the thin line between optimism and delusion…

Two quotes from my favorite television show – Scrubs – one from tonight’s episode and one from a couple of weeks ago.

“Sometimes the easiest way to lose something is to want it too badly.” – JD (Zack Braff – who I am in love with).

“show me a well-adjusted, successful man who wants to settle down and have kids, and I’m not interested, but find me an alcoholic in his midthirties that still thinks his band might make it, and just tell me where I can show up and buy him dinner.” – Molly (Heather Graham) the psychiatrist.

I don’t know why these two quotes struck me, but I like them. I love Heather Graham’s character, because she is totally aware of who she is and she is okay with it. She is also overly optimistic, happy, and chipper. And the amazing thing is that her happiness and optimism totally irritates a lot of people. Fascinating.

Jessica and I were discussing the upside to living in a fantasy world. In our fantasy world, everyone has good intentions and deep down is a good person. It takes a lot for someone to convince me that they actually don’t like me. I know I talk about this a lot, but I honestly don’t have the energy to think that someone doesn’t like me. I have been working on this new life approach for a while, and here it is (if you spend much time with me in person or on the phone, you can probably skip this part because I talk about it a lot).

New Life Approach:
I believe that all the problems in the world and especially in relationships come down to two things: 1. Bad Self Esteem and 2. Miscommunication.

This being the case, I am no longer going to take people the wrong way and I am going to try to keep my bad self esteem from getting in the way of me loving people. Bad self esteem makes me react the wrong way to people – and then it is easy to miscommunication. I have been trying to think of practical ways to put this plan into action, and the simplest thing I can do is to not react. Or maybe, not to over-react. If someone is not nice to me, I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt that it has nothing to do with me, and they might just be having a bad day.

Another important side of this new approach to life is to be aware of others bad self esteem and inclination to misunderstand me. So it is important to be a good communicator. When ever possible, I am going to be upfront with people about how I feel (but remembering their bad self esteem at the same time). The downside of this is that I have a tendency to wear my heart of my sleeve – my mom has been trying to teach me not to do this for years – but some things you just can’t change. Therefore I must have a high tolerance for people in general – or only hang out with people I really like – in order to not increase someone else’s bad self esteem. But I really and truly do like most people, so maybe it won’t be that difficult. Also, must be aware of situations that are likely to bring out bad self esteem, we all have our own – mine tend to be around people I really like a lot who I am not convinced like me, and also with regards to my usefulness – I love to help, and some people don’t want my help – and this is where I get very defensive (there are many others, but examples – oh I also hate it when people want to take my temperature about something – my academics, my spirituality, my dating life – i.e. – “How are your outlines coming?”).

This might make me seem overly concerned with others and selfless – but really this is pretty much for self preservation more than anything. I don’t know, I guess it is just important to me to believe that people are inherently good for the most part – and this is a way for me to analyze away some of the everyday problems that I see with the world. I know, I’m delusional and naive, one day I am going to have to deal with the real world, but until then, don’t be the reason I lose my enthusiasm.

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This summer while I was in Greece, using the internet was expensive and I would try to think about what I wanted to post to my blog during the day in order to save time when I was actually sitting at the computer. I was also overwhelmed by everything around me and tried to take note of as much as possible.

I have never had a journal before, and I have never written many of my thoughts down before. But now that I do write a lot of my thoughts down, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I am going to write. And I probably write down about 1% of what I think about writing. Writing is a release, and sometimes just thinking about what I would write is a release.

I especially like to think about journal topics when I am running. I can come up with tons of things I want to say while I am breezing through the woods. But the amazing thing is, once I come home from running, I almost never write down my running thoughts. I think this is because running is a release. And once I am calm and relieved of my stress – I don’t have the compulsion to write anymore. I don’t know if this means that I am not a true writer, because I think a true writer would only be happy once they wrote down there idea. But whether or not I am a true writer is not important.

I am fascinated that this fairly new hobby of keeping a journal has changed what I think about on a regular basis. Actually writing in the journal is one activity, but thinking about what I am going to write is a whole other activity in itself. It is weird to add to your daydreaming activities. I like it.

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Since the town of Athens will empty this weekend and relocate along the Ga/Fl coast from Savannah to Jacksonville – we have to celebrate Halloween early. The first time the Ga/Fl game interfered with my Halloween plans I was 12 – and here I am again, 14 years later with the same problem. I love Halloween. I was very happy when Jamie, Otis, Caleb and Jay decided to have a party last night. Then there is the SBA party tonight, but I don’t know if I can rally to the level of last night again tonight, especially not with this weekend looming.

The party last night was awesome. Jessica and I bought cheerleading uniforms at Target and completely enjoyed flashing back to high school. We both have a problem turning the page sometimes. The boys did a great job with their costumes – and with getting everyone else to get involved. Jamie wanted to be Willy Wonka and he was able to assemble the entire cast. Jay was the candy store man, Caleb was Mike t.v., Lauren was Verouka Salt, Brent was the best Ompa Lompa I have ever seen, and Kimberly was the golden ticket, we had an everlasting gobstopper, Violet, wallpaper that tastes like snosberries….I’m telling you, it was impressive. We watched scenes from the movie on the big screen – I sang all the songs for everyone. Later, Jessica and I did the perfect cheer. Then we had a dance party to Michael Jackson. My pom pom got caught in the fan. It was awesome. Cristina was a white trash chick and Otis was also white trash (I think they were both suppose to be Florida fans – they both looked great).

I was really impressed with everyone’s costumes – Tunde was Andre 3000 – Taylor was Paris (really well done) – I am blanking on all the other costumes – the bottom line was that it was tons of fun. I’m not sure I have had that much fun at a Halloween party in a really long time. We will see what everyone brings out tonight. I can’t wait.

Oh my gosh, I almost forgot about the best outfit of all – Staci was Britney Spears, and it was totally believable except the fact that Staci is way skinnier than ole Brit these days.

I am going to sing willy wonka songs in my head all day long…..

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