turned me down.

To say that I don’t realize to what extent my negativity affects other people, would be a more appropriate statement.

This is one of the certainties I have found in my short life. For me, to concentrate on some minute iota of positiveness, and then to proceed to blow it up to float me down the happy river, takes all of my strength. It isn’t easy for me to see little good things and have them overshadow the negative things. So I guess you could say, I am lazy, to the hundredth power.

I know I can say that at one point in time, if not most of the time, the general population does the same. Or at least they think about it.

Do you feel this way?

Think about it.

You come home from a hard day’s work. Your day plodded along, you just didn’t have all that much to do that day. You come home and you have to fix a meal for other members in your household. They hungrily gobble the meal you planned and shopped a week in advance, leave the table, and leave the dishes for you to do, without saying thanks. Would you sit there and say, “Golly! I sure am glad that my fellow employee dropped off that individually packaged life saver candy for me, or this would be a sticky situation!” Hell no! But I will give the benefit of a doubt and say everyone but me would concentrate on the good, smile all the way into bed that night, and dream about marshmallows and funny little elves building the dreamworld’s first happy bridge.

Ack!

I make the choice to reserve the effort it takes to find something positive in something negative and channel it into my artwork. I go into my room and I create beautiful works of art. Some finished, some not. All of them my feelings flowing from a pencil. I have books and books full of feelings.

My art and my negativity are inseparable.

Have many of you been to my web site? You know that no anger = no cool drawings. I would not have the drive and concentration to make them, because my fuel is my negativity. I make myself happy by creating something that I enjoy.

I do handle the events in my life differently; I have a different way of calming my soul. Does it make it wrong? No. But is it easy to be misunderstood? Would anyone be able to look beyond that and make the association that I use the anger as fuel? Nope, and I don’t expect them to.

My Beef, it’s what’s for dinner?

The second reason for my mixed impressions on others is that I am outspoken.

I am going to inch out on the proverbial limb even farther and say that I have gotten better at this. College has changed my stance on my own opinions because I started to get a taste of my own medicine.

Rock my world, please!

College is always fun because you get to meet all sorts of new people. But as I was making new friends, I found that I couldn’t do that by being myself. Myself was too outspoken. I had to concentrate on being more neutral.

I also noticed that I was more sensitive to criticism then I had remembered. I wasn’t a big shot anymore. I was just one of hundreds of the best, the kids who all received “Class artist” awards from their graduating peers. My art didn’t feel so special, and I didn’t go off to college with anyone else from high school, so all I had to fall back on was me. One small comment about my appearance or my work made my shaky wall of security come crashing down.

It was the same thing I was doing to people 24/7, to people who are affected by other people’s thoughts, all through my pre-college years. From that point on I realized that I needed only to give my opinion when asked. I still felt I didn’t need to lie. I didn’t like people who responded in such a way to suffice what another wanted to hear.

Continue to Part 2…..

Here are some similar arcade posts

• Column 5 – Part 2
• Column 2 – Part 2
• Column 3 – Part 2
• Column 8 – Part 2
• Column 12 – Part 2

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