Woo Woo, my first of 2012!
Okay, that is the enthusiasm I can muster. I was up until 6am this morning working on my rewrite because I am slipping back into crazy writer mode. I am not entirely sure what day it is, and I am mostly still thinking about what is going on with my characters. It is an awesome feeling but I am not totally comfortable not really being aware of where I am in time. I need to just relax, baby, and roll with it.
I think I might have finally convinced everyone, including myself, that SWTOR isn’t going to kill my writing. I just like writing more than I like playing games and I miss it when I am playing. It is great when I need breaks or for when I take a night off, but I would rather be working than playing. What the fuck is that about?
Though my Corso Riggs has some rocking ass red man panties
So secret telling time: I love “What Not to Wear” on TLC. I can’t help it, I just do. I like watching people growing into their own beauty. I like clothes, hair, and makeup. I am endlessly girly.
I am surprised by my own reaction to the participants who fear that clothes will somehow make them less of who they are. I understand not wanting to wear clothes that you like or you don’t feel fits your personality, but a dress cannot drain your personality from your body. Your clothes should be a reflection of who you are but putting on normal clothes does not some how make you normal.
I have worn some pretty atrocious shit in my life. I used clothes and hair to act out and to try to accept myself as a big freaking weirdo. I felt that if I dressed as outrageously different as I felt, I would some how feel more okay with being me. I was a teenager trying to figure out who I was and trying to signal to others that were like me. I was somehow trying to find a way to be myself and to fit in. I wouldn’t be a teenager again for any amount of money and I think anybody who tells teenagers that they are in the best years of their life should get kicked in very sensitive bits.
I’m a grown up now, well, mostly a grown up. I have a pretty good idea of who I am. Nothing I put on will make me less Selina. A suit won’t make me normal. I know I can help others understand me by controlling the messages I send out with my clothes, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t find a balance between sending the right message and still liking what I wear. I don’t have that fear anymore. I don’t feel the need to dye my hair insane colors to announce that I am not like everyone else, but if I want purple hair because I think it is pretty or it makes me feel more bad ass, I can dye my hair.
I don’t have to scream to find my voice, and I don’t have to change myself completely to fit in. I don’t know when it happened, but it did happen.
Crazy profound from a reality television show.
When the fuck did I start growing up?
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When I had my first student teacher, something she said to me struck me as interesting. Paraphrasing here, but something along the lines of, “It never occurred to me that I could teach and be myself at the same time. I always saw myself as putting on the teacher act in the classroom and taking it off again when I go home.” This possibility never even occurred to me. How could I teach as someone else? How could I put on that act? Surely my students would see right through the act and know I wasn’t being true to who I was. I never even consider the possibility of using an act to teach my kids. I am me, regardless of if I accidentally say “hell” to an 8th grader, or find myself literally beating my head against the wall in the middle of rehearsal just to make a point. It was at that moment, where I realized what my student teacher was suggesting, that I have grown up. I am comfortable in my own skin. I am confident in who I am. When I was a student teacher, I wore a small collection of business suits every day. Now I wear my hippie skirts, bitch boots, and peasant blouses, and I sport my tattoos, and I don’t worry what people will say. I am me, and that’s who I’ll always be. I think my students love and respect me more because they know I’m honest about who I am, and it also probably helps them to see that not all grown-ups have to dress a certain way or act a certain way to do something respectable. It’s amazing what circumstances occur to make you realize that.