Stream of consciousness. Ready, go. Kanye inspired me the other day. What a fucking weirdo. It’s too bad some of his fuckery outweighs his awesomeness though, because in some ways, he’s totally my type of person. My type of person, as in, someone who I’d want to be friends with, someone who I GET. Someone creative and motivated who wants big things and isn’t afraid to admit that they’re amazing at whatever.

One of my biggest pet peeves used to be those kids (read: girls) in my elementary school who were really good at drawing, so they’d draw whenever we had free time and then they’d pass their drawings around after recess or whatever and we’d all say “WOW, this is great! You’re so talented!” and others would go “Draw me one, draw me one!”, so it became a sort of black market craft, where these girls would draw drawings for other girls and pass them around between classes.

If I recall correctly, they didn’t get snacks or whatever in return, they got endless praise and fascination from other girls probably lower on the social hierarchy and their constant responses to this praise would be “NO NO NO, this is SUCH a bad drawing! This is my worst work! It’s so bad!” and the receiver would say, “What, no? You’re SO talented, I WISH I could draw like you.” But the 10-year-old artist would never relent and insist on her mediocrity.

This was a source of never-ending rage for my fourth grade self. Clearly, you’ve drawn something good here, you know it’s good, stop insisting so hard it sucks! This resentment has carried into my adult life now and as soon as I sense modesty I flee in the opposite direction or roll my eyes and vocally agree, “You’re right, this work is utter shit.” And when I make something that I know is fucking awesome, I’m the first to say so. It’s not about ego, it’s about realizing when you’ve done something well and going ahead and congratulating yourself. There is nothing wrong with that. You can be your number one supporter at the end of the day, if you can let yourself.

Speaking of elementary school, just the thought of it brings back feelings of intense embarrassment and shame. I was always that weird kid who had to go home for lunch and did really well on that month’s math test and everyone assumed studied six hours straight as soon as I got home. This to me was ludicrous. Sometimes conversations of a particular TV show would come up and I’d join in with an opinion and other kids would look at me incredulous, I could read their faces (“SHE WATCHES TV? Wow, weird.”). When in reality, all I ever did was go home and watch TV. Sigh, the misunderstood nerd. As always.

Of course, my mother didn’t help in alleviating my loser status at school. She insisted on dropping me and my siblings off straight at the front door EVERY morning, taking us home for lunch and bringing us back, everyday, and finally, picking us up at the end of the day. Kids started to catch on that the beat-up light blue Chevy Cavalier was my family’s. Mind you, this beat up car also had one dark brown door. It was totally falling apart. So just, fuck my life.

The important point to note here is that my house was a ten minute walk from school, a two minute car ride. TEN MINUTES. Why weren’t we just allowed to walk ourselves to school on our own? We could have joined the other kids and we would hardly have been ALONE, ready for a stranger to snatch.

My parents’ intense overprotection has always been a source of extreme resentment and anxiety issues in social situations, but I suppose I can elaborate on the millions of other incidents they’ve caused in a later blog. I think this went well? Thanks Kanye. What an inspiration you are!